Good afternoon, everyone. It's a great pleasure to welcome you to ENGIE's 2024 Full Year Results and Market Update presentation. So we have three speakers today: Catherine MacGregor, Pierre-François Riolacci, and Paulo Almirante. A quick view of the agenda for this afternoon. In the first part, Catherine and Pierre-François will review our results and the main events of 2024, followed by a short Q&A session. In the second part, Catherine will lead us through the market update. She will be joined by Paulo, Senior EVP in charge of Renewables and Flex Power. Then we'll have a short break, and Pierre-François will present the capital allocation strategy and our 2025-2027 financial outlook before some concluding remarks from Catherine. Finally, there will be a longer Q&A session. We'll take questions from the floor and online. With that, over to Catherine.
Thank you, Delphine, and welcome everyone to what I hope will be an informative event. We hope that in a couple of hours' time you will go out feeling better about ENGIE's strategy, why we are doing it, how we are going to be implementing it, and how we will achieve our ambition to be the best energy transition utility. But to start with, some brief reflection on what we have done in 2024. We extended our track record of delivery a third consecutive year of net income above EUR 5 billion, despite a normalizing market environment. In fact, in 2024, it was a year of record net income, and so at the upper end of our guidance range. Talking of records, the rollout of our growth strategy accelerated with record commissioning of renewables and battery capacity to add to wins in power transmission projects.
And this was accompanied again by a stellar level of execution. And we continued to become greener in line with the commitment to net zero by 2045. And then last week, the EU Commission has given us the final approval to the Belgian nuclear agreement, which, as you know, addresses a longstanding source of risk from a group in the form of nuclear waste storage liability, among other things. So adding some color to these results, EBIT excluding Nuclear at EUR 8.9 billion was down 6% year -on -year. That is to be compared with a very high 2023, with Renewables, Networks, Retail all up, Flex Gen and Energy Solutions virtually stable, and GEMS significantly down on this normalizing market volatility. We had increased Nuclear EBIT and a stronger financial result, so our net recurring income group share grew by 3% to EUR 5.5 billion.
And the cash flow from operations matched 2023 record figures at EUR 13.1 billion, which means that we will be proposing a EUR 1.48 dividend, up from EUR 1.43 the previous year, which will be paid at the end of April. Moving to the next slide, greenhouse gas emissions from energy production in 2024 were 48 million tonnes down from 52 million tonnes the prior year, down by more than a quarter in three years, which brings us ahead of our 2030 targets, with tailwinds in Europe, for example, for very low CCGT load factors. And in particular, I think it's noteworthy that we have addressed our two remaining positions of significance in coal, with only a residual stake in the Safi plant in Morocco, and a roadmap to a full exit in Chile by 2027.
The share of renewables in total power generation capacity rose to 43% at the end of 2024 from 41% a year earlier. The percentage of women in Group management continued to steadily rise at 32%. As I mentioned, 2024 was a record year for ENGIE, with 4.2 GW of newly commissioned renewable capacity. At the end of the year, we had 46 GW, of which 27 GW in wind and solar. Growth is only good if we execute well, which is what I really want to emphasize. The business, this business, your business, Paulo, has become a real machine of efficiency and constancy. It is the third time that we are opening about 4 GW on average. It's been achieved with outstanding quality of execution, both virtually on time and slightly below budget on average.
At the end of the year, we had 75 projects ongoing with over 6 GW of capacity under construction. In terms of PPAs, where we rank among the global leaders, we signed 4.3 GW in 2024. Again, that was a record, the large majority of which with a duration above five years and some stretching actually to more than 20 years. We'll be saying a bit more on this later in the presentation. Turning to this next slide, 2024 was really the year where we attained a position of true scale in batteries following a 2023 breakthrough when we acquired Broad Reach Power in the United States because we doubled our capacity in operation to 2.6 GW, and now we have a further 2.6 GW under construction.
We have actually a presence not just in the U.S., but a global presence encompassing all types of markets, from the shorter duration ancillary-based in Texas to the longer duration storage in Latin America. We have a few highlights on the slide with strong delivery by BRP of their projects that were under construction when we acquired them. We had the startup of Coya, that is a co-located storage system, and then the construction of 200 MW of Vilvoorde project, one of the largest in Europe with four hours storage duration, and that is in Belgium. On Nuclear, the European Commission gave us last week its approval to the terms of the agreement signed by ENGIE and the Belgian government. This was the final condition for the completion of the transaction. Closing is now underway. We are expecting it to take place by March 14th.
Once this is achieved, we'll make the first payment to the Belgian government of about EUR 11.5 billion, and that will correspond to the category B and C waste. From late this year, our nuclear activity will be smaller. It will be stabler. It will be based on a partnership with the Belgian government and a quasi-regulated strike price mechanism. In addition, the nuclear deal upgrades the overall efficiency and optionality of our global group asset portfolio. On that very positive note, I'm going to hand over to Pierre-François for a financial review of 2024.
Thank you very much, Catherine, and good afternoon, all of you. I'm very pleased, of course, to present this strong set of numbers. I'm not going to repeat the numbers that Catherine went just through, and these are exactly the same. So I suggest that we go straight into the numbers and move to the next slide, where I think in one glance you can capture basically what happened in 2024 and see what is behind the decrease of EUR 0.5 billion of EBIT year -on -year. And I think clearly you can see on the left side the prices and volatility, which impacts us by about EUR 1.3 billion, which is coming mainly with impact is mainly on GEMS. Volumes are up close to EUR 300 million, and that reflects mainly the hydrology that we had in Europe. It has been raining a lot.
Commissioning is a positive impact of nearly EUR 500 million. That's a very impressive number, very important for us, mostly Renewable assets, which are coming online for EUR 55 million, as well as investments made in Networks and also Energy Solutions. Performance adds an extra EUR 231 million EBIT to the EBIT variation. So that's in one glance the key story of 2024. Now let's be a bit more granular and enter into the variation per business. And starting with EBIT for Renewables, which stands at EUR 2.2 billion, it's nearly plus 10% year -on -year, with almost half of it coming from wind and solar.
FX impact on EBIT is EUR -58 million, mainly related to the depreciation, of course, of the Brazilian reals, but more than offset by the scope contribution, which is a EUR +108 million, with some token acquisition that we completed actually in South Africa, South America, and in Europe. Therefore, organic growth is + 7%. You will recognize the same positive drivers mentioned during our nine months' presentation. Volumes are up by EUR 315 million, exceptional hydro conditions in France and Portugal, new capacities that were commissioned. I mentioned the EUR 355 million, which is another proof point of our strategy in renewables bringing tangible results, and then performance, which is adding another EUR 71 million. We did face some headwinds with lower capture prices and also a higher hydro tax in France, partly offsetting higher hydro volumes I was referring to.
We had also in others some positive one-offs in LatAm and Europe in 2023, which turned negative one-off in 2024 and also reduced tax equity and DBSO contribution as well. As you can see, we delivered robust organic growth compared to a challenging comparison basis in 2023, and the capacities that we are adding is a major contributor to this performance. For Networks, EBIT is up EUR 326 million organically. It's a 15% increase, mainly driven by GRDF new tariff, which includes clawback on previous years. We have also benefited from a colder winter. This year, we achieved significant milestones with a sell down in two gas networks, 15% of TAG in Brazil and 50% of Mayakan in Mexico, and also with the auctions won in Brazil and Peru for power networks.
I won't comment in detail on each block of the bridge, but it's worth mentioning international expansion with EUR +63 million in gas networks and EUR +45 million in power networks, and this is a result of increased performance of our gas assets in Latin America and in power assets, tariff increase and indexations in Chile, and organic growth in Brazil. Power networks now represent 8% of the EBIT of the GBU. Energy Solutions EBIT stand at EUR 356 million, which is a 3% organic decrease, positive impact from performance EUR +60 million, and also commissioning EUR + 30 million were offset by lower energy prices in France and in Germany and by lower DBSO margins in North America. I'm not going to talk again about the one-offs of our U.S. contracts, which I already discussed in detail during the Q3 result.
We are monitoring the situation with all due attention, and remediation plans are proceeding as planned. Excluding one-offs, EBIT margin is stable at 5.3% despite less favorable energy prices in Europe. We will be moving into another level of control and focus with our new setup from 2025. EBIT from Flex Gen amounts to EUR 1.5 billion, supported by high capture spreads in Europe. It is another year of record high profits. Key messages are pretty simple. In France, we paid higher inframarginal tax. This tax ended in December 2024, but saw the very good spreads we had locked in. In Europe, we've seen a further decrease of load factors down to 17.5% from 21.6% a year ago, but that was compensated by high capture spreads locked in 2022 and 2023, and by increased volatility induced by the growing share of intermittent energy in the power mix.
Eventually, internationally, Chile benefited from lower sourcing prices. Our battery development in the U.S. is going according to plan, both in capacities and in pricing. Looking at Retail, EBIT amounted to EUR 695 million. Organically, EBIT grew by 22%, mainly driven by non-recurring timing impacts in 2024 related to sourcing and tariff shield. You can expect about half of this effect to be reversed next year. Impact from prices are quite limited and includes discounts granted to customers and precarious clients in France. Volumes were slightly positive with a colder winter and better hedging protection, partly offset by client sobriety. Performance is negative due to loss-making activities in services unrelated to energy supply that we will divest or wind down in 2025 and 2026. All in all, an excellent year, although boosted by non-recurring timing effect. Let's transition to our Nuclear activity.
EBIT stands at EUR 1.4 billion, an EUR 843 million increase versus previous year, coming from the end of the inframarginal tax in Belgium on June 2023. You can see in the bridge that Belgian nuclear tax and inframarginal tax had a positive impact of EUR 700 million on year-on-year EBIT variance, consistent with our H1 presentation. EBIT also benefited from higher capture prices. That's EUR +340 million with hedged positions contracted in 2022 and 2023 when energy markets were supportive. Volumes, a EUR -152 million results from lower availability in Belgium and the extended two-month shutdown of Doel 4 in Q4. When it comes to other activities, EBIT decreased by EUR 1 billion. This is solely driven by GEMS, which benefited from exceptional market conditions in 2023, while 2024 was a year of normalization with lower energy prices and, more importantly, lower volatility.
We have landed 2024 in line with expectations with an EBIT at EUR 2.4 billion for GEMS, underpinned by the non-recurring reversal of market reserve for EUR 500 million related to the normalization of energy market conditions. Other activities are up EUR 126 million due to improvements in non-core operations, including EVBox. Let's now be a bit more granular on GEMS. We present here the details by activity, geography, and commodity that we started to communicate last year. Client Risk Management and Supply is taking a bigger share, as expected, with market conditions normalizing. It now represents 45% of total EBIT. This part is less subject to market variations. We are pleased with the activity over the last quarters that gives visibility to 2025 earnings and beyond. No significant evolution on commodity split. The position is balanced and in line with ENGIE's portfolio.
GEMS is growing outside Europe with the U.S. and new franchises, for example, India. GEMS is more and more involved in optimizing our battery portfolio, with 50% of our U.S. fleet hedged on 2025-2029. Turning now to performance, our continuous action to improve performance contributed to EUR 231 million in EBIT, beating our target by 15%. Main contributor was operational excellence, with many actions ranging from contract renegotiation to asset optimization and HQ reorganization. We continue to see a sustainable momentum on that stream. While turnaround plan is on track for EVBox, we have taken some hits in a limited number of well-identified situations, which are turning the net contribution negative from one year to the other. There is room for improvements in some businesses inherited from the past. We are fully committed to fix or exit all loss-making activities. Let's now go down from EBIT to net income.
Net financial expenses improved by about EUR 100 million. Higher cost of gross debt average rate has been increasing from 4.3% to 4.6%, was offset by strong cash generation early in the year and better cash remuneration supported by high short-term interest rates. A flattish interest rate curve is definitely helpful since we are significantly long cash. Income tax increased by about EUR 100 million, consistent with increase of our profits before tax, and the effective tax rate stands at 27.6%, quite stable versus last year, and it does include prudent provisioning in some jurisdictions. As a result, net recurring income group share is up EUR 200 million at EUR 5.5 billion, and looking at main non-recurring items, impairments are for about EUR 700 million, a collection of mid-size items, including EVBox in H1 and other ongoing disposal processes.
We also recorded an impairment on our U.S. offshore assets for a bit more than EUR 100 million to account for a four-year time lag in their development following the executive order issued on January 20th. In restructuring costs for about EUR 400 million, you will find mostly EVBox and some restructuring initiative in several Energy Solutions businesses.
Let's look at cash flows. Cash flow from operations is stable year -on -year at a very high level, EUR 13.1 billion. Operating cash flows were strong, also EUR 1.3 billion lower than last year. As mentioned in our latest call, it does include reclassification elements between operating cash flows and change in working cap, in particular to better track the variations of margin calls. Change in working cap is a positive EUR 0.8 billion on CFFO versus last year, with evolutions that are very similar to those mentioned in our latest financial presentation.
I'm not going to comment on them. What is maybe important to get is that the working cap level is now normalized, and we have recovered most, if not all, what was injected during the crisis in 2022-2023. Let's move on to net debt. Net financial debt increased from EUR 29.5 billion to EUR 33.2 billion, mainly due to the funding of nuclear obligations. Significant CapEx and high level of dividends paid in 2024 were almost entirely funded by CFFO. Economic net debt is increasing as well, but to a lesser extent. Leverage ratios are quite stable and remain strong, with net financial debt to EBITDA at 2.1 and economic net debt to EBITDA at 3.1, well below our four-times threshold. This is it for 2024. Before starting our presentation on our medium-term outlook, we are now opening the floor for questions on our full year 2024 performance.
We'll now have a short 15-minute Q&A session before continuing to the market update presentation. Please, can I ask you to keep your questions just to 2024 results, as there will be plenty of time later on for questions on the market update. And if you don't mind limiting your questions to one or two only. We'll start by taking questions from the room, and then we'll take some questions from online. Operator, could you please remind our online participants the process for taking a question?
Thank you. This is the conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on your touch-tone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time.
Thank you. So we will start maybe by the room. Harry?
Hi, everyone. Thank you. It's Harry Wyburd from Exane. So I'll keep it just to one because I presume I can ask some other ones later. This is quite a boring one, but I think it's quite important given that finance costs are a big source of some of the upgrades that you made this morning. So you mentioned that the sort of inversion or previous inversion of the yield curve was good for you because you're long cash, but that's actually been disinverting in the last few months. So short rates have gone down, long rates have stayed high. Is the guidance you just gave on interest costs, which is pretty important, still valid at current short-term interest rates?
So is it sort of mark to market, and are you comfortable that you can still deliver on that new finance cost guidance? Yeah, I think that clearly when we took the stance, it was a year ago, and then we gave the guidance on 2024, but also 2025, 2026. I'm not going to go to 2025, 2026, but just to stick on 2024. It's clear that a year ago, and based also on the forward, we had the view that the short-term interest rate would come down pretty early in the year, and why the long-term interest rate would be higher. So what does it mean for us? It means that, and you may remember that in 2024, we went to the market with a significant amount of bond issues, much more than what we have to do in 2025, and more than double actually in 2024.
So we had been factoring in our forecast that we would issue debt at a pretty significant cost, while at the same time we would be investing our cash, which is significant, at a much lower rate. Now, it turned out to be different. First, it turned out that the interest rate, short-term interest rate, actually stood higher for longer. And at the same time, we have been cashing. You remember our Q1, Q2 were very strong on cash, and it came due to the sharp decrease of prices at those days. You remember in February, I mean, in the early part of the year, the energy prices went down. So we cashed in a lot on the back of this, and therefore we ended up with a strong cash position earlier in the year, with rates being better in the short term.
So it has been helping us in 2024 very significantly. Now, the view that now you're moving to the future, but the view that we are taking is that we expect a curve which will be less backwarded than the one that we had in mind, and therefore that would help us definitely. Probably the view that we had a year ago was very conservative in terms of curve.
Another question from the room? Zach?
Hi. Yeah, thanks for taking my question. This is a question on Retail, really. So I think earlier in the year, you mentioned that first half and second half, your Retail EBIT would be kind of evenly split. Just I think your fourth quarter, you basically delivered more than I think what the market was expecting. Could you just give us some color on the source of this outperformance? Is it like a one-off kind of thing, or any kind of color you can give would be helpful? Thank you.
It's a tricky one, and I don't want to dig into too much in details. What you need to realize is that in retail, in most of our markets, we have what we call campaigns, which are usually one year or two years. You lock basically the price and you sell on that campaign. The point is that people are not buying their energy on the first of June. They tend to enter into contracts all year through. We have 12 campaigns actually, which means that we have, as you can imagine, we have a cross-year effect in ourselves.
In the same way, we are sourcing our product, and we are not, as you can imagine, sourcing back to back to each and every contract. We manage a portfolio, so that means that our sourcing is also depending on the calendar year, and you know that in the energy market, calendar is very important when it comes to hedge. So when we are selling, we are also hedging based on calendar. If you add up that in France, there is a specific, which is a big market for us, which is the ARENH. And the ARENH is also calendar, and so that means that we have a misfit, a natural misfit over time. It's not an economic misfit, but when you represent the financial result in one year, you have campaigns which are going cross-year when you have a sourcing which is more calendar.
So you have between the years, you have significant effect. And we mentioned that in 2023, it was not in the right direction. In 2024, we are significantly helped, and we expect part of it to reverse actually in 2025. So we'll have less of a good impact, of course, in 2025. Long story short, there is definitely a one-timer, and I think it's well represented in the graph, and we have been as transparent as we could be about this timing difference that you need, of course, to narrow. So you're better off to look at a three-year average in Retail that gives you a better view of what is the momentum. But it's not a one-off as such. It's more a timing effect.
Hi, Ajay Patel from Goldman Sachs. I'm going to ask you to do my job for me a little bit. If you look at 2024, could you just list the one-offs that we need to take off when we're doing our bridges into next year? So what were just items that we maybe need to extract and normalize for? And then the second one is, could you maybe give us a little bit more granularity to GEMS in the sense that how much of that business, I know you highlighted the client activities, but how much of that business was dependent on the absolute power price or gas price at a given point in time? As in just because I get asked that question a lot, it'd be helpful just to maybe if you can unpack it a little bit more than you have, that would be helpful.
Yeah. On the one-off, we had positive one-off in H1. We had negative one-off in H2.
So if you take the year as a whole, forget about the one-off. I think that's a fair way. And of course, next year, because of course, you will be looking at each and every quarter, you will find that. You should see some of these one-offs which were positive in H1 and definitely a negative in H2. And we announced that. And you remember we mentioned that during Q3 call, we were expecting some negative one-off, even in Q4, we knew it was coming. So that's to me, I would say overall in the year, I mean, you should look at it as not significantly impacted by one-off. Now, GEMS on absolute power and gas prices, I think that you know, and we have been advocating that for a while. First, we are not a gas producer. We hedge at inception. That's very important.
We never take an open position because we sell at a fixed price and we source at a different price. We don't do that. We really hedge at inception. Now, those being said, first, there is a commercial margin embedded into this business, especially the B2B part. There is a commercial margin. There is some sensitivity to the absolute level because if you are selling a megawatt hour at EUR 200 or if you are selling at EUR 50, the commercial margin that you can post is not exactly the same. But still, it's not very significant. That's not a key point. But there is an exposure, so I want to be complete. So it is there.
Then there is another point, which is that a lot of the value on the energy management part is based on the arbitrage, and it can be about the bid-ask, it can be about the discrepancies that you have in the market, the spread that you have in the delivery points for gas, the spread that you have between countries in power. And of course, I would say that the absolute price does also indicate something. But what is even more important is really the value of the spread, really the value of the volatility. I think that by far a much bigger driver than the absolute level of price. And that's why, despite lower prices, we are still comfortable with strong earnings coming from GEMS, and we will discuss that, I'm sure, in a moment when we look forward.
And we are also comfortable because even if we see a very sharp decline in prices, we have this capability to capture another stream of value, which is on volatility.
So we'll now take some questions online. Operator, could you please start with the first question?
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question is from Louis Boujard. Please go ahead.
Yes, hi, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my question. Congratulations on the good results. Maybe just one question to focus on 2024 on the Networks. I was wondering if you could provide a little bit more granularity regarding NaTran performance specifically during this year. In particular, you were expected to have some positive impacts from the new tariffs.
At the same time, this transit effect, which has been negative, could we have some elements in terms of levels of each box that offset each other? It could be nice for the forecast as well. And then staying in the Network, if possible, on Storengy, how do you see this evolving more particularly with regards to the topic regarding the maximum level of result in terms of total volumes that would be eventually lowered going forward for the one in France in particular? Thank you very much.
Yeah. We didn't, yeah. Louis, you have to repeat the second question because we couldn't hear you very well. Is it the question about whether we can fill up the volumes because of the... Yeah?
Oh, sorry. The second question was about Storengy, which has been impacted by lower volatility this year. And also, if you could provide a bit more elements regarding the sensitivity of this business to the maximum level in France that would eventually be evolved going forward in terms of storage?
Yeah, I'm not sure I completely understood. I think it's fair to say that we are looking carefully at the filling campaign for this summer. They started a little bit later than usual, but we believe that the market and the spreads are improving, and therefore we will be in a good situation to fill the storage as expected. What I think is important is that we meet the 80% at the beginning of next winter. And at this stage, we think that the signals will allow us to do that eventually, albeit a little bit slower and later than normally.
I think the key, as you know, will be then obviously LNG continuing to be imported in Europe and allowing us to fill both the... obviously to continue to fill this summer, but also to pass a good winter and to have a good storage capacity at the end of the winter 2025- 2026. So the situation is improving, and I hope that was the question because we couldn't hear you very well.
And same for Q1, but I think I got the sense.
Thank you.
I got the sense of what you were asking on the variation of results for Networks. So maybe not entering too much into details, but we can, of course, dig in with the IR team offline.
But what is key is that indeed there is a clawback process in the French regulation for gas because tariffs are actually set based on projected cost and also projected volumes. And there is a way that you can actually modify incrementally the tariffs, what they call the K factor, but it is capped. And it was capped in the previous regulation, the previous four-year period at 2%. So what happened is that when you have the volumes dropping a lot, and that's what happened, of course, on the back of the crisis in 2022- 2023, where there was a lot of demand destructions, what happened is that the volumes, the actual volumes, were significantly lower than the projected volumes, which created indeed an underperformance in GRDF. And our numbers were significantly lower than what they should have been should we have achieved the projected volumes.
That's what is indeed funding a kind of regularization account, which is creating the clawback. So what is it? It's an amount that was not cashed in and not invoiced during the initial period, could not be actually compensated by the K factor that was too small, and that creates a kind of a receivable. I would say it's not in the balance sheet, but that's a kind of a credit that we have. And that credit is actually embedded in the new calculation of the tariff. So for the following period, the tariff is actually increased to make sure that based on the new projected volumes, the operator can catch up with what was not earned during the previous period. And this total amount for GRDF that was missing was EUR 900 million. So these EUR 900 million are now spread over the new four-year period.
And in the tariff increase that we got, part of this tariff increase is backed so that we can actually get back this money over the four-year period. And that's why indeed our revenues are sharply increasing year-over-year because now we are recovering money that was due from the previous four years. I hope it's simple enough. So you can work out the numbers on EUR 900 million over four years. So more or less, it gives you a ballpark of the magnitude of the clawback based, of course, on the volumes that are projected in the new tariff.
And that's why we like to say that we have in France a strong regulation.
So we'll end the full-year results Q&A here. Thank you for your questions. And I would like to hand over to Catherine for our market updates.
All right. So hello again, everyone.
I am now going to kick off our market update section joined by Paulo and Pierre-François. But first, let us look back at what we have achieved over the past four years because I don't think it is an exaggeration to state that ENGIE has completely transformed itself over that period. We have invested EUR 25 billion on our strategic priorities. Half of this investment has been funded thanks to an active disposal program of EUR 12 billion over the period, which has been covering pretty much the four continents where we operate, each of our business units. We have added 15 GW of new capacity in renewables, and we have more than doubled our combined wind and solar capacity. We have made a pivotal and decisive move into the battery world. We were nowhere in battery just a couple of years ago.
All this expansion with outstanding execution, both in terms of schedule and budget. We have also expanded in power networks to complement our existing strong position in highly cash-generative gas networks, which we've discussed. And we have achieved commercial success, capitalizing on our energy management expertise. And you can see that in the results of our PPA position, where we have today a portfolio of 14 GW. We have also worked on our organization. We have simplified it. We have reorganized around four Global Business Units back in 2021. We are really working to bring a more centralized industrial and less decentralized conglomerate-like structure that is making us far more effective as a group with over EUR 900 million of efficiency gains over the last four years. And you can see the result of all these efforts into our numbers.
I think the graph on the right-hand side speaks for itself. We have actually doubled our annual net income from the EUR 2.5 billion level during the period of 2016 and 2021 to the EUR 5 billion plus average of the last three years from 2022 to 2024. We have rewarded our shareholders with over EUR 10 billion in dividends, and we have achieved a total shareholder return of no less than 64% in the period 2021 to 2024. At the same time, we have de-risked and transformed the makeup of our earnings because 40% of these earnings back in 2016 came from E&P, LNG, coal, and Belgian nuclear merchant, all of which will have been either stopped or sold by 2027. Meanwhile, our balance sheet headroom has improved markedly with a ratio of net debt to EBITDA down from 4.0 x to 3.1x between 2021 and 2024.
And I have to add the nuclear deal, which we worked alongside all these achievements that represent indeed a major de-risking step for our group. The biggest achievement of all in our mind when we talk between us here at ENGIE is that we feel that we have turned ENGIE into one single team, super focused on business, all about business, with obviously incredible skills, expertise, motivation, strong alignment with the company's purpose always, and also self-confidence. But I can guarantee you there is not one ounce of complacency among ENGIE team members. So what now? Obviously, in the highly dynamic context, I think that's an understatement that we are all facing, it is really important to reaffirm a few convictions. Our view at ENGIE is that there are structural engines to the energy transition. These engines, they include power demand. They include the need for affordability.
They include sovereignty. They include, of course, climate considerations. Electricity demand, because it is set to rise faster over the coming years, which is going to be based on economic growth, on decarbonization, and the rapid development of sectors such as cloud, AI, crypto, EV, etc. Affordability, indisputably another factor for the energy transition, all the more in Europe because renewables are now cheaper. It is a fact, and with the right combination of storage, flexible backup, efficiency grid, there is a path towards bringing low-carbon power that is affordable. The third key driver is sovereignty. It is the drive for homegrown electrons, homegrown molecules. It removes the dependency of our countries, of the country where we operate, on outside influences when it comes to feedstock supply and also pricing.
This means obviously expansion in renewables, but also making use of whatever local resources you can find, which is why we are so excited about the potential in biomethane in France and in Europe, and of course, the fourth driver bringing momentum for cleaner energy is definitely climate, as a vast majority of countries, governments, corporations, and citizens still see the fight against climate change as a critical agenda item, and we have three convictions still, as you know them very well. The first is that there is a wave of electrification, but the gas has a crucial complementary role, so I'm not a big poetry or I'm not a big poet, but I would say electrification is on its way. Molecules are here to stay. That's what we like to say at ENGIE, and this is the poet in me.
Second of our convictions, flexibility in all its forms is needed to underpin the resiliency of the infrastructure and to adapt to the greater complexity of a more renewables-led power market. The third of our convictions is that electrification will require massive power grid strengthening, but this investment will obviously need to be made very wisely given the affordability and the acceptability constraints that this big infrastructure build-out represents. So given this context, what does that mean for ENGIE? We want ENGIE to be role modeling the most affordable and secure energy transition, and we have what it takes. In fact, we have this realistic ambition to be simply the best energy transition utility. And what do we mean by that? We mean that we are going to rely on some key differentiators, and we have some. Sometimes people ask us, what is so special about ENGIE?
First, we have the right business and geographical mix. We have a business mix which starts with an incredible portfolio of assets, assets that are fit for purpose, especially given the convictions that I have just laid out, and we have, for this asset, unrivaled energy management capabilities. We also have a geographical balance. That geographical balance gives us optionalities. As you can see, market shifts do occur every so often. The second, the best utility has to include a share of highly regulated and predictable assets, and we have exactly that in the form of our gas networks in France, which are very highly cash-generative and contribute to our growth investment. In our mind, being the best utility also means that we have to have a very strict discipline in our capital allocation decisions with a strong focus on performance.
We are not going to accept low productivity or bureaucracy. You will notice, in fact, that we are going to double the pace of our performance target for 2025 to 2027. Third, people and expertise. As CEO of ENGIE, you can imagine I get all the motivation I need from my 98,000 colleagues who themselves are so committed to get up and every day make the transition happen. I would like to take a second to thank every one of them today for their unswerving efforts. Because I like to say, this is my little bragging moment at ENGIE, we simply have the best people in the industry. To support this ambition, we are making changes to our organization. We are evolving the makeup of our Global Business Unit for three reasons.
We want to be in the best possible position to capture the opportunities that we see in the market, particularly to advance this ambition that we have to be one of the first to offer 24/7 carbon-free electricity to all of our customers, as well as to expand in power networks. The second reason is that we want to further strengthen our industrial dimension and unlock synergies, particularly in the renewable and battery space, and third, which is a well-known bugbear of mine, to continue to simplify our organization and our processes. As you can see, we start from a position of strength. If I look at the new Renewables and Flex Power, which is led by Paulo here, it combines 102 GW of power generation capacity with scale in renewables, in co-located batteries, in standalone batteries, in pump storage, and gas-fired generation.
The Network's Global Business Unit comprises EUR 32 billion of RAB in French gas and EUR 5 billion of capital employed in power and gas networks overseas. Local Energy I nfrastructures, new name for Energy Solutions, is a leader in district heating and cooling with close to 350 urban networks under ENGIE operations. The new Supply and Energy Management Global Business Unit brings together Energy Management and our two downstream activities, B2B, which was the S in GEMS, and B2C, which is our Retail business. Those two total to more than 500 TWh of energy supply a year. And finally, we have moved from, remember, the 25 Business Units back in 2019 to four Global Business Units, and we are further simplifying under three reporting segments from now on, which are shown from left to right. Over recent years, we have aggressively ramped up our competencies in data, digital, and AI.
Today, obviously, they play a fundamental role from the top to the bottom in our industrial processes. And given the complexity of our markets, it's essential for us to keep up the pace. So for instance, we put the vast majority of data in the cloud. We have an 80% target at the end of 2027, and we want to more than triple the amount of near real-time data collected by that same date. And how to create value from this? There are many, many ways. So I just picked one example, which is within the asset optimization world, where forecasting energy supply and demand is very important. So we're doing it as accurately as possible. It is important because it allows us to optimize production, to match client needs, and ultimately to ensure that energy systems are balanced.
It requires processing a lot of data from a variety of sources, all kinds of sources, including weather data, but in a very, very short time frame. So what we do is that we continuously reinforce our forecasting capabilities, obviously using AI, which means that last year in 2024, a control desk were able to save in the high teens of millions of euros in a pilot project. So obviously, we're working to scale up this for even more impact. Stay tuned on this. And we are making sure that every business, every support function today at ENGIE is progressing alongside its data and digital roadmap to make sure we have business impact, but also that we are contributing to the performance plan that Pierre-François is going to elaborate on. I'm going to now turn to our climate strategy as decarbonization remains a key consideration behind all of our decisions.
Today, we are announcing a new objective for total Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions. We are targeting a range of 120 million to 140 million tons in 2030, which implies a 55% decrease from 2017, which is the reference year. It's an improved ambition, which is really the result of the good progress that we have made already in reducing our emissions to date. We are also, of course, extending our climate strategy to climate adaptation, which means at the asset level, we have been working on detailed plans for every site which is subject to climate risk, and at the portfolio level, more resiliency that can be achieved through a more diversified asset mix, both in terms of technology and geography. These targets will be voted on via a consultative Say on Climate at the AGM at the end of April.
We are very encouraged by the progress that we've made on these ESG criteria because they have been very carefully chosen to be fully in line with our performance requirements. They are meaningful to the business, to our value creation, and they ultimately guarantee the sustainability of the company on all dimensions, including economically and in a way future-proofing our group. What are key 2030 operational targets? We aim for 95 GW of renewables and storage, which is compared to a position of 51 GW today, an average of 7 GW of additional capacity per year. You will see that for this target, we no longer split up renewables and batteries targets as we are benefiting from strong pipelines in both.
We want to keep the optionality depending on what opportunity will bring us the most attractive returns, as well as will play a more important role in our asset portfolio. And asset generation, we target a near doubling of power transmission lines in operation, a near quadrupling of biomethane capacity connected to our gas grid in France, and a 40% rise in B2B and B2C power sales. With these growth targets, we are obviously determined to deliver even more value to our shareholders over the coming years. Despite lower energy forward prices compared to what we showed you last year, I'm pleased indeed that we are raising our guidance for Net Recurring Income, Group share, for 2025, and we are improving our outlook for 2026. We provide our first guidance for 2027, and this will rely on a mid-single-digit year-on-year rise.
This is resulting in a mid-single-digit year-on-year rise. As a result of our investment plan and the Belgian deal, very importantly, from the start of 2026, we become more stable, more utility-like in terms of our earnings mix and trajectory. We are cutting our exposure to open market power prices. In batteries, we aim for half of the revenues over the first five years to be contracted. Potential benefits, of course, from market volatility and high unhedged prices, such as what we see in trade movements in Europe, in Texas from higher penetration of renewables. This, to a large extent, becomes a bit like icing on the cake. On the back of a stabler, steadier earnings mix from 2026, we are proposing to increase the dividend floor from EUR 0.65 to EUR 1.10 while maintaining our 65%-75% payout range.
With that, I'm going to turn over to Paulo Almirante for a deep dive on our Renewables and Flex Power Global Business Unit. Thank you, Paulo.
Thank you, Catherine. Good afternoon, everyone. After talking about the dividend policy, I think my presentation is not going to raise any interest. Anyway, the new Global Business Unit, Flexibles, Renewables and Flex Power, as mentioned by Catherine, is bringing together all our upstream power assets, a significant installed capacity of around 100 GW, which 50% is green power and 50% is gas generation. These assets are well distributed geographically, which brings diversity of business models and diversity of regulatory framework. 1/3 is in Europe, 1/3 in AMEA, and 1/3 in the Americas. In these regions, we focus in each of them in three key countries. In Europe, France, Spain, and the U.K. In AMEA, India, South Africa, and Australia.
In the Americas, Brazil, Chile, and the U.S. This new GBU represents around 40% of the group EBIT in 2024 and aggregates 9,000 employees, maximizing synergies from BD to operations. For example, optimizing BD teams, optimizing land leases, or benefiting from economies of scale when using common suppliers. One important element is that by combining renewables with batteries, we can offer our clients 24/7 green power. When we add gas generation, we can ensure security of supply with low CO2 impact. Let's have a look at our pipeline. At the end of 2024, we have reached 115 GW of renewable and batteries pipeline. As you know, there is no growth without pipeline, and there is no value creation without a quality pipeline.
At ENGIE, we have a solid and competitive pipeline developed by BD teams, well established in our key countries, and that with the coordination of a central team which pilots DevEx, monitors time to market, and prioritizes projects based on value creation, they can create this level of pipeline and prepare ourselves for new projects as we go along. When we look at the graphs, you can see that about 60% of the pipeline is secured or is in advanced development. 40% is wind and 40% is solar, with batteries accounting now around 20 GW of that pipeline. This is a significant growth from almost nothing just a couple of years ago. In terms of geographical footprint, this pipeline is well diversified, which gives us flexibility to choose the projects where demand and markets are more attractive.
For example, if there is a slowdown in growth in the US, we have enough pipeline to redirect investments to other regions. The target for 2025 is 50 GW of renewables, as announced in 2021, and we are on track to achieve that. When we combine all technologies, we should achieve 57 GW. And if we apply a cover ratio of 2.4 x to our pipeline, we can add 38 GW over the next five years, bringing our installed capacity of renewables and storage to 95 GW by 2030. This becomes our new target, all renewable and storage capacities combined. It's important now that we are entering into a new phase to look at our track record in the last four years.
As you can see in the slide, between 2020 and 2023, we invested EUR 12 billion of CapEx in renewables and batteries, and this is mainly through organic development. This resulted in a significant increase of capacity of 14 GW and a strong contribution to earnings with EBIT of EUR 1 billion in 2024. That demonstrates that our growth is about profitable megawatts. In the center of the slide, you can see project IRRs for a representative sample of investments. Most projects achieve an IRR of 7% to 11%, and the average has increased by 50 basis points in 2024. This is the result of applying strict investment criteria, a high level of execution performance, and a business model with a contracted profile of around 70%. We have almost forgotten the challenges that we have faced in recent years with supply chain disruptions, CapEx inflation, political turmoil.
Despite all that, we were able to deliver growth and value creation, and we will continue to face challenges going forward: negative prices, curtailment, and once again, political turmoil, but our teams are well prepared, experienced. They are based on robust processes and growing with digital tools that can support this level of deployment. As Catherine mentioned, execution on time and on budget, so we have the confidence to deliver on these targets by 2030, and one thing we are sure, renewables will continue to grow. This is the only technology that can be deployed at scale and with a competitive price. However, renewables are intermittent, and intermittency brings volatility to the markets. What you see in the slide are a few examples: ERCOT in the U.S., France, and Belgium, which clearly show a structural increase in the volatility of daily prices.
This is caused by excess of solar generation during the day, bringing prices down or to negative levels, and also the variability of wind, which can create significant price spikes during the day. The only response to this kind of problems are flexible assets, mainly batteries or gas generation. Another factor of intermittency is that it is changing the way gas assets are remunerated, and this is illustrated on the right side of the slide for our European fleet. You can see load factors are reducing by half. However, while the capture spark spread is not flat, it is increasing massively, more than double, which is the contrary to the load factor that you see on that slide. Another important element, of course, that you see on the bars is that EBIT is reducing. However, it stays well above the pre-crisis level.
So the new driver for remunerating gas assets is mainly volatility. On the lower side of the slide, we want to show that flexible assets provide value to all stakeholders across the value chain. They can support the grid and benefit from CRMs, capacity remuneration. They can participate in the intraday markets, benefiting from balancing services, or they can capture a premium from customers to enable base load green power. So let's have a more detailed look at our gas fleet. The international fleet, around 36 GW in LatAm and AMEA, is mainly contracted under long-term PPAs with a remaining life of 8-10 years. In LatAm, we do have some market exposure, which we hedge with our downstream portfolio. You are aware, in recent months, we announced the sale of assets in markets like Singapore, Kuwait, or Bahrain.
These divestments allow us to align with the CO2 trajectory of the group and with the geographical strategy. This fleet contributed with around 60% of the gas generation EBIT in 2024. On the lower side of the slide, we have the European fleet, around 15 GW, with a business model which is more exposed to the market. On one side, the need for security of supply allows us to capture good margins on the hedging, and on the other side, the daily balancing allows us to capture price spikes with the open positions. So globally, we have a performing fleet that contributes with strong earnings and offers good visibility. Going forward, we can expect an EBIT contribution of EUR 0.6 billion-EUR 1 billion per year. Let's look at batteries now.
There are two major needs in the sector today: balancing the intermittency of renewables to stabilize the system and strong demand for 24/7 green power. In other words, to move from as generated to as consumed PPAs. The only industrial solution that can be deployed at scale are batteries to resolve these two issues. ENGIE was, in fact, the first mover on this market, and as mentioned by Catherine, with the acquisition of Broad Reach Power in 2023, we are now able to have 5 GW of assets in operation or under construction. We expect a significant growth of this market and of ENGIE, with an increase of negative hours across all the markets where we have a presence and a significant decrease in the cost of batteries by more than 30% since 2023.
In addition, we can benefit from colocation, not only in terms of costs, but mainly in terms of time to market, with faster access to permits, with faster access to the grid. However, there is an important element to reveal. Capturing the revenues of batteries is not simple. It requires sophisticated systems and strong skills, which we have with our Energy Management teams, and we believe it is a competitive advantage for this specific market. Typically, we target to secure 50%-70% of the battery revenues, and for 2027, we have already secured more than 50% of the batteries that are in operation. So here, our plan is to invest EUR 5 billion of gross CapEx and achieve around EUR 0.4 billion of EBIT contribution by 2027. So to conclude, we are starting a new phase with a new objective to achieve 95 GW of installed capacity by 2030.
We are well prepared to execute the plan and deliver growth with value creation, as we have been doing since 2021. With that, I hand over back to Catherine.
Thank you, Paulo. I will cover now very briefly the other three GBUs, and then we will have a break, short break. So I'm going to start with the Supply and Energy Management GBU, which is going to be instrumental to our 24/7 decarbonized power ambition. This GBU has an unrivaled energy and risk management know-how, coupled with a very strong commercial franchise. The B2B, which is on the left-hand side, we obviously supply gas and power to around 200 energy-intensive multi-site clients and other 200,000 non-residential users. With contracts of average two years' duration, this business gives us strong visibility with about 80% of the margin that is locked in at the start of the year.
We also run within B2B the largest global risk management franchise among the utilities. We support 800 large customers, and obviously, these services tend to become more valuable, especially after what has happened with the energy crisis in Europe. Through our B2C, we serve more than 20 million contracts. We are recognized as a low-carbon supplier with 76% of our electricity volume sold through green offers, and for both of these businesses, we have this ambition to increase our power sales by 40%, up to 300 terawatt-hours by 2030, and finally, Energy Management, which is GEMS, ex-GEM without the S. Energy Management leverages and extracts value from our portfolio of assets, whether it's generation assets, whether it's storage assets, but also the sourcing contracts we have in our portfolio. We consider them as assets, and it also manages procurement for our B2B and B2C businesses, optimizing our position accordingly.
The heart of the integrated model of ENGIE, and as mentioned earlier, we are amongst the largest corporate PPA providers. I repeat to you, we have a capacity of 14 GW in our portfolio. In 2024, almost half of the 4.3 GW that we signed were with data centers. So no surprise, growth is expected. We target actually by 2030 annual PPA volumes to be over 100 TWh, which would be a tenfold rise versus 2020. Obviously, the energy transition makes it more challenging for large users to get the power they want as they decarbonize. Increasingly, they are asking us to provide power when they want it, not just when we produce it, very similar to what Paulo was saying.
And we've tried to illustrate with this pyramid how a PPA becomes more sophisticated as we start from a base of local renewables production that can be provided via a so-called as-produced contract. So at the base of the pyramid, you have the as-produced simple PPAs, and then you move up the pyramid, you top up with the whole toolbox of storage, of flexible solutions, of also green market access. Each additional element adds complexity and therefore adds value to the overall product. And we are determined to provide full carbon-free power to our customers. This is why we have a target of 20%. This is an ambition that we have set for Édouard and his team and the whole GEMS, actually, because we are all contributing to this target that we want to be at 20% of our PPA volumes being 24/7 carbon-free by 2030.
Moving on now to our Network business, which is going to be key in contributing to our asset balance and energy mix, the role of utility that I described earlier, Networks providing this predictability, this long-term cash flow that we have mentioned earlier. Our regulated gas assets, again, they have a regulatory asset base of EUR 32 billion. They have at least three years remaining in the current regulatory period. Revenues are largely immune to inflation and volumes variation as their clawback mechanism, and actually, we discussed that in the first section, and they are substantial generators of cash flow because, as you can see, we expect for those assets a free cash flow generation of EUR 8 billion for the period 2025 to 2027. It's also important to note that they are going to be playing a very important role in the decarbonization of the molecule.
We are expecting to invest over EUR 1 billion in that same period of time in raising the share of green gas. By 2030, we are actually aiming to quadruple the French biomethane production capacity that will be connected to our gas grid, and for our own biomethane production, we are targeting 10 TWh that will be in France and also in a few countries in Europe when we have a presence. This rollout demonstrates that decarbonization of the existing infrastructure is real. It's achievable. It's happening, especially with biomethane, which is very mature today. In green hydrogen, we do maintain our ambition to be producing about 4 GW by 2035. We recognize, though, that the market is taking a bit more time to emerge. We're still optimistic about its potential and its very important role in the success of the energy transition.
Turning to the next slide, still in the networks arena, we want to continue to raise the share of power in relation to gas in our Networks business unit. This is not something new. We've said that before. Between 2021 and 2024, the power share of Networks EBIT more than tripled to over 8%, and we are aiming to have that near doubling to 15% for 2027. At the end of 2024, we already operated 5,400 km of line. We target this to double over 10,000 km, mainly in Latin America, where there is both a need for massive strengthening of its networks, and also we have established competency and a very good track record that we rely on. Last, it's no secret that we bid unsuccessfully for the U.K. electricity distributor, ENWL, in 2024 during the summer. We are going to continue to monitor the developments in distribution in Europe.
We will consider a potential acquisition only if such an opportunity is value-creative, aligned with our capital allocation policy, offering us operational control and supported by a robust market regulation. We are determined we will be focused on quality, but we are patient. We are patient, and we are mindful of value. Moving to L ocal Energy Infrastructures, this is the new name for Energy Solutions Global Business Unit. Its financial results will be reported within the Infrastructure segment, but it remains a GBU. The market drivers for this activity continue to be very good, with strong growth expected in heating and cooling solutions, especially. Where at ENGIE, we happen to have a very strong position. We are today among European leaders in district heating, and in district cooling, we have a sizable platform in the Gulf region with our shareholding at 40% of Tabreed.
Our objective is to provide more than 20 TWh of green distributed heat, cooling, power by 2030. But we cannot be everywhere, and this is particularly true in this Global Business Units. So in parallel of focusing on growth in the domain I've just mentioned, we are taking bold decisions to focus on our five core markets in Europe, where underlying margins and revenues have been trending upwards, and we are placing our businesses in the Americas and in smaller European countries under strategic review. And I repeat for the sake of clarity, I am only talking here about the Local Energy Infrastructure business, ex-Energy Solutions. And we want to recenter, refocus geographically this business because we are also, and as we are doing that, we are taking the opportunity to carry out an optimization of span and layer.
In this case, we are removing a regional layer consolidation level. We're merging support function, and I wanted to highlight this as a very good example from the team representing a good concrete application of our performance and simplification program.
All right, I think we've all earned a break. Thank you for the attention. I think we have to come back at 3:30 P.M. sharp. Thank you very much for the attention.