Hello. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us in our Copel Day. I'd like to thank all of you joining us online and those of you who are here in the city of ficers, and the whole Copel team. I would like to thank Bruno Laskowsky, director of BNDES. By greeting you, I'd like to greet all of our shareholders, investors, and the Copel employees, all of you who monitor us and follow us. I'd like to start by going over the agenda for today. We are very excited. We have a lot to talk about. Our 2030 vision for Copel. This is the list you can all see on the screen.
We are going to talk about our vision, our journey, all of our panels, and lastly, we'll have a panel on financial sustainability that provides support to our growth and perspectives for the future. Let's start with a message by the Governor of the state of Paraná, that is the controlling shareholder. His message came in writing yesterday with a material fact communicated to the whole market. I believe that the message was very clear. This is the Eletrobras model with some characteristics, particularly a golden share, that aims to maintain our investment plan in Copel Distribuição. There is a bill of law addressing this that has been sent to the Paraná State Council, and we have to wait for the developments and approvals. That's all I have to say about this.
Having said that, you all read about it, you analyzed the repercussions, and you understand the intent of our controlling shareholder, the state of Paraná. With that, I want to focus on our 2030 vision, and I'd like to invite the board of directors, Marcel Malczewski.
Good day, everyone. On behalf of the board of directors of Copel, represented by myself, Andre and Marco Antônio Barbosa Cândido, I would like to welcome all of you. I wish you a great Copel day, a great morning together with us, so that you can understand in more detail what we are thinking for Copel in the coming years until 2030. We have experts here, Daniel, but it is always good to remember that the energy industry is a mega trend all over the world and in Brazil.
It is an industry that is going through a lot of transformation. There's a lot of dynamism in this industry, and it is an unprecedented dynamism. Copel needs to be prepared for the challenges and for the opportunities that come from this transformation. I think that we have opportunities for growth, for market openings and opportunities connected to new business, acceleration of growth. The board of directors has been participating, as Daniel knows, and participating actively in this process of planning for the company. This hasn't started today. It's been a couple of years. We have been looking at the challenges and the opportunities. We have been developing cycles of planning.
In recent months, we devoted ourselves, the board of directors as well as the executive committee of the company, together, we devoted ourselves to develop a more long-term vision for the next seven to eight years. The role of the board, I can tell you, has been very effective. We've been very present in the management and in designing the future of Copel. Copel made an option, Copel's option is not to follow the trend. Copel's decision is to play a leading role in writing our own future. I believe that the board has been able to make our mark. We have also worked in potentializing the culture of the company. You all know that Copel has a strong culture, but we need to potentialize it to get even more out of this very good and technical culture of Copel.
We have been trying to develop our leaders. We have great leaders, great talent, we need to have a stronger development pace for these leaders. As a final thought, Daniel, I'd like to say that I am particularly very optimistic about the future of the company. My background is in engineering, my optimism is responsible. It's not just optimism for the sake of being an optimist. I would like to say that Copel, by 2030, will be in the place where it deserves to be, where it can be. In the board, we will contribute for this to happen. That's why I am very optimistic. To end, Daniel, I want to congratulate you. Today, it is Daniel's birthday. Happy birthday. And I wish you all a great Copel day.
Marcel, one question for you because you're the chairman of the board. We have nine board members. In the board of directors meetings, you always very keen to talk about execution. Execution, KPIs, people, you spoke a little about that, and digital transformation. In all of the meetings, this is in the agenda. Why is this clear for you?
Well, I'm a technology guy, so to me, digital transformation is obvious. There's no successful company in the future if this company does not have a great efficiency impact through digital transformation. You cannot have a relevant impact on a company's efficiency without a successful digital transformation process with automation. Yes, we'll be focusing on this until 2030 and beyond, because we need to speed that up at Copel.
People, well, that's a cliché, but people are the main asset of a company. It is the same at Copel. Even if we have digitalization and automation, we'll always have to rely on people's minds and talent. Copel has a lot of talent. At the end of the day, it is all about execution. When I joined the board of directors, I told you clearly that we would need to have excellence in execution at Copel. If there's one thing that the board focuses on day after day at Copel is excellence in execution. Excellence in execution. It will continue to do so.
Okay. Thank you very much, Marcel. Stay with us. We'll count on you. This is the tone of the top. Let's see our vision for that. I remember in 2019 when we took over, we came up and designed a strategic plan. We would have one-on-one meetings or smaller group meetings with the market, and we always asked you, "Give us the benefit of the doubt." Now, quarter after quarter, year after year, we have delivered results consistently. Today, Copel is at its best level in its 70 years of history. This is a reflection of the work of our leaders, our managers, and our employees. Copel is a collective work of art. To give you a small summary of what we've done in recent years, and particularly in recent months after Copel's earnings conference call, we prepared a quick video.
Copel, the largest company in the state of Paraná, one of the largest integrated electric groups in the country, present in 10 states. We are well-known in Brazil and abroad.
Best governance among state-owned companies. Cost cuts, efficiency gains, low debt. Revisiting our portfolio, 100% focus on energy and robust investments. Valuation results, record results coming from a great cycle of generation in transmission. Copel prioritizes investments in free energy. After acquiring Vilas wind hub, we have incorporated Santa Rosa, Mundo Novo, and Aventura hubs. We started operating the Jandaíra hub two years before planning, and we delivered the strategic transmission line, Curitiba Leste to Blumenau, which brought more energy in South-Southeast exchanges. Copel grows strongly in the segment of energy commercialization in the free market. Copel invests heavily in distribution to grow even more in its concession area, the state of Paraná. Strategic to the company, vital for the state. Since 2019, Copel has attracted BRL 120 billion in investments. For such growth, Copel responds in two fronts.
The largest modernization program for rural energy in the country to ensure expansion of Paraná agribusiness, one of the most advanced in the world. We execute the most ambitious Brazilian project of network automation, full monitoring, power information in the speed of light, a revolution in managing power for our customers and clients. Copel went public in 1994. It was the first in the Brazilian electric sector to be in the New York Stock Exchange. Since 2002, we're in Europe, in the Madrid Stock Exchange. Our dividend payout policy was renewed. Minority shareholders have one more seat at the board. Three new statutory committees were created, all to increase, expand governance and safety for our investors and clients.
Created in 1954, Copel is a benchmark in sustainability, both in Brazil and around the world. Copel is a pioneer in good environmental and social practices. We have a firm commitment with a net zero economy, with emissions way below the average for the sector. A clean power company, the first in the electric sector in Brazil to join the UN Global Compact with a huge social inventory, respecting human rights with a code of conduct that prevents and fights ethical deviations, values our employees and our social policies. For a long time, Copel has been doing what has been called recently ESG. We respect our clients. We innovate, we manage results. We are the best power company in Brazil in 2022, powered by the future. Copel, pure energy.
Well, this is the Copel that we see today, that allow us to greater ambitions and vision for the future. It is exactly this that we want to share with you. First point, we will be one of the largest integrated energy groups in Brazil. That is our vision by 2030. Our focus is energy. We will only invest in electricity, and that's why the telecom investment and Comgás. We understand that as a crucial part of this strategy, we should have a relevant presence in the four businesses where we operate: generation, transmission, distribution, and commercialization. You will hear this today, we want to gain scale. That's a crucial part. Another point is our people.
As a competitive differentiator, I'm not going to elaborate a lot on that because the Chairman of the Board has given us the tone of the top. Big transformations happen through people. We have to care for our people. We have to potentialize our culture. We'll speak a little about that. We will be very much focused on customers' experience. We'll be focused on the customer's journey. This is a trend in the market, we are going to have a panel to speak about market opening. We have to serve our customers well. We have to have loyal customers. We have to offer them new products and services. The customers will be satisfied and integrated with us. This is the power engine for us. Copel is a company that looks outside.
To get to this vision, I believe that three pillars are fundamental. Number one, decarbonization of our current portfolio and a focus on renewables. After a lot of reflection and with the support of international consulting firms, the company understood that it was important to have a clear statement, a firm position regarding decarbonization. That is why we announced the decision to increase our investments in UEGA to have a study to divest from UEGA. Cassio will speak more about that. We believe that this is an important path for us to be a relevant integrated company in the electric sector. We see market acknowledgment of that. In the mid to long term, we'll have 100% renewable power coming from hydro, wind and solar, because that will give us a competitive edge. Discipline in capital allocation.
We will not grow at just about any cost. We will be making good deals that will add value to the company and to our shareholders. With our two recent acquisitions, we believe, actually, I am sure, I'm convinced that both recent acquisitions and the transmission auctions in which we participated, and unfortunately lost, show how discipline in capital allocation is present in our agenda. We are walking the talk constantly in a perennial fashion. We get to our strategic goals and objectives. This is the part that we have debated the most, the part that we like the most, because that's when we start giving more color to materialize this process and this vision. What are the objectives? To increase at least 2 GW in our G&T area, so that we can have a consistent presence in solar.
Transmission with 2,000 km, additional kilometers. I'm not talking about the assets in which we participate and in which we have majority or minority stakes. Eletrobras has declared that they intend to have a rotation of assets, we'll keep an eye on that. 2,000 additional kilometers gained in auctions built in a greenfield approach. This is part of our strategy. Third, distribution, Disco. Here, I believe that Copel has one of its largest assets, because we have a Disco with a renewed concession. Concession that was recently renewed in the fourth largest market. You saw recently that Paraná overtook the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Now we are the fourth economy in the country. Very soon we'll catch up with Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, we'll go after São Paulo.
Max will speak a little about this because we have a lot of room for improvement in our regulatory base. I want to declare publicly that if the opportunities in this segment arise, they're rare, we'll look into those actively because we're ready. Our management model, Max will speak about it. Our work are all ready to expand our footprint in distribution, going beyond the boundaries of Paraná, just like GNT does. What are we thinking about distributed generation? DG for us, distributed generation, is a defense strategy. It is the transition of a small customer to the free market. This will happen, and we will speak about this, how Copel Mercado Livre will cope with this transition of customers.
Eventually the sector will be consolidated, and Cassio and his team will be ready to look into this and to be a player in a consolidation strategy in the distributed generation sector. As for the free market and commercialization of power, we are among the largest commercialization companies, and now our focus is on increasing profitability, adding services, adding products, being a one-stop shop. We'll speak a little about that. Above all, we have the brand, the Copel brand and guarantee. It is a quality seal, so that customers who buy Copel's energy for two, five, 15 years, they'll be certain to get delivery behind us. We have at least a ballast of 7 GW. To end, we want to be recognized by customers for our innovative and digital service offering.
I have no doubt that with this big volume of customers coming, digitization, a platform, having a digital channel to effectively serve our customers in an omnichannel approach with the marketplace, whatever we're able to build, I am sure that all of that will be part of this integrated strategy. Here we have a framework that consolidates everything I've just spoken about. This roadmap will be on the desks of all managers of the company so that all will know where we are going. I've spoken a lot about where we're heading. In the next panels, our officers, my colleagues will explain to you how we are going to get to where we wanna be. I just wanna say one final thing. Our case is unique.
The Copel brand, our asset base, our people, our technical competencies, our teams, and especially the expectations resulting from the material fact disclosed yesterday, all of that will lead Copel to a lot of success. I hope you enjoy the event. Getting into the second panel, I'd like to invite our Business Development Officer, Cassio Santana da Silva. Cassio, over to you.
Good morning, Daniel. Good day everyone joining us here and online. We'll speak a little about our strategic journey and how we'll get to 2030. In our agenda, we have three main pillars. Decarbonization, as Daniel mentioned, which is our vision of making Copel a 100% renewable energy company. Second pillar, capital allocation, which became like a mantra for us. Since 2020, in capital allocation, we defined an investment policy which advocates the kind of asset, size, location for the assets.
We have very well-defined rules for Copel to look for assets, and we have discipline in execution mentioned by Marcel. Innovation, the third pillar, the icing of the cake. I will speak a little about corporate venture capital, Copel Ventures. Let's get started and let's speak about our first asset in our decarbonization, UEGA. UEGA is the thermoelectric power plant operating in the merchant modality. 484 MW. Concession expires in 2029 with the possibility of renewal. The most important fact about UEGA, it is a 0 km asset. We did a major inspection held in August of 2020, that ended in August, that puts the asset at its best operating condition to extend its useful life. What else is important about this asset? It matches the timing of our strategic planning of decarbonizing our grid.
This matches Petrobras' initiative of divesting their minority stake, 18%. Petrobras has put their stake for sale. We should follow that process. We're finalizing our studies to have our 82% working interest for sale in a structured process, so that players that master the gas chain, and we believe that this is very relevant to create value in this kind of asset, may buy not only 18% of the asset, so that they can buy 18% or 82% or why not, 100% of the asset. With the right timing, we can make this asset profitable for us, and we can then continue to decarbonize our power grid. Another very important asset that Daniel mentioned is Compagas. Copel Holds 51% stake of Compagas.
Since we have executed a similar process with Telecom, here this fits our strategy of focusing on energy assets. The outcome for Compagas, afterwards, we'll speak a little about the renewal of the concession, but as soon as we renew the concession, we will have a similar process to Copel Telecom, an auction and stock exchange, a transparent, competitive process that is clear. We're sure that it's going to be successful because this is an asset with unique characteristics. We are at a final stage of renewing a concession. This asset should be sold with 30 years of concession and a modernized concession. The main drivers of this concession renewal are here on the screen. I draw your attention particularly to the first item, which is a change in a cost-plus to a price cap model.
As you all know, this privileges that the concession be managed with a lot of efficiency. The concessionaire is remunerated for that, compensated for that. That is an important modernization in this concession model. Some data that are public and have been disclosed since the public consultation in February. The grant of BRL 508 million for the renewal of the concession. A very important topic is the internalization of gas in the 10 meso regions of the state through physical and virtual gas pipelines and a WACC of 9.12%, which gives us a lot of safety for profitability of the concession.
Our expectation is that after the renewal of the concession, which is at an advanced stage in the governance of Compagas and Copel, we can have this auction between 180 and 210 days after renewal. Foz do Areia. Foz do Areia is like the crown jewel for us. It is the biggest plant of Copel. It is an asset that we operate, just like all others, very carefully. It is an important asset for the company. Where do we stand in terms of renewal of the concession? Well, information is available in an ordinance of the Ministry of Energy that the draft of the new concession agreement has been approved for an additional 30 years in addition to the material fact. I'm just detailing the material fact information.
There is a grant bonus defined, of a little over BRL 1.8 billion, a WACC of 8.27%, and a future energy price of a little over BRL 177. The conditions for renewal of the asset are very clear, safe, and now this is a process that needs to develop. Life here at Copel has been very busy. We're always into acquisitions, assets, auctions. Yesterday was no different. Our life was very busy yesterday. The original plan for this asset was to have an auction for divestment of shareholding control, 50.1%. By selling our shareholding control, we can renew the concession for 30 years. If the material fact disclosed yesterday becomes a reality, our priority is to renew with 100% of the asset for Copel.
One way or another, what we realize is that this asset has great attractiveness. There are many strategic financial self-producing players getting information about the asset. Of course, financial players, because this asset has assured return, particularly with the operation and maintenance we've been providing for this asset. We also have engaged advisors in Castro. The best player for this asset is Copel.
Well, the asset is already very well managed, right? If this is a winning team, you shouldn't change it. We already have that as plan A. We have Santander as our financial assistance, and Cescon Barrieu, our legal assistance. Let's talk about our growth agenda. I would like to remind you, this is a legacy from this administration, when we look at assets acquisition, as I mentioned when I started, we created a investment policy by the type of asset. We have a investment policy for transmission hydroelectric, photovoltaic, wind power plants. We developed these policies very careful. Here we tackle the type of asset, the location and what type of synergies that we might have for our business, the size. We have a minimum size to create a new cluster or to continue investing in operating clusters.
Our partnerships, if we do have partners or not, our corporate structure, and I'll talk more about that in the last bullet. What is a powerful information here on this slide? It is what the policy will bring to our daily practice. What it has allowed us was to acquire two assets with two digits of profitability. We know that we can go even further. Looking at this here, Vilas, Aventura, Santa Rosa & Mundo Novo, we published that, and the market realized that these are assets that are two digits of profitability. Marcelo has stressed that, is the discipline and execution of projects that are already in the company's portfolio, our greenfield. Copel Geração e Transmissão, for instance, has executed Jandaíra, which is a farm that we acquired in the auction of 2019.
We delivered it two years ahead of time. It's really, we are walking the talk, and we are showing in practice what our policies state. Finally, the last bullet here, which is very interesting. How can we bring in more profitability? How can we increase these two digits results? We monitor the market, and we realized that there are very good people with complementary investment thesis, complementary to ours. Very good people develop assets, and at the right moment, they rotate those assets. They turn these assets profitable by M&As. What these partners need, they need a PPA. A lot of times they also need some financial proceedings. We are monitoring the market.
In our pipeline, I would say that our possible future acquisitions might look for assets that are in an earlier moment minimizing risk because of this combination of investment thesis risk and execution, bringing in assets that provide us a synergy with PPA and the free market with self-production, and also assets that in an operating moment would fit into our G&T. This is a very important moment of our growth. Talking about these initial avenues, both assets as well as services, I think Daniel already touched on that, and I'll go over this briefly. What does it mean to add 2 GW to the portfolio? That is something very significant. This year, the wind farm that we acquired is of 260 MW. This year's target, it's there.
If there is a good opportunity, we still have time up to December 31st. About transmission, Daniel also mentioned about our discipline in the auctions. It's too bad we were not awarded. We were very frustrated. As I usually tell my team, we have to play against ourselves. You know, someone might take ourselves very close to the abyss, but we will not jump. This is our decision. About distribution, Daniel also mentioned that our focus here is to grow by new concession areas and to consolidate our base in Paraná. We have a continuous improvement plan in our distributing company, in our concession today. Max will talk more about that. We are very proud. We have 0 test allowances. We have no investments that are not prudent.
In terms of monitoring opportunities, these are not opportunities that, you know, come out every day. We are monitoring, from time to time, all those operations that might add scale and synergy to us. About services, this is a very significant topic when we look at our future scenario, because here, really, we want to have our customers and clients at the center of all our actions. We want to have a large commercialization company, and we have one of the largest ones. The ideal is to have a commercialization company or a subsidiary or a business area that is large and profitable. How can we do that? We will follow up the client's journey. It doesn't matter, what size this client is. It might be a captive client with additional services. These services might be provided by Copel.
Might be a large client, a client from the free market that might contract services in high production. We already have a model developed in the leasing and matching mode. We also have services available related to energy efficiency for these large clients. To improve operating efficiency and the energy management for these clients also one of our commitments, we can already deliver that. About distributed generation, Daniel has already mentioned, and I would like to add to this defensive strategy. We developed a plan that is very well structured, starting with the very beginning of the project and the land up to the management of our clients portfolio that go into DG in the state of Paraná.
We are doing that with our own funding as well as with our own human resources. We are monitoring opportunities to consolidate that market when you look at that rationally. No one knows Paraná's distribution as ourselves, and we know how we can use distributed generation as a tool to improve energy management in the state of Paraná. That's right. I think this is the main message. One stop shop is a reality when you're able to guide the trajectory of our clients. This is a clear understanding. With the clients that are already in our base, we want to turn them loyal and to retain them. The ones that are not in yet, we want to bring them in. We want them to become part of our client base.
Also, of course, that everyone can be happy with us. Finally, I would like to address innovation. Especially 2021 was a fantastic year when we think about open innovation for Copel, and this has extended itself to 2022 also. I would like to remind you about what happened in 2021. We had a program called Copel Volt that allowed us to access the global ecosystem of innovation. We had a contact with over 200 startups related to the energy area in the five continents. We chose five for concept proofs. One company from Asia, three Brazilian companies, and another company. I can tell you that they brought a lot of oxygen to us. They really changed our mindset. It was great to have this contact with the type of maturity from these companies.
We realized that we needed to have a clear message for the system. That's why we developed our innovation thesis. This is what you see on the screen. That organizes the way we want to position ourselves and how we want to communicate with the innovation ecosystem. Obviously, after the POCs moved forward and we saw the strategic value for the company, as well as the potential of scalability and the economic and financial potential that the businesses could have, we realized that we did not have the right vehicle to have a relationship with these startups in the long term strategy. We created what we call Copel Ventures, which is the corporate venture capital of Copel. Here we have more details on how this fund is going to work.
Yesterday, we published the notice to select someone that is qualified that can work with us and work with a fund of BRL 150 million, where Copel is going to be the single quota holder. We are going to work in a strategic point of view, of course, to improve the pains and foresee and work with the opportunities that we already have at Copel, but also that can be scalable to the energy market. We also have a financial approach here, in addition to the strategic one, to that type of partnership. We believe we will have between BRL 2 million-BRL 10 million per round because we are looking for companies that would fit in this early stage.
These are businesses that have a thesis, a product, a service, and that really right now they need something attractive. Copel is a great environment for that because with our engineers and our businesses and our farms, we can test and scale businesses to the energy market. Up to December 21st, we are open with the second round of Copel Hold to select companies, startups that can help us in these challenges. Renewable energies, here we are talking especially about green hydrogen, about storage, these are future bets, we want to have small bets on those, we want to position ourselves in a consistent way. Energy as a service, which is to take care of our clients' journeys.
What kind of services we can add to our current clients' portfolio so that we can continue with us, and they're happy with us as well. Asset management, this is very important for a company that has such a great asset combination as ours, and this is important to generate efficiency. In a regulated market as ours, efficiency a lot of times comes in from those that are out of the industry, the ones that are coming in and from a non-regulated point of view. This is important for us. We need to bring startups in that can help us in that opportunity as well. Smart grid and smart cities, everything that is related to energy, IoT, electro-mobility, because a lot of people are already turning into profitable and monetizable models in the electric reality and also innovative processes.
These companies also have that trend to use the daily activities of large companies and improve processes. These are the challenges that we have for this ecosystem. A registration will be open up to December 21st, and Copel Hold is our main generation of opportunities. Having Copel Hold the way that we will have it in a perennial way and having Copel Ventures, a fund already established, we believe we have the right entry doors to develop this innovation area, Daniel. That's what I had for my presentation.
Very good. Thank you very much. It is very clear, right? Very transparent. I just would like to say that Copel Ventures, in addition to this relationship with the startups, Copel and BNDES and Banco do Brasil are the only state-owned companies that were able to develop Copel Ventures like this one. We are excited about that. Congratulations, Cassio. Thank you. Now let's turn to our next panel, the operating excellence of our businesses. I would like to bring in Moacir Carlos Bertol from Copel Generation and Transmission. Hello, Bertol. Welcome.
First, I would like to greet Daniel, CEO. Also, I would like to greet all employees from Copel Group. Also, all the members of the top management, all the members of the Board on behalf of the Chairman of the Board.
Also, I would like to greet everyone that is following us here in this Copel Day and everyone else that follow us in the streaming platforms in such an important event for all of us. We have prepared a presentation in which we will analyze the trajectory of Copel Generation and Transmission and how we developed this trajectory and how we reconnected with this vision or with this growth purpose that we have for Copel Generation and Transmission. The topic of this panel, operating efficiency, places us in a position to move forward and look for established objectives. I would like to say that we are very happy about the results that Copel Generation and Transmission is boasting all these years, especially after 2019 here at Copel. This provides us a lot of opportunity to grow.
That's why it went through a transformation so that we could post these results. I will talk about seven topics: 100% renewable generation, energy transmission, and I will conclude with a new operation center that we just delivered at AM3 that has all administrative structure for Copel. When we took over Copel Generation and Transmission in 2019, it had 5.7 GW of installed capacity. I would like to comment that 87% of the power matrix would came from HPPs, therefore placing us in a very susceptible position depending on GSF effects. From 2019 to 2022, we installed 1.3 GW of installed capacity in our electric matrix. In 2019, we had Colíder HPP start up.
In 2020, the start up of Cutia e Bento Miguel Wind Complex, 312.9 MW of installed capacity. In 2021, we concluded our SHP Bela Vista, 28 installed capacity, and we acquired Vilas Wind Power Complex with 186.7 MW of installed capacity. In 2022, we concluded Jandaíra project with 90.1, and also we acquired wind farm Santa Rosa Mundo Novo and Aventura with 260.4. This was the trajectory of 1.3 MW or GW of installed capacity throughout these years. What does that represent now? We have already reduced the HPP stake. 77% is of HPP in our electric matrix, we already have 17% of wind farms part of our matrix, and 6% comes from our thermal electric plants.
We want to have 100% renewable matrix, 100% decarbonized, and that allows us to have a sustainability seal in our electric matrix. What is our major challenge when we look ahead? When we received the guidelines from our board of directors, for growth, we saw the opportunity to grow sustainably in generation and transmission, anchored in a portfolio that could be 100% renewable and not as susceptible to GSF with recurring cycles of unfavorable hydrology. This is a concern of ours, and we do have competence to move forward with it. What does that growth represent from 7 GW-9 GW of installed capacity, an additional capacity in a minimum 2 GW of capacity that is annual growth from 250 MW-300 MW of installed capacity a year.
Therefore, we are going to have a huge transformation in our hydroelectric matrix. Hydraulic stake, it's going to come down to 56. The wind share is going to go up to 29. Here we are adding a cluster of a photovoltaic solar generation. A matrix that is going to be 100% renewable, right, Daniel? On the other hand, to sustain that diversified growth with this new cluster of solar generation, we have to optimize the existing structure so that we can operate these assets with quality and efficiency. Also, out of the 9 GW that are installed here, we have what Caio mentioned. We have the sale for the decarbonization of the matrix of 548.4 for Araucária thermal power plant and a renewal for extra 30 years of GBM FDA.
The transmission segment in 2019, we had 5,700 km of transmission lines. We added 600 km , we also added improvements and reinforcements that were authorized by the regulating agency. These all were prudent investments done ahead of time from the regulatory term that was established by these approvals. Now we have 6,300 km of transmission lines. In this horizon of 2022, we will be implementing 2,000 km more, reaching 8,300 km of transmission lines, becoming a relevant transmission company in the electric system, in the national interconnected system. We have to improve the digitization of our O&M processes, we have a strong commitment at Copel Geração e Transmissão, as Marcelo mentioned. We have a commitment with efficiency. We always aim at efficiency of our processes.
Here I will dive into efficient actions we have taken at Copel Geração e Transmissão. We optimized our decision-making structure, focusing on the strategy of portfolio management, also O&M management, and also partnership management. In this period of time and in this scenario, we had a reduction of 164 employees, almost 10% of its headcount. That meant an increase, as we mentioned, from 1,300 MW of installed capacity and also 600 km of transmission lines. We increased our assets and we brought down our headcount, and we increased operating efficiency. We modernized our installations, and we were able to retrofit some of the critical equipment of our HPPs, and we reestablished very quickly our assets that were underperforming for some reason.
What is important for us also is the robotization of our processes and also the programming of our efficiency services. Copel GNT is operationalizing 30,000 documents a month. That is thanks to this robotization process. The collection of charges as well as the billing of generation and transmission contracts. This is the structure and also the rebuilding of transmission assets. With all these actions, we have KPIs that measure efficiency. With a very frequent condition of cost optimization and increase of our net operating revenue. The first indicator is our net operating revenue. We have headcount and services over the net operating revenue. We see a significant drop in those. You can see the movement here from 2018 to 2021. We have our PMSO over our net operating revenue. We also see efficiency from 22% reaching 13% now in 2021.
Well, Bertol, I think you will be able to see that throughout the company, we grow in size, we reduce our headcount, we gain efficiency, and we reduce costs. I think the figures talk about this process, about this efficiency driver. Exactly, these are the actions that are allowing us to move towards efficiency. Also we have redirect, in addition to efficiency of operating management for G&T, we replanned the execution, the projects for generation and transmission. This is a case that we can bring to you and that shows the efficiency we are working on. This is for the Itaim wind complex, 90.1 MW of installed capacity. We are going to start supplying in January of 2025.
Over a month, we have delivered it in commercial operation two years ahead of time. We have an office with projects that are already structured with PMI methodology. This year it was among the 10 top in the PMO award for 2022. This is a great progress that Copel was able to achieve. Very strategic and relevant topic for Copel Generation and Transmission and for the Copel Group. We have here our well-succeeded portfolio strategy and mitigating the risk of GSF. GSF is bringing us some hard times because of its seasonality. Sometimes it's higher, sometimes it's lower. Here we clearly see that in 2022, what do we have? Our portfolio of assured power, 2,764 MW average.
15% of this portfolio was not contracted to so that we could work with the GSF level. 85%, it was already contracted, this is what we are already doing now. Down here we have the Pmix of the energy sales starting in 2022. We have all the years, these years ahead, eight years, where we established our targets for energy sales, and we want to reach that level of contracting, maintaining a GSF hedge to face a GSF. This is a strategy that we consider well-succeeded. We are improving our models so that we can have a price forecast for megawatt-hour, as well as to manage the GSF and data flex portfolio. Also, this has a very important topic in our commercialization strategy, following the market trends.
We here have a natural hedge of 15%, as Bertol mentioned, that is very strategic and very important. Here we have the Pmix. We are going to sell A +1 , A +2 , A +3 , as we understand that the prices are more attractive and good prices for the company to guarantee an average price so that we can also always have a small balance of energy for A +2 , A plus one. We do believe in that strategy. We have been doing that in the last five or six years. This is a vision that considers the opportunities to have as much contracted as an energy as possible that allows us to have more stability.
In moments like this one, in which the price is so many times at the spot price, at the floor, right? We have to be calm and wait, because the current prices now are reflecting a situation because we left a hydrous crisis in the past, and now we are having the best MLT in the last five years, the 5th best in history. You see. This is a very sensitive topic. I'm sorry for interrupting you. Yes, great contribution. Thank you for your support, because then we can interact on this topic. Let's move forward.
Like I said, Daniel, Copel G&T is improving its techniques and its models to have a better predictability of prices and to actively manage water deficit percentage GSF, even by maintaining our grid hydraulic accounts for 30% and we want to get to an 100% renewable grid. Moving on to the next slide. We follow and assess the sector environment. In the sector environment, there are three topics that draw a lot of our attention and interfere in our generation and transmission assets, which is a public hearing on the 2022 ordinary review of the assured energy of hydroelectric power plants. This is done every five years. This one will take into effect in January 2023 for another five years.
In the simulations and in the analysis that we did, there will be a reduction of our portfolio, as we showed some time ago, of about 3%. There is also GSF increase as we reduce the physical guarantees. The denominator is also reduced, the GSF is a little higher and exposes us a little less. We have also followed, and we're done because this has a positive reflection for us. We followed on the approved methodology for enhancing the locational signal of TUST and TUST-G. This was approved by ANEEL and two resolutions. In our wind and hydro portfolio, we would have a reduction of 14% by 2030 in the consolidated result. PL 365 of 2022 was approved by Congress, by the Lower House. It needs to be approved by the Senate House.
Yes, here I think I have to make a comment. We will act at the Senate house with the senators that we have a contact with because we consider this an interference of the legislative on the regulatory body, i.e., ANEEL, this sends a bad signal to the market. I just want to reinforce the position of the company.
Yes, Daniel, that's an important comment. We have institutional work, we have achieved a number of things that are interesting for Copel and for the sector. Also review of the methodology for payment of RBSE financial installments. This had been judged in two levels of court, it's under evaluation by ANEEL. There are two different appeals, being assessed by two different directors of ANEEL.
Hopefully by beginning of next year, we'll have a solution so as to have no impact for Copel Geração e Transmissão. In understanding this, judgment on RBSE is final. To end, Daniel, I want to say that we completed the construction of the new generation and transmission operations center. Like I said, it's located in km 3. It's a modern facility, a safe facility, and the equipment in there operating the generation and transmission systems are interconnected. One single operator can operate the transmission platform and the generation platform, bringing operating efficiency. Because of that, this is a very digital state-of-the-art system. Because of that, we can sell the old headquarters that is located in a noble neighborhood of Curitiba with almost 100,000 square meters, and that is going to bring funds for the company and reduce our maintenance cost.
This is the strategy that we have. We'll have GBM, Caxias, Segredo, and GPS. These will be separated from the plant concessions and they will be sold. For GBM and FDA, well, we have had a sale process. We were not successful, but we will relaunch that, and this process is being well conducted with quality and efficiency by our officer of shareholders, Adriano Fidalgo. Thank you very much for your attention, for the opportunity to present this panel, and thank you very much. Thank you, Bertol. I want to invite Maximiliano. Still talking on operating excellence, I'd like to invite Max to speak about Copel Distribution. I will just go, Max, over to you.
Good morning, everyone. Especially good morning to you, Daniel. Happy birthday. I wish you all the best.
I suspect that he scheduled Copel Day today, so he wouldn't have to host the party for everyone. Well, it is a pleasure to be here in Copel Day and to speak a little about Copel Distribution. Let's get going. The question that never stops, why to invest in Copel? Why to invest in Paraná? The most obvious answer is because the Paraná GDP historically grows above the Brazilian GDP. Recently, we received news that made us very happy, that we are the fourth largest economy in Brazil, galloping ahead and strong. Trying to catch up with the third and second ranked states. Of course, that reflects in Copel. Our trade market is systematically growing above the average for Brazil. Much so that for December 2022, we expectTo connect our customer, our consumer number 5 million.
Which means that our customer base continues to grow. Another two reasons to invest in Paraná are these two indicators that are very common in distribution, very traditional, non-technical losses related to theft and fraud and corporate default. Over time, we have always been among the best companies in the sector regarding non-technical losses. In 2022, we have the 3rd best result among the largest distributors in Brazil, which comes to show that indeed this ratio is very low for us. As regards corporate default in 15-365 days, we always had very low numbers. In 2022, the highlight is that most likely we are going to have the best result in our history, most likely below 1%.
Of course, the numbers are not closed yet, but it's all pointing to the best result in our history, under 1%. Reading these two indicators differently, we can say that our market, our clients, the Paraná customers are very honest. They are not into fraud and they're excellent payers. That is definitely great competitive edge for us. Another very important point is our remuneration basis. Despite our great efforts to invest in our grid, from one tariff review to another, we grew from BRL 4.9 billion to BRL 8.4 billion, so 71% increase. We're still very depreciated. We used to be the most depreciated remuneration basis among all large distributors. Now we're doing a little better, but we're still in the fourth quartile.
We had 60.3% in 2016 and got to 57.3% in 2021. We have the second lowest tariff in Brazil, showing that we have a huge room to continue to invest in our grid. We have a lot of room for that. All of that with our traditional zero glass guarantee. In the last two tariff reviews, we did not have one single BRL denied. In the last two tariff reviews, not one single BRL was denied, which is a very interesting fact. Talking about investments, we have been doing our homework. We have been increasing our investments. An interesting highlight, in 2020, in the last year of the previous tariff cycle, for the first time in our history, we crossed the BRL 1 billion mark of investments.
We started this tariff cycle stepping on the gas, almost BRL 1.3 billion in 2021. For this year, it is estimated that our investments will be over BRL 1.6 billion in the expectation. Of course, if everything help us, we want to continue to grow our investments. Of course, we should reach a peak in 2025 when this tariff cycle ends. For us to continue to invest and more than that, if we want to continue to invest well, we created a program called Programa de Transformação, based on four pillars. Paraná Trifásico, the Smart Electric Grid, Total Reliability, and Cultural Transformation. I will focus on the ones that have the most immediate impact. The most famous one is Paraná Trifásico or Paraná Triphasic. It is a program that aims to renew our rural networks that are totally depreciated.
Our rural grid dates back to the 1980s when Copel was a pioneer. For that we used a construction aspect that was simpler, cheaper, with monophasic grids. At the time, it did the trick. It allowed us to take electricity quickly to rural consumers that had no electricity. Now, 40 years later, this is a depreciated grid. It's a fragile, it's the weak link for us. That is why in addition to turning a monophasic into a triphasic grid, we are using protected cables, automated equipment and all of that, changing the path, removing the wires from the middle of the forest, bringing the lines to the highways, and that improves power quality and has a huge potential to reduce O&M reduction. O&M costs, I mean. This is a multi-year program.
On October 31st, we celebrated 10,000 km. We were able to deliver 10,000 km. By the end of this tariff cycle, by 2025, we want to complete 25,000 km of triphasic grid with an investment of BRL 2.8 billion. Another project which is very interesting is the smart grid. In Portuguese, Rede Elétrica Inteligente. It is the largest project being executed in Brazil. In its three phases, it's going to reach 1,610,000 customers, BRL 820 million. This project also has a huge potential to reduce O&M costs, operation and maintenance costs. In addition, it brings the possibility of offering new products and services to our customers. This is a prudent investment. It's going to compose our remuneration basis.
All of that led us to a two-digit return of this project. This project is being executed on schedule, and phase I is being completed now in the beginning of 2023, 462,000 customers. We have phase II contracted. We already have a winner. The works are starting. Another 511,000 customers. A highlight, the cost per point of BRL 408 is the lowest cost in any project being executed in Brazil, which shows that we are very efficient in our procurement. BRL 408 per point. Also we are including rural customers in this package, so this is very relevant. In phase III, more than 637,000 customers. Phase III should start in mid-2023. This is a project that makes us very proud.
It shows our innovative and avant-garde spirit that Daniel and Marcel mentioned. We are creating the rules. We are not just following the rules. Talking about digitalization, we are practically revolutionizing our systems in practically all areas. We are working hard, always seeking what there is that is best in the market to offer in terms of grid management, robotization, metering management, data management, asset management, and even customer relationship. We are trying to digitalize, bring state-of-the-art software. I'll focus on the first one, ADMS. To give you an idea, this is a project of some dozens of millions that we invested. It's going to manage the whole operation in our grid. Two years to deploy, just to give an idea of how complex the system is. Strictly on schedule, impeccable deployment.
It will help us have a peaceful and safe relation with DG, it will allow us to remove from the smart grid everything it needs to offer. It should start in the beginning of 2023, bringing a lot of productivity to our system. Speaking about productivity, there's another technology that has come to stay. We can no longer work without drones. We have the second-largest fleet of drones in Brazil. In the electricity sector, we are number 1. It seems that we only lose for the São Paulo Highway Police. We have 119 drones in operation in all kinds of activities. The most obvious ones, such as grid inspection, but oversight of service, oversight of field. In the physical inventory, our people discovered that we can increase productivity if we have a drone to count materials.
Field survey for projects and even for cabling. Of course, it's not the cable itself, it's a guide cable, but we've used the drone for that as well. Always increasing productivity. I want to zoom in on this photo. You can see here. This photo taken by a drone. I am sure that if our electrician went up in the pole, he or she would not have a perfect view of the service to be performed. You can imagine the productivity gain we have with this equipment. Of course, this translates into operating efficiency. We have the two most important items in a distributor, DEC and FEC. How many times on average a customer has a power cut? Since we renewed our concession contract in 2015, we had a reduction of greater than 50% in DEC and FEC.
This is significant. If you get these two results for 2021, 7.22 and 4.83, that puts us in the first quartile among the best distribution companies in Brazil. This is very important to us because our concession has different challenges. Our concession has big challenges. For example, the huge number of rural customers. Also weather events, storms that hit us frequently. Despite of that, we are in the first quartile among the best in the company. When we talk about operating management, we have four obsessions. The first is to serve our clients well, our customers well, and we have an incessant quest for optimization of costs so that we can always increase productivity, and we always want to increase efficiency. This indicator shows a little bit of everything.
The briefest one was our obsession to serve customers well, and this is how much we spend to serve every customer. In a little over five years, we were able to cut cost by a third. Actually more than a third, minus 36% in terms of reducing how much we spend to serve a customer. To serve them a lot better. To serve customers a lot better, we're spending a lot less. Of course, this needs to have an impact on EBITDA efficiency. Our story starts in 2014 when we had inefficiency of minus 86%. It hurts to say that, minus 86%. We've been gaining efficiency, and we hit an important milestone in August of 2019 when we crossed for the first time this threshold of efficiency. We started being efficient.
We had expected. This still happened in 2021, but we delivered that in August of 2019. In the end of 2021, we reached 21.1% efficiency, which places us among the six top efficiency companies. Now, in 2022, we had a slight reduction. Some of you might have found this strange. It dropped from 21 to 12.4. Exactly. In our best quarter in our history. How can that be? BRL 530 million in 1 quarter, the very best quarter in our history, and exactly in that quarter, we had a reduction in efficiency. We increased our base by 70% in the last tariff review, and 2022 is the 1st full year. The tariff review happens in the middle of the year. 2022 was the 1st full year when we increased the remuneration basis.
We increased the regulatory EBITDA, which is the denominator of this calculation. Instantly there is a reduction in efficiency. Although we had a great increase in EBITDA, the ratio with regulatory EBITDA dropped a little. Don't worry, very soon we will return, and we are already returning to that same level of growth, and the sky is the limit. This whole journey brings us to some acknowledgments. Recently, ANEEL created the Best Ombudsman Award. In four editions, we won 2 times and were ranked second twice, which shows our obsession for the customer, our focus on our customers. Speaking about customers, we have ABRAD. ABRAD gives a customer satisfaction award. In 10 years, we won 8 times the award of Most Satisfied Customer of Brazil, which reinforces our focus, our obsession for our customers.
We also had international acknowledgement, the Ibero-American Management Quality Award, which placed us among the best companies in the world. Not electric companies, but best companies in the world in terms of management quality. This was a milestone for us. In Brazil, we have a crazy and fierce race with another distribution company. A healthy race, of course. This other company won in 2018, 2019, 2021. We were ranked second. They were first. Finally in 2022, with a constant purpose, always improving, we finally beat them and got the Management Quality Award. Now we can say we have the best management quality in Brazil.
All of these awards and prizes and everything that I mentioned before, our focus on operating efficiency, focusing on cost, all of that prepared us, so that in 2021, after 20 years, we were again getting the biggest broad award, which is the best distribution company in Brazil. We had won this in the year 2000, and we got this main award again to crown the great effort of our wonderful team at Copel Distribuição. All of that gave us an ambition. We're bold, right, Daniel? We have this ambition of perhaps be able to share our whole operating management efficiency with another distribution company, another concessionaire, another company. Why not? If the market offers a good opportunity, you can be sure that we're ready to seize the opportunities and take our management philosophy beyond the borders of our concession area. Thank you very much.
You can see the enthusiasm and the energy that we all have. Max, please stay here. I'd like to invite Bertol back on stage, please. Moving to panel number four. Max, Bertol and myself will participate in panel number four, together with Felipe Soares of Copel Mercado Livre, free market, talking about experience, customer experience and synergy. In this panel, the four of us want to speak a little about this experience, this journey we've talked about. Let's also put into context market opening. That started in the end of the 1990s, but now we are seeing infra-legal and legal measures. Talking a little about this topic and that we understand are very positive. Perhaps you could start giving us a market view and then we'll continue.
Perfect, Daniel. Good day, everyone. It is a pleasure to be here to speak a little about this Copel Day. We started with our chairman mentioning our mantra, digitalization and discipline in execution. Our CEO also speaking about our strategic journey together with Cassio. In this panel, we'll have an opportunity to show you how the subsidiaries interact with the holding. How we are going to execute everything that we are projecting and forecasting our strategic and customer journey. Let's start with market opening. That's a moment that has been lasting for some a couple of decades. The free market was created in 1995. I highlight how pioneering Copel was in this market. A pioneering approach that we see in all of our businesses. We had the first free market contract.
The first free market customer was with Copel's Energy, a customer that was beyond the border of the state of Paraná, showing that we were in the search for new products and new markets, and how we can include all that in Copel's portfolio. The market has grown. Copel has grown with the market. If today the free market represents almost 40% of national consumption, Copel is among the top 10 companies supplying this free market. It seems that the free market is free, but normally industrial customers that they choose their suppliers. They look at generation assets, they look how satisfied they are with distribution. That's very important. Very. Copel is among the top suppliers in the free market. With market opening, and I'm talking about Group A, it is a reality.
There's an ordinance published this year by the ministry opening Group A customers for 2024 with different characteristics. If today we have 30,000 companies in the free market, representing 38% of national consumption, these are large consumers. The ones that can migrate from Group A are 106,000 units that are able to migrate, but they add only 10% more of national consumption, so it's a lot more pulverized. We cannot repeat the same strategies that brought us this far. I go back to our chairman's words: Digitalization in the future, it's digitalization. We do it internally every day with Leticia's team, with partners. We'll have to deepen our digitalization in order to be successful in this new market of high voltage and low voltage as well. How can we close the whole cycle?
We use the benefit, the synergies we have, because we are an integrated company with an open innovation program to bring innovation, innovative solutions in the digitalization front to serve customers. With a proof of concept, we identify new products and services. We can include them in our portfolio and offer them to our customers. If a certain innovative solution is positive with the creation of Copel Ventures, it can become a new avenue for growth. With that, we close the cycle, and we have the benefit of being an integrated company. Max, come closer. How G&T, or as we call it, GEB, is seeing market opening?
Well, market opening is here. It is inexorable. It's going to happen. Copel has identified opportunities for growth in assets. We have a large portfolio of energy to serve our customers. We have this projected growth with assets, with average megawatts to supply into Copel G&T and Copel Mercado Livre, or Copel Free Market, will have a leading role in this century with the market opening, expanding and growing.
Max, what about the discos? How does our discos see market opening?
Well, we look at this with very good eyes. Market opening is a natural evolution of the model. The main thing is that it brings benefits to all players, particularly to all stakeholders, particularly the end customers. Of course, it needs to come with other elements, other tools, so that we can better manage some impacts that we'll have, the main one being over-contracting. We have some peace of mind. We know that the industry, led by Enel, will know how to develop tools that will address that point. Customers in the regulated market will end up footing the whole bill of over-contracting involuntarily. We're sure of that.
We know, all of us know, that this market opening is just the tip of the iceberg in a broader context, which is 414. Sooner or later this year or next year, this is going to be approved, and then we'll have a special structure and a significant review in the electric sector. I would like to hear from you that separation ballast from energy. What do we have in terms of opportunities here for Copel and for 414 issue?
The market opening and the Bill of Law 414 is a modernization of the electric sector. We are waiting for that update in the sector. I remember that the Bill of Law 414, it started in 2017 with a public hearing, CP 33. It went for public hearing. All the stakeholders contributed.
The way it had happened, you know, it was this public hearing that was designed by Paulo Gabarra, Paulo Pedroso, Guteli, Barroso, Drepe, and significant names in this industry. Now it's the Bill of Law 414 is ready to be approved. The separation between ballast and energy, this Bill of Law 414 is the beginning of that separation and the contraction, and the contracting of the ancillary services for price offer is the beginning of the market opening. Daniel, we are paying attention to the capacity auctions, the expansion of the capacity for the system. Marcelo, FDA, you were there, and you see that there are two areas available to install two generators of 480 MW each.
Adding capacity in the system of almost 900 and something mega, if Copel offers that in terms of capacity for a system that will need to meet this load. Marcelo, opportunities for 414 for distribution. We actively participated in 414, not only at Copel, also via Abradee. I see this as a way that we have to improve the model, and we see this Bill of Law 414 as an opportunity for a distributing company. This is the phase of distribution. We know that we will be able to cater to that, and we expect to have returns, of course, and to have remuneration, for instance, adding meters, a regulator, commercializing, also digital services. We are already prepared. We have the largest project in Brazil, the Smart Grid.
We see that as a great possibility. The contact with customers and billing and so on. Tariff flag by hour, right? We can control that. We have the meters for that. We see this as a great opportunity for new revenues for the distributing company. Felipe, I would like to hear from you the possibilities and how that is going to happen, this experience and the journey for our clients. Of course, as an integrated company, it's. And it has been said in the beginning of our day, the electric sector is undergoing constant changes, tech changes, government changes, industry changes, and it's important to have a relevant footprint in all four segments: generation, transmission, generation, and commercialization, being leader in each one of these businesses. That allows us to be more resilient to changes.
I will give two examples here in this long list. This is just a brief summary of changes that are coming from 414 and commercialization. For instance, pricing by offer, that was going to affect the generation and commercialization. Both of them are already working with risk management mechanisms. Of course, if it changes, we'll have to make a few adjustments. The core of this activity, which is rich risk management, we already know how to do. We have experience in that. Also, the development of the regulated commercializing company. This is a commercializing company in which we already are leaders, and we are going to help the group to structure, to cater to this need faster than someone that is starting from scratch. I think this is the good thing about being integrated here.
When Arcél says that when the theory meets practice, when the strategic journey meets the client's journey, what we have here is that we are talking about the client at the core. What we have to consider is that how the client is going to reach us is by the free market, the commercializing company. We have the through the single door, an opportunity to improve our services and to measure our services. Also to bring in opportunities to the group, and in the group to provide solutions and then send these solutions back to clients. Okay, I want something. I look distribution or commercialization? Commercialization is the single entry door for these clients. Also important here, as Castillo mentioned, is that energy is a commodities market.
It's another pillar we have to tackle. Price is important. How can we leave this trap of always being fighting for prices? We have to add services. This has to be in our portfolio. I know that today our strategy has been major energy blocks with competitive prices, gaining market share, but we cannot stop there. This is not going to allow us to have better profitability. We have to add services coming from Copel Ventures, Copel Holding, and these are our main areas of focus. Also the journey of the client. How is that going to work on a daily basis? Max just mentioned that a well-serviced client that is in the captive market, this is going to be the market opening. This is a market reality. How are we going to tap into that?
We are not going to be sitting and waiting. We are going to provoke these clients. If we are in the captive market and we can, and you can migrate to the free market, why don't you migrate to the free market? High voltage clients will give them the opportunity to migrate. They will continue working with us, but they can work in the retail mode for the low voltage clients that we cannot open them because that depends on the law. We are going to offer them the distributed generation as a protection manager. For the free market clients that are not in Paraná, we are continuing offering that renewable energy, for instance, with delivery guaranteed with a lot of safety.
For large consumers that are in the free market and that want to work with Copel, that want to be a partner in the renewable generation, we are going to be the self-producer in wind and solar projects. Of course, we have done that in the 1990s, also, electric energy partnerships. Now, in this cycle of our needs and our objective of growing generation, as a large commercialization, we can offer the BPAs we had in the past, but for projects that we want to have in our portfolio. This is a little bit of the client's journey that we have here at Copel Mercado, free market, obviously catering to these clients and improving profitability.
In a single channel for the free market clients at Copel free market, and that Copel is going to work in partnerships with G&T and with projects and migration of distributing company and other areas. How can we improve the profitability of the business in this context? That's very important. How can we add to these services? What is good here is that this is a strategy of perspective, is a strategy for profitability for our clients in another part in a high and low voltage. I have products, I have consulting services to offer for clients to migrate to which environment you're going to migrate to. We have the renewable energy certificates, I-RECs, that we can offer, also services and solutions that came from Copel Volt. This is an assessment and a diagnosis for energy efficiency.
At that part of the portfolio, we are adding services. On the other hand, we also have to see the price volatility. You mentioned it, we came from a horrible history in the past and to the best level of reservoirs in the 10 years. This volatility is not only a risk, but it's also an opportunity. We'll work on trading, respecting the risks limits that have been approved by the management, not only to be the largest commercializing company, but also a reference in terms of profitability. We have a strong expertise in this risk analysis and this risk management. Max, explain me something. You mentioned in a slide that Copel was chosen as the distributing company with the greater customer satisfaction eight times from, you know, the last 10 years.
What can we learn in this expertise in the captive market and bring it to the free market?
Yes, you said it well. We have a history of great success in the relationship with our clients. I dare to say that Copel Distribuição is the company that has the happiest client in Brazil. I would say that that is so because we are obsessed in providing good services. We hear, we listen to our customers here at Copel Distribuição. Of course, we participate all the surveys. We analyze all the data that we receive. We understand that the contact with customers and clients is an opportunity to understand them better, what are their demands, their needs, their pains. Therefore, we can be always improving.
A quick example here is that, you know, in a few years ago, we implemented a new control item based on this contact, this understanding. This was a client's pain. We developed the first call resolution, both in our call center as well as in our stores. How many of the problems we would tackle and solve in the first time? It seems kind of obvious, but when we went back to our procedures, we found that many times we asked clients to call again. This is important, and we had taken care of that already. In addition to being obsessed in the clients, we have really to be interested in their needs. There's a single Copel program, which is each customer matters. A comment on that very briefly. Yes.
When we address a DEC, we address the average and that is being reduced. When you see the outliers that do not or that are not involved in DEC, but these clients do have power outage for a long time, for 48, 72 hours because there is a different, a different type of service for those. This is pioneer as well. We are working on that. I do not know about any other company that is doing that type of specific control for each one of our clients. Bertol, to conclude our panel. The client that has a relationship with Copel has guarantee of energy delivered. Yes. If you contract Copel, you will have the safety and the supply of energy with all that portfolio of megawatts hour.
It's the supply, this market that is opening, that is increasing, and that safety allows us to cater to this market, especially with all the advantages of having an integrated group of commercialization, distribution, generation and transmission and all Copel Group that favors the offering of a good product. With Copel's brand, which is very strong. Yes. With the ballast of Copel, those 15% of the hedge that we allow for the GSF risk for the energy of hydro power plants, we have a plan for up to 2030 to replace that by a renewable generation because it is generating more energy when the water crisis is higher so that we can hedge the GSF. We will have more energy there. Therefore, we conclude this panel.
I think that one of the main advantages and the importance of Investor Day is so that our investors and shareholders can get to know the management, can get to know the officers, to see how we work together. We work in integrated fashion. I think this panel can translate that. We are focused on our clients and customers, and that goes throughout Copel. This was the main objective here, and we wanted to show you how we work. This is a company of 68 years old, of 6,000 employees, totally focused in our clients. Thank you all very much. Now we'll have a quick break for 10 minutes, and then we will be back with the ESG block and then a Q&A session. Thank you.
Hello, welcome back. We had our initial panel with hard skills. Now for this specific panel, we'll talk about soft skills. I would like to invite our Management Officer, Ana Letícia Feller, and our Compliance Officer, Vicente Loiacono. We are going to talk about ESG and people. Okay, Vicente.
Good morning, Daniel. Good morning, Ana. Good morning, everyone. Starting this panel, to put things into context of how much Copel is at the vanguard in terms of sustainability and how it is being well-recognized in its ESG practices, we have a video that we'll show you now.
Copel presents a sustainability story. Pioneer in good environmental, social, and governance practices. It is a reference in Brazil and in the world. The commitment that has been there for a long time. Copel has placed the first environmental impact report in Brazil. It built the first wind farm in Brazil, it was the first one in the industry to follow the UN Global Compact. It was one of the founders of the Inventory of Greenhouse Gases, a pioneer in electromobility in line with the low carbon economy. Also because of that, it was continuously awarded. Powered by water, wind, and sun.
One of the main providers of clean energy. A strong management in line with the future and the best governance among the Brazilian state-owned companies. 15 times in the B3 Sustainability Index. It is compliant to the 2030 agenda with the sustainable development goals, reduced costs, increased investments, it has a standard portfolio fully focused in clean energy. It has a low indebtedness and record results. People management, its main asset.
It moves forward with investment in continuous training, at the same time, it stresses human rights respect and also fights any ethical deviations. With the new policy of dividends and greater representativeness to minority shareholders, clients and investors, it gained even more security. Copel is a reference in impact generation, and it has a broadening project and also free access program of energy for needy families. Copel believes that shareholders can only be benefited if all that are involved are part of the process. This is the energy that moves us. Respecting clients, innovation, managing results. In 2022, we were chosen the best energy company in Brazil. Copel, ready for the future.
Very well. What a nice video. What a great story. We are proud to be here. Copel's journey in ESG has a 68-year history. It follows the company. This is not something that was just created now, but Copel sustainability is there since day one. It is in our DNA. I would like to highlight some ESG pillars and some of the topics that we have seen in this video already. In 2020, in the governance pillar, we received the Pró-Ética seal. In 2021, with a broad state reform, in addition to the migration to level 2, we created committees to support the board of directors.
We have a sustainable development committee that is responsible to support the board in the ESG and people topics. Recently, we are part of the UN Global Compact and adherence of the, to the 100% transparency movement. We have in the environmental pillar, we developed and we received the B Concept from CDP in 2021.
The neutrality plan for carbon, as we have shown, that was developed. Now in 2022, it was developed with a strong connection with our strategic planning and also decarbonization metrics for the company. ESG at Copel is the pillar of our culture. As we have seen when Daniel talked, and also Marcel when he addressed us, that's all present in our strategy. Let's look to the future now. In this future, our objective is very clear, is to neutralize direct emissions up to 2030. We'll be doing that by this carbon neutrality plan that is based on four pillars. We are going to set goals. We are going to decarbonize, as we already heard this morning. The alternatives to compensation, and here we have opportunities as we have seen in the prior panel.
The I-REC, and also neutrality embedded in our strategy, as we mentioned, and this is going to be permanent in our planning. Copel 2030 will be 100% renewable, and we'll be doing that by committing to robust commitments. Two of them already were mentioned by Cassio, and these involve investments and TPPs, growth leverages focusing in solar and wind powers, but other sources and alternatives are also being analyzed by the company. I should highlight two other commitments regarding sustainable operation, the electrification of our fleet, and also zeroing our emissions by compensating residual emissions. About our electrical fleet, we are keeping an eye on mobility, innovation, the electric vehicles environment in Brazil, and we will be moving towards that gradually in a very organized fashion.
We will be directing 15% of that fleet now by 2025, 2027, 30% in 2030. Light, the 50% of our light fleet is going to be electric. Now, the way that we are going to zero and offset emissions, I should highlight that Copel, about its buildings and headquarters and the main administrative hubs, it is going to certify by WELL certification all these buildings. That allows us to add two pillars: the social and environmental pillars and the environmental air, water, and lighting for these buildings. The social pillar, food, health, comfort, and well-being as a whole for everyone that uses those buildings. Allied to a low carbon economy, all the energy consumed will be in the hubs, in the operating units, in the buildings, in the offices.
All of that will be compensated by the company by solar energy by 2030. We'll be doing that first by solar energy farms, and second by solar panels and the reservoirs of our power plants. Well, here we have something very important that I'd like to stress we saw in the video. 30% of the bonus for the company and employees are related to our ESG goals. 10% by our neutrality plan and the performance of our sustainability indexes, that allows us to disclose it to Copel Group. 10% is going to be related to internal controls indicators. Here we have a success case. I think Copel has evolved in internal controls greatly. Our board of directors can testify to that. We did grow from 2017 to today in that area.
Ten percent is going to be related to the occupational health and safety indicator. Just a quick comment here first, that we looked at everywhere, at Natura and other companies, and we have not seen any company with 30% of this type of incentive in the short term related to ESG. We have had experienced people analyzing this, and no one has ever seen that type of percentage. Not only the percentage itself, but how important it is, and also the messages that we convey to the company, to the leaders and to our employees. Look, this is what we have in our net zero decarbonization plan. How are we in the Dow Jones? This is positive. This is plus. The other two bring us down.
It is a company's obligation to have a control environment with no material deficiency, nothing significant. If this is our obligation, and if we don't do our obligation, we are penalized, and also with 10% extra. This is not an objective, this is an assumption. It's zero accident in-house and also from outsource. This is an obligation. Yes, this last one, I would say that this is one of the most important ones because our focus is zero fatal accidents in our own headcount, in our own labor and also outsourced labor. The prioritization of SDGs at Copel. In the year 2000, Copel was a pioneer in the electricity sector, a signatory of the Global Compact.
In 2018, a long time later, with other companies, it adopted the five priority SDGs for the electric sector. Now we have something new. Education is the way you change a society and a nation as well. We are prioritizing the SG, number 4, quality education. This is a way that we can ensure inclusive and equitable education. We organize that in pillars. First, by providing support projects by higher education institutions, the state and federal universities, laboratories, for instance, for engineering courses and other courses related to Copel. We also help with scholarships and internships and other initiatives. Also we are going to develop study projects that are specific in specific topics, but, for instance, climate change, working with human development and also diversity.
Talking about diversity, I would like to mention another important commitment for Copel. We are going to increase in 40% the number of women in the high leadership by 2025. We'll be doing that by programs of leadership, women's leadership development programs. For to talk more about that, Ana, please.
Thank you, Vicente. Good morning, everyone. Everyone that is here with us and also everyone that is following us in the streaming. It's nice to start this day listening to Marcel and Daniel, stressing the importance of people in our strategic planning, in our strategic reference. What I bring to you is how we are going to bring all that to our organization, taking care of our people and how we are working diversity.
I will start with this topic linking on this initiative, this affirmative condition of Copel, of increasing the number of women in the top management. I am very happy to be able to be a part and contribute to this project of increasing diversity in leadership at Copel. How are we going to do that? Well, we are doing that because we know, women here are very well prepared, and that allows us to have a great base to move forward in diversity with affirmative actions that provide us an even more inclusive environment and that increase the number of women here, in the leadership areas.
We are going to start mapping the profile of our leaders, and we'll take important actions for women that will encourage great development and also self-awareness and self-knowledge, because sometimes women need to break internal barriers, and they end up the willingness of these women to take on leadership roles. We are going to work with development, training, mentoring, counseling, and also we'll follow up all these women in the journey that they are gonna go through. A women leadership program is not only the only work that we are doing to develop people. One of the actions is in the broader project, which involves training and development for Copel in 2030.
This has as a principle the strategic alignment, the readiness for new challenges, the protagonism of the teams, and the enhancement of our culture, which Marcel and Daniel already mentioned. We understand this is very important for the process. Therefore, we developed the global leadership program and the program to develop our employees with two clear objectives. One of them is to improve the already existing skills, and the other one is the development of needed skills so that we can face all challenges that are being set for Copel 2030. To support the development of all these projects and programs, we mapped the technical skills and also the behavioral skills. Just as Marcel and Daniel have mentioned, leadership have a crucial role, and I should highlight now the skills needed for our leaders. We need to take care of our people.
If our people are our competitive advantage, leaders have to look at that in a very careful way. Therefore, we are going to develop an inspiring leadership who is going to create a trustworthy environment which will allow them to develop, to train these people. As we do that, we can engage teams towards a common objective. By looking at people, the leaders also can have a better efficiency in their results and a better delivery in their results as well. We have to have that special look at those people that will really deliver and that will be part of the results of this organization. I talked about one of the pillars that we are developing to support this strategic growth, which is the skills development.
We are also working on our empowerment of culture and on our digital transformation that everyone already mentioned this morning. In terms of this culture empowerment, we know this is a long journey, and this long journey needs to go through a relentless search for a even more collaborative environment. We talked a lot about synergies and the search for all benefits of our company, because this is an integrated company, and that's what we will be doing. How are we going to get there? We will get there by reviewing our organizational structures and also reviewing our internal processes. When we take these actions and these initiatives, we are able to provide our employees an even fuller vision of this journey that we are moving through. Without that, we cannot have engagement of our team.
We work on these actions so that the teams are able to see the importance of each one of these activities at the end, and that these activities, they have a great potential to generate value for all our stakeholders.
We also spoke about innovation. Cassio mentioned the ecosystem of innovation and how we work with the ecosystem of startups so that we can evolve even more in our digital culture, making our teams more agile and prepared to develop innovative solutions. In a nutshell, this is a long journey. We know that this requires strong work. We'll work with our inspirational leadership so that we can play an essential role in growing our business. Lastly, in this presentation, last but not least, right, Marcel and Daniel, we have digital transformation as a pillar, the support for us in our journey. As mentioned in the other panels, across our businesses, the main assumption is serving the needs of our customers. For that, as everyone has mentioned, we are deploying a number of technologies, but we'll continue to focus on security, deploying state-of-the-art technologies and focusing on customer experience.
We won't lose sight of what we are applying in the organization. Digital channels, robotization, automation of our processes, use of AI, artificial intelligence, in all of our processes to improve efficiency even further. We want to have a lean vision of the organization by reviewing our processes. We'll use agile methodology and tools for all of our new services and products. Something which I believe is very important has to do with a data-driven culture. We need to use big data processing tools so that we can use all of the data available to us, so that we can improve and be more assertive in our decisions. With all these cutting-edge technologies and along the journey that we are designing, we'll ensure operating efficiency of our businesses as presented before. We will grow our business with the main underlying assumption: customer experience and customer satisfaction. Thank you very much.
Listen to you join us. Something that is very important is the highest cybersecurity levels. This is a recurring issue in Brazil and around the world, Copel is working on IT and TO. We are more than tripling investments in cybersecurity. Something that is important is that digital transformation is cross-cutting. It involves all of the businesses, but with a vision of the company and the context and a cross-cutting theme, which is culture empowerment. It's not transforming culture. Copel's culture is already very good, but it needs to be empowered to cope with the new sector challenges. We are working a lot on that, particularly in distribution. It's quite advanced, but we're expanding this culture empowerment approach to all of the holdings. We have special care about this topic.
Because we will have a new way of being and acting, but we'll get Copel to 2030 as we plan. One comment regarding the whole of the agenda. We spoke about a story in the video, I would like also to speak about sustainable goal for embracing education. What happens in any example from large company, they're all in the sustainable goals, in the sustainable goal number four SDG 4 focused on education. That is very important, not only for our business, but for Brazil as a whole. We see education as a great value. Thank you, Ana. Thank you, Vicente. Now we're moving to our last panel. Thank you. We'll move to our last panel with our CFO, Adriano Rudek de Moura, to speak about leverage, dividends, and the financials that will sustain our business. Moura, over to you.
All right. Good day, everyone. Sorry. I hope you're still with energy in you so that we can end this Copel day. This is a very special day for us. We have more than 600 people connected here face-to-face and online. It's a record audience. We are very happy to share this vision of the future with you. This last panel talks a little about the financial strategy so that we can support a whole growth plan. It is sustainable growth, mind you. It's not growing at any cost. We spoke a lot about this today. The good news is that it is doable. This plan is viable. It's doable. It's feasible. Although it is aggressive, it is feasible, it is sustainable.
Before we get into the details, I would just like to emphasize, because when we speak about financial sustainability at Copel, it is important that we remember our fundamentals which are helping us in this journey. The first fundamental is a cash focus. Perhaps this is a little too operational, but it is the pillar that ensures us operating efficiency. We have to be sure that our operation is the most efficient possible. I believe we have advanced a lot in these pillars, particularly regarding investments in businesses that are no longer core to us, starting with Sanepar. We had a stake at Sanepar in 2017. We were able to sell that and a number of other minor businesses. Now finalizing with the sale in 2021 of Copel Telecom with a premium of almost BRL 1 billion. That was an important homework done.
We still have Comgás in the list for divestment. It is an important divestment to us. It is in our agenda for the coming months. In terms of cost and operating efficiency, cost reduction and operating efficiency, I think we still have room for improvement. We have improved already, but in the 2023 planning, we are in the second round of that planning. We will present it, submit it to our board in December. We'll include a number of cost reduction initiatives that will continue to improve operating efficiency at the company. Finally, scale gain. I believe we're evolving a lot in that regard, particularly regarding acquisitions. Copel is becoming very competitive, particularly in some investment areas. The second fundamental pillar is efficient capital allocation. We heard a lot about that today.
Well, it will continue to be one pillar that will, I should say, ensure our survival. The moment that we have a clear investment policy, as we have, a high-level governance based on the same market benchmarks, and particularly a well-thought-out risk diversification, we'll be able to ensure two-digit investments and IRR. You saw recent examples of the investments made with two-digit profitability. The third pillar balanced the capital structure. This is our competitive edge. I think we spoke about this in the last Copel Day. We had an opportunity to speak about our journey that starts with a low leverage, a level of one, an inadequate capital structure. We said that we were going to go on this path until we got to a leverage of 2.5 and no more than 2.7 ratio.
We haven't gotten there yet, but it is a journey that will bring us an adequate capital structure so that we can be more competitive in terms of investments.
Moura, there's something important here. Since 2019, we've been saying this when leverage was below 1. We were saying that we were going to have a balanced capital structure in the mid to long term. In other words, capital allocation plus dividend payout. Now when we end the Q3 at 1.9, with a goal of 2.5, we are doing this in a safe, healthy way and being conservative.
Right. Moving to the fourth pillar, and perhaps it is the most important one for you Copel investors.
We have to ensure competitiveness not only in dividend yield, and I think we're doing our homework in that regard, but mainly improving the valuation of the company. We are always seeking that. It's our quest, our strategic plan. The 2030 vision moves in that direction. We want to be in the top three of the best companies. That is our ambition. We will improve a lot the value of the company. With these fundamentals, with these pillars, they were fundamental for us to achieve these main financial indicators. We improved in all of them. We are moving in the right direction. If we compare our EBITDA, we crossed the barrier of BRL 5 billion. We are ending September, the last 12 months, with BRL 5.1 billion. Significant evolution, considering that some years ago we were BRL 2.7 billion.
In terms of cash generation, a very good conversion above 5%, BRL 5.2 billion of operating cash generation considering the last 12 months ending in September. Our leverage that even broke a covenant in 2017, dropping to an adjusted net debt to over-adjusted EBITDA of 1.9 in the last 12 months. This is a journey that will continue, and to me, this line has a meaning. My take-home message is that Copel will continue to deliver what we promised. We promised, we delivered. This 2030 plan is still a promise, but we have all the conviction that we will continue to deliver what we promised. Just one detail, when we speak about consolidated adjusted EBITDA, G&T still accounts for our main business, 65% and Disco 30% and other businesses 5%.
Moving forward, an important example of operating efficiency and cost reduction. Today, our biggest expense, almost BRL 1.6 billion, is with payroll. We were able to decrease based on technology investments and skill building. We were able to reduce employees by one-third. We invested a lot in process reviews. Again, this is an agenda that is endless. I believe we still have more room to improve in terms of PMSO, the cost that we can manage. We're talking about reduction on the same basis of comparison of 21%. Quite relevant. As we gain scale, we will be able to improve efficiency even more. Investment program, totally aligned with our investment policy. We are concentrating right now all efforts on the new remuneration basis of the distribution company that ends in 2025. Max has mentioned we made relevant investments.
We increased by 76% to almost BRL 3.5 billion to BRL 8.3 billion. We are moving at a good pace, BRL 1.6 billion in 2022. We can see the chart. At this level of investment, we can reach BRL 9 billion considering this new cycle until 2025. Quite relevant numbers. There's an important detail here to be highlighted. These are prudent investments, right, Max? We are careful, and this is our guidance in terms of investments for the scope. Other recent projects are not here, but these are all 2-digit return projects. We'll continue to look for good projects. We have a number of opportunities mapped, particularly focused on solar power and wind power, as mentioned before. Capital optimization. That's an area that we have to be very competitive in, particularly with increasing interest rates and high inflation.
Fortunately, our debt has no foreign exchange exposure. We have basically debt indexes, IPCA and IDI. It's CDI. It's all affected at this outline moment that we hope will be normalized. Otherwise, the cost would be a lot more competitive with lower interest and inflation rates. Average cost, a little below 10. Totally reasonable considering the current scenario. Average cost of debt, I mean. Maintenance of a AAA rating by Fitch, which is very important to increase competitiveness of our funding project. This is already bearing fruits. You must have seen some recent funding. We had very attractive rates. We closed one of BRL 1.3 billion for the acquisition of this wind project that we closed with IDP. We should be making payment by end of January. This was a funding with six consortia of banks.
It was super competitive, and we ended up getting a very attractive rate. That is the way to go. I'd like to remind you that optimization of capital structure has a goal of 2.5 ratio to increase competitiveness in new projects. This is another example of value creation and an example that Copel is delivering what we are promising. Two different periods, five and 10 years, comparing our share to Ibovespa. We can see in a five-year period, 10-year period our performance. This year, we lost the reference with the impacts yesterday of the appreciation of the shares, but they are definitely above these two main indices of the period, and we'll continue to create value for the company. I believe that this is where we have great opportunities for value creation.
I believe that every one of the pillars are very well mapped and discussed. These opportunities are part of the strategic plan for 2030. Some of them have started and always taking into account investment prioritization, starting with the Copel DIS, focusing on this cycle that ends in 2025, moving to renewable generation, wind and solar, and then considering transmission and other services and innovation. The two-digit rule applies for this prioritization as well. There are a number of opportunities, and I believe that we have a solid balance sheet to continue to invest. This gives us some safety margin to embrace this growth plan and these avenues of growth. Now, moving to the last part of my presentation, our dividend policy. Our dividend policy is transparent. It was approved in 2021, and it is being implemented and executed in full.
We have made two payments since 2021. We are paying the second dividend payout on November 30th. Yesterday, in our shareholders meeting, we approved the interest on equity, BRL 600 million to be paid on November 30th, and BRL 370 million, the remaining, to be paid by June 2023. This is a dividend policy that improves every year our dividend yield. Of course, for 2021, we cannot consider it. It's totally an outlier, considering that we made investments and the profit basis included extraordinary results with the sale of Telecom, re-agreement on GSF. That should not be considered, but considering this declared part of... The declared part, we're talking about a dividend yield that is quite reasonable. We know that the electric sector is a good payer of dividends.
Copel will continue to look at this driver so that we continue to be competitive in terms of dividend yield. What really matters to us right now is thinking about future investments that will bring returns to increase the valuation of the company. I'd like to remind you that in our policy, the three main financial indicators are leverage. We have available cash flow that preserves investments in good deals. That we consider this B for a dividend payout. That, that's a detail to remember. This is a policy that will continue to be applied and as much as possible, according to our goal of ideal capital structure, we'll consider dividend policy and investment policy. To end my speech here, I think that I want to convey to you the confidence and conviction in the plan.
The plan will need to be adjusted given the material facts of yesterday, that can only potentialize the execution of the plan. It is a detailed, feasible plan, one that has clear goals to be achieved, it will be revisited yearly. In the next 2023 budget to be approved now in December, we'll have all of the possible details and goals to reduce costs and improve operating efficiency. It is a plan with a lot of opportunities, as we presented here today. We have a balance sheet for that. We have a solid balance sheet that will allow us to grow the company, we have strong pillars that sustain our financials, that will continue to be our reference. This is it, Daniel. Again, thank you very much for joining us today.
This is an opportunity, a golden opportunity for us executives of Copel to speak about the future of our company. Thank you very much.
All right, Moura, you stay here. I would like to have the team set up the chairs so that we can start the Q&A. We're a little late, but we'll end by noon. That's our commitment to you. I think this was very good, Moura. I think Copel is very healthy, very solid, and we will be monitoring the outcomes of yesterday's initiative to evaluate the impact on our execution. That's the position of the company. We have to evaluate the impacts whether the material facts materializes or not. Just waiting for the team to set up the chairs so we can all be on stage, and then we'll invite all officers. Everybody will be on stage.
Of course, those of you who are in the room, you can just raise your hand. We have two receptionists to take the mic to you. Those of you joining us online, you can ask your questions using the Q&A, and we'll see your questions here on the screen. Let's start with the people in the room. If you are joining us online, you can ask your questions as well. All right, are we ready? Okay. I'd like to invite all of the officers on stage. Vicente, Ana, Bertol, Felipe, Ana, sit here. The rest, well, you can all sit wherever you like. All right. Who's going to ask the first question? There's one hand raised, and there's one question by Carol.
Good morning. Thank you for the event. Congratulations. I think the question, the first question needs to be about Copel being privatized. From the operating standpoint, Copel improved the efficiency ratios, the MSO we saw in the presentation. I just want to get a sense of what would be the effects of a privatized Copel. What could improve even further? The second question: If you were to choose between the investment growth program, 2 GW and 2,000 km, additional kilometers of transmission, if market conditions prevent the 2-digit growth that you mentioned, are you committed to make that kind of investment, or can you give it up?
Okay, I'll start backwards with the second question. If we don't have a project, the money will be distributed to shareholders. If the company cannot use the resources better, the shareholders' resources, the money will be distributed back to shareholders, and the shareholders will decide where to invest. There's no obligation here. We will not be growing at any cost.
It's not about growth for the sake of growing. It is just a guidance, it is a north, it is a vision. Our priority is a disciplined capital allocation. I think that we made this very clear along the panels. Of course, it hurt us to lose that lot of 2021. It was a lot in the auction that had a lot of synergies. We bid five times. Britto is here. It hurt that we didn't get it. You know, five bids. We were suffering at between, then we said, "Fine, we had a limit." We had an expected IRR, so we stopped. As regards the first part of the question, we'll have to look into things. First, we need to wait for the outcome of the material fact, and then we'll evaluate the scenarios, possible execution.
What I can tell you is, this is the group that runs the company. This is the group that will continue to run the company. Imagine that we will compete with Eletrobras, and this is the tone at the top. Okay? That's the question by Carol. It was in the video. It's not showing here, though. Carolina Carneiro. She's here, but she's asking online. She had to leave, and she left a question. Okay. She has three questions about the strategy for the future. FDA seems to be core, but how to plan now with the possible privatization of Copel and the possible transformation of Copel? Of course, it's what we said before, and Cassio can add to that. We'll wait for the outcome of the material fact so we can evaluate the impacts.
Right now, we cannot say anything because we didn't have time to do a minimally reasonable analysis. What we can tell you is that one of the great benefits of a possible evolution of this process is the maintenance and conservation of the assets of the company. Of course, any Copel employee loves the company. They care for the company. We're not talking about Foz do Areia only. We're talking about Caxias. We're talking about Segredo. Parigot de Souza. 250 MW asset. It's a small asset compared to the other three, but it is divided into quotas. If that moves forward, we want to have equal treatment. Eletrobras renewed 22 concessions, you can imagine the benefit that we would have to preserve these assets and to preserve our generation capability and the ability to strengthen Copel.
Daniel, if I can add to that, I believe the take home message is that our agenda is one of growth, and we'll continue what we'll have to growth, enjoying the best opportunity that arises. As Daniel mentioned, I believe that the material fact of yesterday still will have some developments, and we'll need to see how this will evolve. Parallel to that, undoubtedly, we will continue on our path, on our plan to continue to, the studies with the advisors we have hired so that we can make a decision on a timely basis, deciding on the best solution for Copel.
Yes. Hello, I'm Felipe with Itaú BBA. I have two questions regarding the sale of part of the share of the State of Paraná. The first would be to understand whether the government has spoken with you regarding how long they would need to complete the deal. You mentioned that a Bill of Law had been submitted to the State Council of Representatives. Have you mapped the next steps? Do you have a deadline? The second question is discussing the deal. Have you spoken with BNDES, or has the government of Paraná discussed with BNDES to know whether BNDES would be part of this discussion of the government of Paraná selling their stake?
What was the first part of the question? The timeline. Yes, you're right. Well, the timeline. First, we need legal approvals before any legal approval by the State Council of Representatives and by the credit accounts. Anything is premature before the kind of approval.
The project was submitted yesterday, and you have a legislative dynamic that you all know about. They take their time. Regarding the process, it's very clear. The list of reasons presented by the state is to preserve the assets and the biggest asset, preservation of Foz do Areia . We have a meeting with reality, which is December 10, 2023. We'll need to pay BRL 1.83 billion, whether we keep 100% or whether there is a private partner with 50.1% stake. The process needs to happen in the timeframe. Cassio will be coordinating this, but the plan needs to be adequate and so that we can have the benefit of the asset. We have a date and time to respect. Regarding the second part of your question, Felipe, involving BNDES.
Bruno was here, but there has been no conversation, no contact between the State of Paraná and BNDES. No contact between the company and BNDES to address this topic. I believe that things will become clearer in the coming days or weeks. I think the stakeholders will talk and decide on the best way to carry this forward.
Hello. I would like to know more about the days ahead. Thinking about this privatization scenario, what are the opportunities for a turnaround, both for T&D, operational opportunities, looking back to this amazing history that you had in the past five years. What do you still have in terms of opportunities and especially after a possible privatization project?
Thank you. Great question. Unfortunately, we do not have an answer for that. We need to wait for the outcome. We need to sit down to analyze everything. Our priority now is to take care of people. We want to take care of our Copel employees, of people that are there. Obviously, we do have an initial impact, it is up to us as the top management, the leaders, the superintendents.
We need to explain them what is the model, not if it's good or bad, but when they talk about corporation to corporation, how does that work in real life? We have to translate that to them. Tomorrow, we will have a meeting with all our employees. It's going to be a live, I could say. That's a meeting with all our employees so that we can talk to them, we can explain, and we will tell how the process is. The process of a corporation, if that is successful, it has a number of benefits. First, we will have the golden share of keeping the name, which is an equity in itself. Second, we will remain in the Paraná state. Everything that you already read about, right? Just stating those topics.
Third, we will have a specific golden share guarantee for investments in distribution. This is very positive as well because you have a strong energy infrastructure and is a pillar for the state's development. We had BRL 120 million in four years. We have a social sensitiveness and social vision of our governor as for Copel. What is most important, a corporation will not have anyone coming in from abroad, an alien or a foreigner or someone from the country. Copel has already worked with a 28% cost reduction. This is a company that has done its homework. This is all in theory, but just to tell you that the plant operator, we will need a plant operator at the plant. Who is the best plant operator for that plant rather than the operator that's already there.
Once again, addressing your question, we do not know. That's not our priority for now.
Good morning. Arthur Pereira from Bank of America. About this idea of Paraná state administration maintaining this high level of investment in distribution. You mentioned that there is no disallowance and the investment level is above what you had mentioned in yesterday's material fact. In the short term, you have a part of the base that is undervalued that could be renewed. I would like to know about the distribution opportunities, if you can maintain that for more cycles. Where these investments would be made in equipment and the smart grid, and how sustainable is that level, and related to that integration quota?
Excellent, Arthur. First, the state administration, the controlling shareholder, did not mention anything about that level of investment. They said that if there is not a minimum level, they will execute the golden share. Who is going to define the investment level is Max, the management with the approval of the board of directors. We have to think that this is a long-term view. This is our asset. We have an asset in Paraná. In 30 years, a renewal, this will have a great value. We have repeated that. The perspective is to go up to the end. We have to think about that average and how we are going to work up to the end. In this cycle, it has a clear strategy, minus 60% and depreciation and second better tariff. As cycles move forward, that you know, we could go, could be reanalyzed.
Max... Talk about, you know, room for investment. Talk about that, please, Max.
We have now 57% of our base appreciated. As you know, I don't need to tell you, that type of base does not generate return on investment, no remuneration, and it costs a lot in terms of operation and maintenance. We are monitoring it very well. I will give you an example. It's not a catastrophic event, but it's growing. Today, we have six transformers in our plants with over 50 years. This is not an equipment that has a life, a specific life. In theory, it is like eternal, but we have to look for ways to renew our grid. We have a smart grid, and we will now be reaching one-third of our consumers.
I don't see why we should not extend that to everyone else, improving the implementation cost. And our cost is already low, so there are a number of opportunities. Paraná Trifásico, we have 25,000 km now, but we have 100,000 km in the rural area. We have a lot of room to invest in our grid. Thank you, Arthur.
Any other questions? Any online questions? Ricardo Verdinich, how Copel Distribuição is going to combine strong investments in Paraná Trifásico with distributed generation rural area, which reduces energy costs for these consumers? Max.
Well, actually, distributed generation needs our grid. This is a balance, and we do have areas in which we already see. I think I now has to pay attention to that so that we can direct it a little bit better.
There are some areas where distributed generation is posing problems that are non-conventional. We have a night overload that's not very common during the day. During the day, we have an underload. Our grid, our networks is very important. Paraná Trifásico crosses the whole state. Our state has this DNA of the agribusiness. I am sure that Paraná Trifásico will work with distributed generation so that we can work with the industry as a whole. We see the increase of distributed generation. We have MMDG, and that already has an impact on the PDR, and we see that a lot now, Verdinich.
Well, if we want to fight against that, it's just like a taxi driver to fight against the Uber driver. Forget it.
We need to learn how to use that at the end of the line. In the future, in VPPs, we have to inject those generated energy to help the optimization and the grid's management. We have some pilot projects so that we can have aisle operation for this network. If I have a line that is not in operation, so that can supply the neighbors. We do have initiatives towards that, so I'm sure that distributed generation and our grid will have a peaceful relationship, and we'll have a wire getting to places, right? At least the places we want. There's another question from Carol Carneiro. In the energy balance that Bertol presented, the company has signed new sales in free market in 2023. Can you comment on prices?
How is the strategy of energy sales for 2023 and 2024? Bertol, can you comment on that? Felipe will give us a further perspective on prices.
This is always a good market debate. For 2023, we don't have much time to reach our contracting level of 85% of our portfolio, but we sold within that Pmix on top of BRL 200. That is the price, that is the amount at which we have sold energy in 2023. We have very little to go to meet our target. About 2024, we now already have a good level of energy available to be sold or to be contracted, but we are still tracking a downward trend in the prices. We don't think those...
That drop won't be sustained, because now we have a level of energy storage that is very high. I think that we might have a price drop, or at least a stability in this downward trend. That's what we are analyzing. We have a large margin of energy to be sold in 2024. We are selling it bit by bit.
I'm sorry to interrupt you, Berto. Considering we still have two wet periods and one dry period, we have to be calm. We have to have the cold blood and wait, because to sell it now is to materialize a low price. We already see a lot of people materializing short positions, but no one believes that's going to last too long. We have said that many times already.
In 2021, how many months were we at the ceiling, at the ceiling? From September to October, November, floor. Now floor. The perspective for prices for 2024, Felipe, if you can comment, to sell our energy. We are being cautious. We are holding it back so that we can wait, not for too long, but so that we can wait a little to improve conditions. Foz do Areia in the process, right, Cassio, if you can comment on that as well after Felipe, is already decontracted, and we have a strategy there. Felipe, volatility is the name of the game in the electric energy market. In this panel, we talked a lot about that.
Okay. The closer we are to deliver energy in 2023, we are here, it's tomorrow, but 2024 is very close also.
The greater is the volatility. I think what is special here is this integrated management. Just like Daniel mentioned, we are going to sell it little by little. In the free market, we have this mission of providing liquidity to the company. Whether selling by great consumers that are in the free market, migrating or selling to commercializing companies within the credit risk limit, we are able to provide flow to this strategy. This is how it goes with electric energy sale. We are always selling. In the trading, you're buying. We are seizing the trends, opportunities. Like Daniel mentioned, the current scenario is really to take it easy, to be calm, because there was a huge depreciation in energy prices. Shortly, you know, some event might come up and change that.
About Foz do Areia, I think the strategy follows everything that we said. What could we add? Considering the original plan was, and still is, to sell the control in 50.1, we believe that the stake, or the participation in the strategy for energy, selling this energy, has a lot of value if our... It's a great potential if they can contribute, if our partners can contribute. In executing that, the preferred scenario, I think the answer is given, we are going to wait. Of course, we have a period, a limit, time limit for that, but we have the best moment to execute our strategy for energy sale.
A final question? A final question or anyone from here? If someone is here, please raise your hand and we'll have a microphone taken to you.
B ernardo Vieira, considering a possible transformation into a corporation, what is the risk of changes in dividends policy?
I don't see that as a risk because who is running the company are us, and who is the head of the board are us, this group here. And the fundamentals of this company for dividends policies and investments won't change, at least not in the short and the medium terms. That is, Copel's investors can continue, and Moura already said it, not with a dividend yields of 18 because this is atypical and not even comparable, but a good dividend yield here in the company. There's a final question there. No? Oh, online? Okay. We can't see it yet.
We don't have more time, let's answer a final question. This plan of adding 2 GW of renewable, how can the company follow an in-house portfolio creation to work on the assets it already has for expansion? Could we have more M&As to reach that target? That's a good question for you, Cassio, I think we are in a transition period with a lot of focus in brown to rebuild the telecom EBITDA and moving forward. Cassio, can you give us more color on that?
Well, I think that following our execution plan as we have followed it so far, we have made decisions and measures that are very well-balanced. We are never working on anything extreme here. I would say that there is a combination, a mix of everything that you mentioned in your question.
We have significant opportunities of consolidation, where Copel has a majority or minority shareholding. Just like Eletrobras, we see opportunities, real opportunities that can be quickly executed depending on the consortium agreements. Daniel has mentioned that, and I talked about that also. We are still looking for brownfield assets of two digits that will help us rebuild our EBITDA in a fast and efficient way. We are also looking carefully at the complementary pieces. We know that we have a lot of players in the market executing a strategy of rotating assets. Moving towards a little less developed stage in the project, we believe that returns might be better. It is a combination.
Before my final remarks, I would like to especially thank our IR team led by Moura, Luis, Ana, and all the team here. Debbie, thank you very much to the communication area. Debbie Campos is our communication officer. All this, the team that allowed this event to happen. To tell you that our strategic journey has already started. We are committed, we are excited, and this is the team that is running the company and that will be running the company as a growing story of success. Thank you very much to all of you that are with us. I will end it, the online event, and I would like to address the team that is here. Thank you all very much.