...to a country that has none. 100 years later, now it's a multi-energy company, active everywhere on the globe, and at the crossroads of two worlds. World of hydrocarbons, and thus, of decarbonated energies. How can we explain this incredible adventure? It is a trajectory that is inseparable from the worlds, of the changes in our world, and the challenges of each time. First World War. On the battlefield, for the first time, there are engine cars with engines. And to win, for according to Clemenceau, oil has become as necessary as blood. France notices its absolute dependence vis-à-vis the great British companies to, for the supply. It needs to master their access to oil, a question of national security. Thus, in 2024, the country has the new company, the ancestor of TotalEnergies, that confiscates the shares that were taken by the German.
A small group of men is going to work in order to have its rights been known and for its shareholders. Other pioneers are working elsewhere, geologists. During a night of 2027, the victory, being tenacious is finally a success, and they have their first oil. So, the world is going at a crazy pace to be very performing, high and automotive, maritime transportation at high scale, you need still constantly more fuel. This change of scale is alongside an industrial challenge. It is about creating everything from scratch. We're building a pipeline of more than 1,800 kilometers, the longest in the world, the first to travel through borders. There's a whole refinery that is being set up. We launch the greatest tanker ever put on waters. We discover the first well in oil pit in Saint-Marcet.
At the end of 1930, the precursors of the company are ready for the battle. Even if they're small on the board game, they are ready to grow according to the speed of the needs. But suddenly, the Second World War explodes. The infrastructures are damaged, we need to rebuild everything. After the war, optimism is back. We're building, but bigger and greater. We're having more children, and asking for more comfort. This new world has its own idols: a car to go away on a vacation and plastic. Synthetic materials for everything and everyone. For the company, it is about going towards the infinitely small. It is a molecular adventure, and that takes place first and foremost in labs. The first steps in petrochemistry.
Will come out new products with a high added value for packaging, textile fibers, resins, but also fuels with improved properties under the brand of Total. The network was born and will grow constantly and deploy itself. At the same time, on the international level, new changes and upturns intervene in Algeria, in Iraq, in Western Africa. It's a time of independence movements. Producing countries change things and want to use the resources, a huge challenge for oil companies. The company deploys to find new oil deposits. The group studies offshore drilling in icy seas. In France, it's the discovery of a lake called the French Texas. This deposit, this huge deposit with very specific qualities. A huge challenge picked up by the pioneers of the company. The pioneers are also engineers who have the crazy idea to cool gas until liquefaction.
It is one of the first achievements of the kind in the world. Gas travels oceans. Jules Verne, first methane tanker, transporting transformed gas into liquid at less than 60 degrees.
...The geographical borders are pushed back constantly in Northern Africa, in France, America. The company settles also in Indonesia; it's in Sub-Saharan Africa, Gabon, Congo. Finally, it makes the bet to explore the ocean, this unknown country or land. The company becomes global. At the beginning of the 1970s, the energy market is no longer dominated by oil companies. When the OPEC imposes a sudden increase of the, of oil, the world is shocked. It's a petrol shock. Shortages of gas start appearing. Next, inflation, a decrease of production, unemployment, and the 30 glories are past us, are behind us. The increase of barrel prices helps pay for new to dig for new deposits, and we're pushing back limits to use this gas very deep down in the ocean. It required a great imagination.
At sea, we need a dynamic positioning of the ships, horizontal, vertical drilling with high pressure. Engineers and drillers are making miracles. There are Frigg, Ekofisk, Alwyn. Then it will be the venture of great offshore. Pioneers are still pushing back limits in Angola with the Golden Block, Seventeen and Nigeria. Thanks to technological innovations, the needs are covered. Nothing seems to limit the civilizations of hydrocarbons.
Throughout the years, three companies cross on the different territories. Sometimes they're competitive, sometimes they're partners. At the end of the century, they merge. Together, they bring light to the fourth oil major in the world, Total Fina Elf. For the very first time, the shareholders of the new group are gathered here to vote as part of one general meeting, but at the very same time, a major crisis strikes suddenly at the company.
This is a distress warning that we've received. The Erika drowns. The terrible explosion in Toulouse. Second disaster, the AZF factory explodes. This is an emotional time for Total, and we need to respond. So at the time, safety becomes of the utmost importance. The message is conveyed throughout the world. It's an imperative for the employees, the stakeholders, and the sustainability of the company. At the time of the new millennium, everyone agrees we need to fight against climate change as well, so the company makes this strategy evolve. It shows its ambition to be a leader of the energy transition. More energies, fewer emissions, that is the direction we're taking. On top of oil and gas, the company is investing in electricity and renewables, as well as decarbonized molecules to become a multi-energy integrated company.
Energy is reinventing, reinventing itself.
Booming and becoming TotalEnergies.
TotalEnergies.
TotalEnergies, a brand-new name. It embodies the transition dynamic of the company. The goal: continue to supply energy that the world needs today while building the energy system of tomorrow. A huge challenge that men and women at TotalEnergies are ready to rise to, to write the new pages of the next 100 years. This is the pioneer spirit as a legacy.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, hello. I'm delighted to welcome you to this general meeting of TotalEnergies, and we're celebrating its centennial this year. Jacques Aschenbroich, your lead Director, and Jean-Pierre Sbraire, your CFO, are at my side. The members of the board and the executive committee are also present in the room, and I thank them for that.
As you see, we have chosen to host this general annual general meeting at the company's head office at in the Tour Coupole auditorium, and its capacity is more limited than at Salle Pleyel. So if some of you, some of you will be able to attend this meeting in elsewhere in an adjoining room, from which you will be able to attend the presentations, will take part in the debates, ask questions, and vote, since the two rooms are connected, and during the-
... Q&A session, I will move between the amphitheater and the next room in order to respect the right of speech of every shareholder. We hope that this annual meeting will run smoothly, so that you can take part in your company's major decisions by voting on the draft resolutions submitted for your approval. The annual general meeting is a key moment of expression for shareholder democracy, to which your company is particularly attached to. As in previous years, we have taken the necessary steps to facilitate your participation remotely. You can follow the meeting live via our website, totalenergies.com. The shareholders following the assembly live cannot directly take part in the vote, but they were able to vote previously through mail or internet, through the vote access platform. We thank them to have recourse to the system.
I'd like to inform you that bailiffs and journalists are present and attending the meeting. I wish you a warm welcome to all shareholders and all those interested who follow this meeting wherever they are, and I declare the session open, the meeting open. We will first talk about the bureau, the general meeting officers. There's first, Mr... Well, the FCPE TotalEnergies, represented by Monsieur Philippe Rivaud, Amundi, and Madame Frédérique de Brem , who were the scrutineers of the assembly. The two shareholders have, according to the attendance sheet, the greatest number of votes among the shareholders present in the room. I'd like to thank them and declare the board constituted. I'd like to appoint your CFO, Jean-Pierre Sbraire, who is alongside with me as Secretary of the assembly.
According to the provisional attendance sheet drawn up by the centralizer of the site, the 35,566 shareholders present or who voted through mail represent 1,647,927 shares. So this is higher than the quorum to deliberate as an ordinary or extraordinary assembly. I thus declare the general meeting constituted, duly constituted. The documents attesting of the regularity of the convening of the meeting were deposited on this desk. They were at the disposal of the members, the shareholders, and those who made a demand according to regulations. I'm not going to read the list unless one of you requires it, and I'd like to remind you that the general meeting is there to deliberate on the agenda on page four of the brochure.
The reports submitted to the assembly appear in the convening brochure and in the documentation made available to you. Under these conditions, I suggest that you do not read them either. We are, thus, if you agree, going to present different topics that we want to tackle here, one after the other. Jean-Pierre Sbraire, first, your CFO, will present the financial results of 2023, the first quarter 2024 as well. These results, as you will see, testify of the performance of our strategy, followed by your Board of Directors and the integrated multi-energy model of the company. We'll come back to it. Then your statutory auditors will then present the various reports drawn up in connection with this meeting in a pre-recorded sequence. Then, Jacques Aschenbroich, your lead Director, will then take stock on the balanced governance of your company.
He will report on the main work of the Board of Directors and its four committees. He will present to you the mandate renewals and the new member, whose appointment is subjected to your approval. He will present to you the role of the lead Director and the report on his mission in 2023, and even 2024, until the new meeting. Mark Cutifani, the Chairman of the Compensation Committee, will then present the compensation package for the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and the company's Directors. Mark does not speak Molière's language or French language yet, so it is in a video that is subtitled. So you can all follow what he will explain. I will continue then with points on the implementation of the company's strategy and its prospects.
Before giving the floor to Jean-Pierre, as a tradition, all meetings begin with a safety point moment and sustainable one in the afternoon. We have thus decided to talk about security and safety, since it's one of the biggest, greatest value of the company. So let's talk about safety on an industrial, with an industrial work site.
In order to share the safety culture with our contractor, we do have several meetings. The general safety meetings, where we are sharing the incidents we are facing within TotalEnergies, on receiving the information also from our contractors, and we are performing permit to work meetings. Prior to any activity, first, there is a permit to work. Based on this permit to work, we do some normal job safety analysis. We also perform some regular check, participating to the toolbox talk or doing life-saving checks. Today, we have a lifting operation. So in such case, to ensure that the operation is safely conducted, we have what we are calling life-saving checks, which is a checklist for us to ensure that all the operation has been properly scheduled and is correctly performed. On top of this, we do have the golden rules.
For instance, for confined space, we ensure that the location is well-ventilated, that people are trained, are aware about the risk by going into the confined space, and we ensure that they do have a standby. The main objective of the golden rules is ensuring that everybody, at the end of their job, will go back home safely.
Jean-Pierre is going to take the floor.
Ladies and gentlemen, hello. The environment in 2023, after an exceptional year, has remained favorable for the company. Thus, the price of Brent, the marker for oil prices on the international market, reached nearly an average, well, $83 per barrel. Gas prices, although volatile, remained at high levels, thus the price in Europe reached $13 per million BDUs, and refinery margins remained at a high level, around $70 per ton on average in 2023. In this environment, TotalEnergies, as the President said, implemented its transition strategy, and thus generated solid results that I will have the pleasure to present this afternoon to you.
As you know, TotalEnergies celebrates its 100 years this year, this it celebrated, and in 2024, a handful of Frenchmen embarked on an impossible mission, or it sounded impossible, to secure oil resources to a country, France, that didn't have any. 100 years later, TotalEnergies has become an integrated multi-energy company, and its 100,000 employees have kept this pioneering spirit alive. The company is in an environment favorable to take advantage of the evolution of energy markets, with a strategy for this transition that's anchored in two pillars: hydrocarbons and electric- and power on the other. The first pillar, hydrocarbons. By reducing drastically the gas emissions or greenhouse gas emissions in its operations, TotalEnergies is planning to grow its hydrocarbon production by 2%-3% a year in the five next years, a growth that will be mainly supported by the growth of LNG production.
The company has a portfolio that is rich in projects at low cost and low emissions. Thus, TotalEnergies will develop its pipeline of LNG projects that are ongoing or in construction in Qatar, United States, Nigeria, Mexico, Oman, to quote just the main ones. We're going to continue strengthening our position as a first exporter of LNG, starting from the USA, and our position as a leader in the regasification in Europe. TotalEnergies will also put in production its portfolio of oil projects that have a strong profitability. That is the case in Brazil, as you have seen, in the Gulf of Mexico, in Iraq, Uganda, Angola. A portfolio that was recently enriched with promising successes in exploration in Suriname or Namibia. These projects will enable TotalEnergies to compensate the natural decline of its oil fields.
The first pillar, hydrocarbons. Second, power. Clearly, the energy of the 21st century and TotalEnergies wants to, in this business segment, duplicate its integrated oil and gas model in order to reach profitability of 12% for its sector. We want to duplicate our oil and gas model with a profitability of 12%, equivalent to our oil and gas projects at $60 per barrel. This means that this model or this business segment will have a profitability that is higher to the traditional models in utilities. The company is designing a portfolio of renewable assets for many years. Sun, onshore, wind, offshore, flexible CCGT storing competitive in order to supply its clients in low-carbon elec- power, available 24 hours and seven days a week.
We want to increase our power production to more than 100 terawatt-hours by 2030, and are anticipating that with a generation of $4 billion in 2028 in cash flow, this segment will be positive in net cash flow in 2028.
Let's now see some figures. In 2023, the adjusted net income of the company was at $23.2 billion, and the IFRS income at $21.4 billion, so a bit less than EUR 20 billion, EUR 19.8 billion, to be accurate. Over the year, the return on equity is at 20%, and the one on the return on capital employed, 19%.... This performance puts the company for the second consecutive time at the forefront of the majors in terms of profitability. I will get back to that later on. In terms of cash flow, as you can see, TotalEnergies generated funds from operations of $36 billion. You can see the breakdown on the left-hand side of the screen by business segment. They all positively contributed to this, funds from operations. $19 billion for exploration production.
They recorded a production of 2.5 million barrels oil equivalent per day, driven by LNG production growth of 9%, new assets in the United Arab Emirates, in Iraq, and startups in Brazil, Norway, Oman, and Nigeria. This cash generation, as I said in my introduction, was supported by high oil and gas price levels. $8 billion for downstream, with a contribution of refining chemistry of about $6 billion, thanks to the refinery utilization rate at 81%, which enabled us to generate high margins, as shown in 2023 in Europe. $7 billion generated by the integrated LNG sector and $2 billion by the integrated power sector. I will get back to that later on in my presentation on this performance. Both of the sectors are growth sectors for the company.
On the right-hand side, the, in yellow, you can see how this cash flow was used and broken down by shareholders' investments and the debt reduction. $16.8 billion for net investments, $16.5 billion for the return to shareholder as either dividends, $7.5 billion paid in 2023, $9 billion in share buybacks, including $1.5 billion related to the disposal of our Canadian assets. And finally, the balance was allocated to debt reduction, which enabled us to decrease our debt ratio. It was at 7% at the end of 2022. It's at 5% at the end of 2023. This $16.5 billion of return to shareholder represented in 2023, 46% of the funds from operations, so this is the ratio.
This ratio of return to shareholder is growing. It was at 37% in 2022. This ratio is, of course, in line with the return-to-shareholder policy approved by the board at over 40% of FFOs over the year. We published last April our income for the first quarter of 2024, and this income is in line with the bold objectives that we set for 2024. Hydrocarbons production reached 2.46 million barrels oil equivalent per day. They benefited from a growth of LNG production of 6% over the quarter, and in particular, the startups of two new fields, Mero-2 in Brazil and Akpo West in Nigeria. The company continued to confirm its leadership in terms of cost management, with some of the lowest operational costs below $5 per barrel.
LNG sales reached almost 11 million tons in the first quarter, a slight decrease because of a lower demand in Europe because of a soft winter and high stocks level. The growth renewable electricity generation capacity continued its growth, reaching 23.5 GW at the end of the quarter, thanks to the startups of new renewable new renewable assets in the US and in India. CO₂ emissions on our operated assets, Scope one and two, are at 8.2 million tons in CO₂ equivalent. This level integrates the effect of the acquisition of gas plants in Texas, finalized the first quarter.
Against this backdrop, marked by sustained oil prices and refining margins at a sustained level, but with declining gas prices, the company generated cash flow from operations of $2.82 billion, once again, in line with our goals. We made net investments at $3.6 billion, and we confirm our annual goal between $17 billion and $18 billion of investments over the year 2024, including $5 billion dedicated to the integrated power segment. With the payment of the second interim dividend in January for 2024 and the continued share buyback in the first quarter, the return to shareholder is at 43% in the first quarter, in line with our goal of 40% that I mentioned earlier. Let me get back to our investments. $16.8 billion of net investments in 2023.
This figure covers organic investments and the net amount of acquisition and disposals made over the year. As you can see on screen, we have the breakdown of the $16 billion investment by activity. A third of these investments were allocated to low-carbon energies, mainly renewable electricity, with the only integrated power sector accounting for $5 billion himself. A third of this investment was allocated to new oil and gas projects, with, in particular this year, significant investments in new LNG projects in Qatar, in the U.S., where we entered the project, Rio Grande LNG.
...And finally, the last third is there to maintain our oil and gas activity. As I said, this 16.8 figure integrates the net acquisition and disposals, and in 2023, we've been very active along those lines. We continued to be active when it comes to our portfolio, to seize the opportunities offered to us, and that will create value for you, the shareholders of this company, in the short and midterm. About $8 billion for disposals, among which the disposal of our assets in tar sands in Canada, and the sale of some part of our distribution network in Europe. And $6 billion allocated to acquisitions, including 20% in the field SARB and Umm Lulu. And then the entry into the LNG new project in Qatar and Rio Grande in Texas.
The acquisition of 100% of the securities of the company, Total Eren, a leader in renewable electricity production, and the acquisition of interest in one of the very first developers of renewables in Brazil, Casa dos Ventos. Focus on the two growing sectors of TotalEnergies. So, as you say, integrated LNG and integrated power. They generated about $10 billion in cash flow in 2023. As you know, since January 2023, TotalEnergies published separately the income of both sectors. They used to be gathered into one entity called Integrated Gas, Renewables and Power. But this decision to publish separately those results was welcomed by the financial community. It makes it easier to read this activity and our strategy of LNG growth and renewables.
So on this slide, you can see the performance of the two entities between 2021 and 2023, the year 2022 being exceptional, in line with the war in Ukraine. The volumes of sales of LNG have reached 44 million tons in 2023, thus representing 12% of the global market. The sector integrated LNG and the result, operational net adjusted result of $7.3 billion of cash flow generated by this activity. Sector with figures increasing significantly compared to 2021. The company is using fully its global portfolio of LNG in an environment that has remained favorable, as I said. Talking about power, integrated power, we continued with our growth with an FFO and a result that tripled compared to 2021, to reach $2 billion, $2.2 of FFO and $1.9 of income.
The production of power has reached 33 TWh, among which 19 in renewables, which means a growth of almost 60% between 2021 and 2023. At the end of 2023, the gross installed capacity of power generation of renewables reached 22 GW on the road to follow our aim of 35 GW at the end of 2025. The profitability on the employed equity used in the sector was close to 10%, 9.8, in line with the objective set. This really proves the relevance of the integrated model on the value chain of power. We had the opportunity to mention it last year, TotalEnergies has entered in a new era. Today, it is a company that is more profitable, more efficient than it was in the past.
The rotation of our portfolio, the selectivity, discipline of investments in oil, gas assets at low costs and low emissions, the mastering of our costs, have helped us lower our break-even organic point by less than $25 per barrel. We divided it by four in years' time, when talking about break-even point, and our financial situation has never been so robust. TotalEnergies is largely this without any debts, as testifies this debt ratio by 5%, of 5% at the end of 2023. This situation makes the company obviously stronger, more resilient, to maintain a strong cash generation and follow this attractive well policy to for shareholders, return to shareholders. The dividend is an element that is key to our return to shareholders.
The dividend, well, the quarterly of $0.66 in 2019, 2020, has been maintained during the COVID crisis. We increased it starting in 2022, with a growth that reached 20% during 2024. On buybacks, we also are holding the road, and since the second quarter in 2022, we are repurchasing $2 billion of shares each quarter, excluding the fourth quarter, where we went up to $3 billion to give back to our shareholders part of the disposals of our Canadian assets. Thus, in 2023, we purchased almost 6% of our capital. In 2024, we are following the same pace with a buyback of $2 billion of shares per quarter. These buybacks have mechanically increased the result of the share associated to the structural growth of cash flow.
... It represents the engine for future increases of dividends per action. In this context, the Board of Directors has suggested an increase of the dividend in 2023 for of 7%. I will conclude my presentation of the 2023 results with a comparison of TotalEnergies with the four other majors, the two European ones, Shell and BP, and the other American majors, Chevron and Exxon. For the second consecutive year, and this is the graph you see on the left side, TotalEnergies has had the best profitability amongst the majors. It has remained, in 2023, the most profitable of the five majors, with a profitability on average capital employees of 19%.
We have in our portfolio 12 years of life of reserve, proven reserves at the end of 2023, which places us at the second rank of majors, testifying of our success in exploration, our developments and our resources, our selective portfolio, and more generally, of the concepts of our strategy in the last years. In terms of societal and environmental responsibility, TotalEnergies has had the best marking in the listing Sustainalytics amongst the majors, testifying that it is possible to be a leader in energy transition and at the same time being the most profitable amongst them. And finally, as you see, the return to shareholders over five years, 13%, is at the level of the American majors and far ahead of the TSR for the European ones.
This performance, I believe, testifies and is the fruit of your ability to execute the multi-energy strategy in a constant manner to design a rich portfolio for opportunities, maintain the dividends, through the cycles and crises, especially through the COVID crisis, when other majors decided to cut down on the dividends, and more recently, increase the redistribution or return to shareholders. In to summarize, in 2023, we were able to prove once again the relevance of our multi-energy model and the quality of our global portfolio. TotalEnergies is now starting 2024 stronger than ever for the centennial. I thank you.
Merci, merci, Jean-Pierre.
Thank you very much, Jean-Pierre. I will now yield the floor to Laurent Vitse from the Ernst & Young firm. He will present on behalf of his firm, the reports drawn up by our statutory auditors.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and CEO. Dear shareholders, on behalf of the Board of Statutory Auditors, Ernst & Young firm, and PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit, I suggest that I present our reports on last fiscal year. This report is at your disposal as part of the documents that you already have, and they're shown here on screen. We have the report on the consolidated financial statements and financial statements, the reports on the related party agreements, and the report on capital operations. I suggest that, in accordance with, the tradition of this meeting, to present the reports on the consolidated financial statements, and of course, our due diligence made it compulsory for us to take into account the specificities of your, company. And we also followed, the professional and accounting standards to make sure there were no anomalies.
Under resolution number one, our report on the financial statements of your company have been prepared according to French accounting principle, can be found on page 588 - 591 of the universal registration document. We have certified these financial statements without qualification. The key audit matter is the evaluation of the different debts and investments. We haven't made any comment as to the management report and the Board of Directors report on corporate governance. Under resolution two, our report can be found pages 416- 420 of the universal registration document. We have given an qualified opinion on these financial statements. Our audit takes into account the specificities of your business lines in terms of activity, organization, accounting rules under IFRS, as adopted in the EU, and internal control procedures.
The audit committee and the board have been regularly informed of the progress of our work. We presented in our report the three key audit matters related to the impact of climate change and the energy transition on the financial statements, the assessment of the impairment of noncurrent assets of the sectors exploration, production and integrated LNG, and finally, the impact of the estimated proved and proved developed hydrocarbon reserves on the depreciation of those both sectors, exploration and production, and integrated power. Under resolution number five, our report on related party agreements can be found on page 272 of the Universal Registration Document. It states that there is no new agreement that should be subjected to your approval. On top of that-...
We also have the Alliance Education United Way that had been approved by you in the previous fiscal years, continued in 2023. Then in connection with resolution 17-23 of this meeting, we drew up a report on capital operations. We did not make any comment as to the conditions and information that can be found on the board report. Finally, as it is customary, we can draw up supplementary reports to finalize those capital operations made by your board. Dear shareholders, this was a summary of our different reports on the fiscal year 2023. Thank you for your attention.
Well,
I thank the auditors for their presence today, because they're present among us, and I'm gonna give the floor now to our Lead Director, Jacques Aschenbroich, to talk about the governance of the company and the works of our board.
Thank you, Patrick. Dear shareholders, hello. I'm delighted to be able to speak to you today in this year 2024, which marks, as we said, the 100th anniversary of the company. Last year, I spoke before you for the first time because I was going to succeed to Marie-Christine Coisne-Roquette as lead Director of your company. I would like to thank you and Patrick Pouyanné, its President, and the member of the council, for entrusting me with this demanding and essential mission, which I have the privilege to occupy for a year already. Before presenting to you the work of the Board of Directors in 2023, I would like to briefly remind you of my missions as lead Director.
Since 2015, the internal regulations of the board has been modified and plans the appointment of a lead Director by the Board of Directors in the event of an accumulation of the functions of Chairman of the Board and of Directors and Chief Executive Officer, in order to ensure a balance of power within it. As lead Director, my role is to guarantee the proper functioning of governance within your board. In this capacity, I chair the Governance and Ethics Committee, as well as at least one annual meeting of all Directors external to the company. This meeting is, of course, held without the presence of the Chairman and CEO, and provides an opportunity to take stock on the functioning of the board and the progress of the company. I also manage the process of evaluating the functioning of the...
or assessing the functioning of the Board of Directors. I also participate in relations with the company's shareholders, especially on corporate governance issues, as I will have the opportunity to return to in my presentation. Finally, I would like to remind you that the lead Director contributes to the agenda of the board meetings, that he can request the convening of the board at any time and as often as the interests of the company require, and that he or she is the preferred contact for Directors for the prevention of conflicts of interest. It is with a great pleasure that I will now present to you the actions of the Board of Directors, which guided the good governance of your company during the year 2023.
In 2023, your Board of Directors and its four specialized committees, audit, governance and ethics, remuneration, strategy, and social responsibility committees, were particularly mobilized in order to support the transition of TotalEnergies into an integrated multi-energy company. Your Board of Directors met nine times, and the committees held 18 working sessions with an average of 99% attendance rate. This participation rate is exemplary as a model, and it shows, it demonstrates once again, the full involvement of the company's Directors and contributes directly to the balance of powers of your company. As every year, we also held a meeting of Directors not holding executive or salaried positions, which I chaired as lead Director, as I mentioned in my introduction.
The implementation of the transition strategy, decided by the Board of Directors and supported without reservations by its Directors, makes of TotalEnergies the company that is most committed to the energy transition amongst, by the majors. By developing, in a determined and structured manner, an integrated power activity that reaches now levels of profitability that are very encouraging. In this context, communication efforts must be further developed so that the perception of the fundamental work undertaken by the company is improved, and this energy transition is fully recognized by our stakeholders. I now come to the composition of your council, council. As you know, your company is operating in a complex environment, changing also, and must support three major challenges: the necessity to build a new carbon-free energy system while providing affordable energy and meeting security of supply requirements...
Your company also operates in a very international context, with operations in around 120 countries and nearly 170 nationalities represented among its employees. In this context, TotalEnergies can count on a board of Directors rich in complementary profiles and expertise, thanks to the diversity of its 14 Directors. At the end of this meeting, and subject to your approval of the approved resolutions, your board will in fact be made up of six women and eight men. As in 2023, it will have an international majority, since no less than seven nationalities will be represented there. This wide diversity of nationalities and cultures is quite remarkable, and allows TotalEnergies to strengthen the match between the composition of the board and the geographical exposure of its activities. Also, more than two-thirds of your board has expertise in the management of large international companies.
The vast majority of your Directors also have recognized skills in the energy and industrial sectors. Finally, many of them have experience in the field of sustainable development and climate, having contributed directly to the decarbonization of the automotive industry, the mining sector, or even to the growth of renewable energies. The implementation of the transition strategy, in which your company has been engaged since 2020, also requires continuity in its governance and leadership. This is why, at its meeting of September 21, 2023, your Board of Directors unanimously decided to, without Patrick Pouyanné taking part in the voting, to renew his mandate. Indeed, for 10 years, Patrick Pouyanné has done excellent work to manage to and steer TotalEnergies in a complex environment, delivering extremely solid financial results and engaging the company in the energy transition more quickly and more resolutely than its peers.
The board unanimously is counting on his leadership and strategic vision in order to continue and pursue the transition of TotalEnergies with determination and constancy, based on two pillars: oil and gas on one side, electricity and renewables, or power and renewables, on the other. This medium and long-term value-creating vision and strategic stability constitute an asset and a differentiating factor for TotalEnergies compared to its peers. This renewal of Patrick Pouyanné's responsibilities is part of the pursuit of the uniqueness of the functions of Chairman and Managing Director. The board has judged that this method of exercising the management of the company is best suited to face the challenges and specificities of the energy sector, which is facing major transformations.
This context indeed requires an agility of movement that the unity of command strengthens by giving the Chairman and CEO a strength of action and increased representativeness of the company in its strategic negotiations with the states and partners of the company. The unity of management power is also part of a context of balance of powers, especially well supervised by the governance of the company, with the Lead Director having extensive powers, as I have reminded you at... And the Board of Directors judged that it fully fulfilled its role. I thank them for that.
It is for this reason that the Board of Directors unanimously voted at the same meeting on September 21, 2023, for the renewal of my mandate, simultaneously with that of Patrick Pouyanné's, because it is a couple of the Lead Director and its President that ensure the good governance of your company. Your Board of Directors has taken note of a consultative resolution submitted by a coalition representing 0.9% of the capital of your company. Resolution aiming at inviting the Board of Directors of your company to decide on the establishment of separate governance between the Chairman and the Managing Director or CEO. As you know, the respective powers of the general meeting, the Board of Directors, and the general management are precisely organized by law.
In accordance with the principle of specialty of corporate bodies, the general meeting cannot deprive the Board of Directors of its legal powers, in particular, in the choice between unified and dissociated mode of the functions of President and General Director. Taking into account, moreover, the work achieved by Patrick Pouyanné for 10 years in the energy transition for TotalEnergies and the balance and well-supervised governance that I described previously, the Board of Directors unanimously decided without excluding Mr. Pouyanné's vote during its meeting on April 24, which I chaired, not to include this consultative resolution on the agenda of this general meeting. The Nanterre Commercial Court, seized in summary proceedings by some of the submitters of the resolution, yesterday validated on the merits, the analysis of the French legal framework and the position of your board.
Furthermore, this year, the mandate of Glenn Hubbard is also proposed to your vote for a new period of three years. I would like to emphasize that the renewal of Glenn's mandate, a renowned American economist, would also allow the board to continue to benefit from his knowledge of American markets. I can attest to this. It is a very significant asset and much appreciated, given the importance of the capital invested in this country, and the growing share of the North American shareholder base of the company. Finally, the Board of Directors decided to offer the general meeting the appointment of a new independent Director, Ms. Marie-Ange Debon, for a period of three years in order to replace Ms. Anne-Marie Idrac, for whose term of office ends after 12 years at your board.
The Board of Directors would like to thank Anne-Marie Idrac for her exceptional contribution to the work of the board, particularly within the Governance and Ethics Committee, the Compensation Committee, and the Strategy and CSR Committee over the last 12 years. In order to support your company's transition strategy, the board wished to welcome a Director with extensive experience acquired in administration, and then in large international groups, particularly in the field of transport. Ms. Marie-Ange Debon will also be able to provide the council with her skills in financial, regulatory, and governance matters for large companies. Ms. Debon will introduce herself in a video, which will be broadcast in a few minutes. Let us now move to the highlights, which have marked the action of your board since the last general meeting.
First of all, the board, once again, has devoted a significant part of its work this year to the company's transition strategy and associated business models. During the year, the board has decided on the company's major projects. I would like to quote, in particular, the repurchase of the entire capital of Total Eren, the proposed acquisition of upstream gas assets in Malaysia, or again, the Kaminho development project in Angola, and finally, the disposal of tar sands activities in Canada. Then, the board has organized a strategic seminar for two days in September. On this occasion, the Directors or board members were able to discuss with Daniel Yergin, Vice Director of S&P Global, on the challenges of the energy transition in the USA and around the world. They also worked on the profitability levers of the integrated power sector and conducted a review of hydrogen technologies and costs.
In terms of relations with shareholders, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of... and the Lead Director held discussions ahead of the general meeting of May 26, 2023, with the representatives of the coalition of shareholders, who offered resolution A, rejected by 70% of the shareholders, votes cast during the general meeting. This dialogue continued after the general meeting, during the meeting of October 12, 2023. With this coalition, the Chairman and CEO, and the Lead Director listened to the arguments of the coalition and explained the motivations for the position expressed by the Board of Directors in its report on the resolutions presented at the General Assembly on the company's climate and sustainability ambition. As Lead Director, I reported on these discussions to the Board of Directors.
Finally, in 2023, your Directors were able to visit in groups, accompanied by a member of the Executive Committee, but without the presence of the CEO, the company sites in Congo, Qatar, Texas, and France. There, they met collaborators or employees, partners, local figures from the energy sector. I'm thinking, for example, of the visit at the technical center in Pau, the La Mède biorefinery, a gas liquefaction plant in Qatar, or an oil platform in Congo. These visits contributed in a very concrete way to the training of the Directors or board members and allowed them to deepen their knowledge of the specificities of the company, its challenges, and its professions, including the new professions. This year, new visits took place in Saudi Arabia, in France, and for some board members, some board members will soon have the opportunity to visit Uganda.
The dialogue with shareholders is a highlight of the lead Director's mission, or thus, I had a number of meetings and interviews this year with shareholders representing around 30% of the capital, both before the general meeting, but also in recent weeks, in order to explain the positions and recommendations of the board. I also managed relations with the voting agencies in liaison with the secretary of the board and the company's investor relations teams. I was thus able to answer their questions and gather their expectations. I remember four main themes from these meetings.... The first concerns the board itself, its composition, its functioning, its assessment or evaluation, and its work relating to the evolution of the compensation policy for your Chairman and CEO.
These discussions also allowed us to address the management of the balance of powers within the framework of the unique function of Chairman and CEO, and my role as Lead Director. Climate and the environment, of course, which are themes at the heart of our strategy and our shareholder dialogue, were the subject of extensive discussions. The shareholders met also wanted to know my point of view as Lead Director on the company's strategy and its investments. Finally, several other topics were discussed, notably those which may have given rise to certain controversies, such as the projects in Uganda and Mozambique. In conclusion, I can testify that your board members are present, active, and very involved in the work of the Board of Directors and the committees, in which they take part with exceptional regularity and a strong commitment.
The complementarity of their professional experiences and their skills are assets for the quality of the board's deliberation and for the good governance of your company. Also, rest assured that your board, your Directors remain resolutely mobilized in order to support the company in its transition strategy over the coming years, within the framework of a balanced and effective governance. I thank you for your attention. Ladies and gentlemen, hello, my name is Marie-Ange Debon. I have managed the Keolis company since 2020. Keolis is the first operator of automatic metros in the world, the first operator of tramways, a company that operates buses and coaches, serving local authorities in 13 countries. It is a company of 68,000 employees. If you choose me as a member of your board to represent TotalEnergies, I would bring my experience in three areas.
First of all, as a business leader at the head of groups and service and the industry with a large geographic footprint in very different countries. My experience as a board member, I am the board member of the listed company, Arkema, and this for six years. I have been for a dozen of years, until very recently, a board member of Technip Energies, which succeeded to Technip FMC. For these two companies, I chaired the audit committee, and I still chair the Arkema audit committee. Then third area of interest and experience for me, the field of the energy transition, the environmental transition, and fight against climate change. Subjects on which I have worked extensively at SUEZ, internationally and in France.
Energy recovery from waste, the circular economy, the topic of water, and of course, obviously at Keolis, where energy and greenhouse gas emission issues are major issues. If you choose me today as Director to join the Board of Directors of the TotalEnergies company, I would be proud and happy to work on the work of this Board of Directors for a company that is both major for our citizens, for our economies, and for future generations. Thank you very much for listening.
Before we move on to the next part, and I wanted to extend my warmest thanks to Mr. Aschenbroich for his commitment and for the couple that we are at the head of the company. Everything he said, I agree with. So thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, I am delighted to be with you here again. For the very first time, we are here at Tour Total, at the headquarters of our company. We've wished to organize this major event here in La Défense to prevent disruptions from occurring as it happened in the past few general meetings. So I would like to thank you for making the effort to coming here to La Défense. Once again, this general meeting is a highlight of our company's life.
This is a time to dialogue directly with our shareholders. I also applaud all those ones who are. I greet all those ones that are online with us. This year, you had the opportunity to share your expectations, your questions with us. Between the 10th and 20th of May, there was a platform for you to ask your questions. We gave the priority to the questions of the people who are here today, in this room and the other room. Your secretary of the meeting, Jean-Pierre Sbraire, will ask some of those questions on your behalf, and I will be delighted to answer them. Finally, I would like to greet the 1.6 million shareholders, individual, non-employee shareholders, that we have counted in Europe and in the US in 2023.
They've increased about 165,000 last year, and now account for 13.6% of the capital. The employee shareholders have also progressed. In 2023, TotalEnergies has become the number one employee shareholding company in Europe and reached over 8% of the capital, and I will have the opportunity to talk to you more about this. So in total, if we join individual shareholders and employee shareholders, that is about 20% of our capital owned by natural people. So that is remarkable because this shows how stable our company is. 2024 has been a very specific year for TotalEnergies, as you know. We are celebrating our 100th anniversary.
100 years is significant for a company, so I would like to start off by reminding you of our history and the lessons that we can draw from it. TotalEnergies was founded in 1924 in Iraq. It was called the French Company of Oil. It was founded to lead a national oil policy because the founders were aware during the First World War that they needed to secure the energy supply of France in hydrocarbons and not depend on non-French companies. 100 years later, this challenge is still topical and a constant responsibility for us, supplying our clients with the energy they need. TotalEnergies grew up over the century. Our history, as this film showed it, is merging with that of the 20th century. Its economic, social, geopolitical evolutions, collective momentum, and more serious times have marked this history.
Its development also supported the aspirations of a company looking for progress, comfort. Energy is life. Human beings has fought, innovated, in order to have access to the most affordable costs. Safety, affordable cost, sustainable development, this is at the core of an energy strategy, and that is a constant, pursuit for humanity. For 100 years, TotalEnergies employees kept pushing boundaries to adapt to the market evolutions, meeting the expectations of their clients, and, surpass technological, challenges. As you saw in this short film, the history of TotalEnergies is the history of men and women, pioneers to whom we wanted to pay tribute by signing our 100th anniversary, pioneers for 100 years. Yeah, our ancestors were pioneers. They discovered oil in Iraq in 1927 in Baba Gurgur.
They built a pipeline, about 2,000 kilometers in 1934 from Iraq to the Mediterranean Sea. They built two refineries in 1933. 1935, they launched the largest tanker in the world, the Emile Miguet, in 1937. All this in less than 10 years. I would like to pay tribute to these hundreds of thousands of pioneers, and these are the employees of our company from today and from the past. I would like to pay tribute to the successive Presidents of our company. There were nine of them in 100 years. They all had their strategic vision at every step of its development, Ernest Mercier and the other founders, Jules Mény, Victor de Metz, who died while being deported. René Granier de Lillac, François Xavier Ortoli, Serge Tchuruk.
I also wanted to mention Pierre Guillaumat, one of the main Elf founders, and to whom the French industry owes so much, and Baron Wolters, who rebuilt Petrofina after the Second World War. Then, Thierry Desmarest, our seventh CEO, believed that we had to change the dimension of our company to pursue our growth. With the support of Albert Frère, a shareholder of Petrofina, he launched successive merging operations between Total and Petrofina and Elf Aquitaine, and then he made it part of the circle of the major international majors. I would like to pay tribute to Thierry Desmarest, who unfortunately left us at the beginning of this year. Without us, our company wouldn't be the giant of energy that it has become today. At the head of Total for over 20 years, Thierry was a visionary.
He marked the history of the French industry. He will forever, to me and to you, one of the, the best, French bosses. Then Christophe de Margerie succeeded to him. He was our eighth CEO. He wanted to fuel dialogue with all stakeholders because he loved people, and he gave a new dimension to our company and its development. I firmly believe that Thierry Desmarest and Christophe de Margerie would have been particularly proud to celebrate alongside us, the 100th anniversary of TotalEnergies, and I would like you to pay tribute to them in their memory. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our history has mostly created common value. They've gathered, embarked the teams since 1924. They guide us on our daily task to rise to the challenges that we face and to build our future together.
These values, you know them. Safety, respect for others, the taste for performance, the strength of solidarity, and the pioneer spirit. Pioneer, that is what TotalEnergies has been at the very outset of its history, because this is our way of being. The pioneering spirit is our value. It enabled us to dare, and with this pioneering spirit, we decided in 2020 to go through this energy transition. We set the ambition to aim carbon neutrality along with the society and transform TotalEnergies as an integrated multi-energy company. So with oil, gas, and power. And to reach such bold goals, your company is relying on a clear strategy, and that is. My second point now. The year 2023 has been a successful year for your company against a less favorable economic backdrop than in 2022.
But your company demonstrate how relevant our multi-energy strategy is. We've been, for the second consecutive year, the most favorable, company with a return on capital employed of 19%. So it shows how robust our economic model is. This performance is the fruit of an anchor strategy. It is based on two pillars: hydrocarbons and power. It is an energy that is at the core of decarbonizing and the transition. Our first pillar, oil and gas. The facts are clear. The demand in oil keeps increasing and will continue to do so because the International Energy Agency foresees a demand of 105.7 million barrels per day for 2028, against 102.1 million barrels per day in 2023. This is explained by the growth of the global population, mainly in the Global South.
Of course, they want a better standard of living, and of course, we need more energy. Dear shareholders, someone blame us for developing new oil projects sometimes, and they deem that we should stop developing new oil resources. Let me remind you that oil fields naturally decline every year by 4%. So the issue is not to know when the oil demand will start decreasing, but when it will start decreasing more than 4% by year. So at this stage, the demand in oil continues to grow as the global population. Of course, we decouple the growth in the demand for oil and economic growth, but growth remains here.
Since we haven't reached this degrowth of over 4% per year, if we do not want the prices of oil reach levels that are too high, that are unbearable for developed and emerging countries' populations, as we've been seeing it in the past few years, it is needed that the oil industry continues to explore new production fields and discover new resources to fight against this natural decline. Against this backdrop, we need to continue to produce and invest in oil and gas to fight against this natural decline of our fields and meet this demand. That is, to ensure the supply and energy security of our clients, and as part of our transition model, we also want to keep making profit to invest in low carbon energies.
But of course, we produce and invest in hydrocarbons in the most responsible way by targeting our projects, and we focus on low breakeven point projects, less than $30 a barrel, and by reducing gas greenhouse gases emissions, because every new project needs to show a greenhouse gas intensity lower than the average of our portfolio. Retargeting recentering our portfolio, as we've been doing in the past 10 years, on assets with low cost and low emissions, is bearing its fruits. In terms of profitability, the breakeven point before dividend was in 2023, at less than $23 per barrel. This is low. Remember, in 2020... In 2014, this breakeven point was close to $100 per barrel. So every additional dollar per barrel has generates additional income.
Our production costs are close to $5 per barrel and are the lowest among our peers. This strategy to produce at low cost, this investment discipline, enable us to benefit, fully benefit from current prices, but also ensure the resilience of our portfolio on the long run, while contributing directly to the resilience of something that is dear to you, your dividend. And as Jean-Pierre said, we haven't cut it for over 40 years, contrary to some of our European competitors. This strategy became a reality in 2023 and at the beginning of 2024, with new projects. For example, the Mero field in Brazil, the gas Block 10 in Oman, the new assets in fields of production in Sarb, in the Emirates, and Ratawi, as part of the multi-energy project, gas, solar, oil, that we launched in 2023 in Iraq.
The exit of tar sands in Canada that we did, and we send some of the profits towards the shareholders, are part of this strategy, because tar sands were high cost and high emissions projects. We have a wealth of projects in our portfolio, and we will continue to produce, to invest in, gas and oil fields, and the growth that we will have will be driven from LNG, liquefied natural gas, thanks to a wealth of project in our portfolio, as Jean-Pierre said, in the US, in Qatar, in Oman. We assume this growth in gas, because gas has two main assets as part of this energy transition. First, gas is a flexible way to produce electricity, and it makes sure that we can compensate for the intermittency of renewables.
Of course, renewables will be at the core of the transition, but thanks to the gas, we can supply electricity to our clients when there's no wind, no sun, because our clients want electricity 24/7... Second, advantage of gas, a relative one, okay, this is a fossil fuel, so one day we'll have to move on and exit gas as well. It is a good alternative for many countries, contrary to coal, to produce electricity. A gas plant emits twice as less CO2 emissions than a coal plant. So we have assessed the situation, and our sales in LNG in 2023 contributed to avoid about 70 million tons of CO2 globally, because some countries substitute coal with LNG. To be successful in this energy transition and reach carbon neutrality, we need to develop our activity in low-carbon energies.
This is the goal that we set ourselves by developing the second pillar of our strategy. It is mainly oriented towards power, energy at the core of the transition, but it is also being developed with other molecules based on biomass or other energies like hydrogen. Dear shareholders, we continue to step up our investments in energy transition. The figures are here, $2 billion in 2020, over $3 billion in 2021, $4 billion in 2022, $5 billion in 2023, just like in 2024. We want to maintain this level of investment in the next 10 years. In France, we're investing $1.2 billion in renewables, low carbon energies, decarbonizing our activity three times more as in 2020.
We are the only company that invests as much in renewables in France, and this month, in May 2024, we are reaching 2 GW of renewable capacities of production in France. These considerable investments show how engaged your company is in the building of tomorrow's energy system, based on electricity, but also on renewable capacity, but also on low carbon molecules and biofuels, biogas, hydrogen. Some highlights of 2023. We have acquired 100% of Total Eren after five years of strategic, fruitful partnership in Scotland. We put in service Seag reen, our largest offshore wind project in Germany. We managed to get maritime concessions to develop two wind farms offshore, with a total capacity of 3 GW, and that is the equivalent of the consumption of 3 million households.
In Texas, we acquired three gas plants, accounting for 1.5 GW of capacity of power generation, coupled with a portfolio of renewable assets of 4 GW that we are building, and our storage capacity per batteries of 300 MW. So in Texas, we can now meet the expectations of our clients that want to have a low-carbon electricity 24/7. We can also face the exponential demand in power for data centers required to develop the digital aspect and artificial intelligence. But we cannot stop here. Our portfolio of renewable power projects, we have onshore, offshore, power, solar power. It accounts for over 85 GW, including 24 already installed.
It positions us as the solar and wind developers as the most important in the world, excluding China, and we will reach our goal of 35 GW of capacity - growth capacities in 2025. As you can see, some of our competitors have scaled down their ambitions because of the prices of hydrocarbons that were rising, and some are blaming us of greenwashing, but we remain constant, persistent, and resolutely committed towards the building of our energy system of tomorrow by investing more in such new business sectors.
For this ambition to be sustainable, it needs to be profitable. This is why we must be disciplined in the choices of projects we want to develop and execute. We want deeply to duplicate the successes of our integrated model in oil and gas that makes of us, once again, the most profitable major today in the value chain, in the power value chain. This is why Jean-Pierre Sbraire reminded us that we decided to publish in 2023, rather than what we had anticipated, the results of the integrated power segment that has already generated, whereas we launched it really in 2023. A few years later, more than $2.2 billion cash flow in 2023, and reached 20% of profitability of its capitals employed.
You can see that this activity can help be profitable in oil and gas, and also develop in these renewable energies. Thus, those say, even people saying that it isn't, those they say... This is why in 2028, generating cash from these low-carbon activities, integrated power, meaning revenues higher than EUR 4 billion, and investments with a profitability of 12%. Thus, this is the aim. With these new activities, we want them to be part of the growth of our dividends. Dear shareholders, as you know, your company has been committed since 2020 to an ambitious strategy of balanced transformation, reconciling profitable growth and sustainable development, and we take part actively to the energy transition. We can also be proud to say that our efforts, in terms of our own emissions, continues to bear its fruit.
These progress are described in the Sustainability and Climate 2024 Progress Report, which is the object of a consultative resolution in this meeting. Only to quote a few figures, in 2023, the emissions in all of our operated sites decreased by 24%, and it's even 34% if we consider that the operated sites of production, refining, liquefaction, and gas, oil and gas. These excellent results are due to the hard and determined work of all of our employees, and comforts our position to an objective to reach 40% of reduction of our emission scope one and two operated net at the by 2030 in our 2050 report.
So we have Marsa LNG project in Oman, which will help us produce 1 million tons of liquefied natural gas per year, mainly for maritime transport and contributing to its decarbonation, to reduce our carbon footprint and have less greenhouse gas emissions. To reduce the carbon footprint of the plant, we decided to electrify it fully. So we want to liquefy gas, and naturally, this electric power will come from a solar plant, a 300 MW, which will supply all of the needs of the plant. Thus, Total is a pioneer in this field, where in carbon, average carbon, in the density of plants of the LNG produced in the world, are 35 kilos per barrel. At Marsa, it will be inferior to 3 kilos per barrel, thus divided by 10, the emissions of the LNG plant.
We show we can make liquefied gas differently by reducing very clearly the emissions. Of course, gas, natural gas, well, we must mention methane, and when we commit and when we have a strategy of growth in gas, we must also have a very strong ambition to reduce methane emissions. And this is even more important because emissions of methane are stronger, and we want to act directly. We have the lowest emissions in oil and gas, but we, our ambitions is to reach the zero. We have reduced by 47% between 2020 and 2023, and we will reach our -50% in 2025, with a year ahead, and our objective is of -80% by 2030.
If the management of scope one and two, in terms of these methane emissions, is, of course, of our direct responsibility, we can act upon them, but we must also contribute actively to the decarbonation of what we call Scope three, meaning Scope one and two of our clients. The way to do so is to implement our strategy, since we have the ambition to decrease by 25% the carbon intensity over the life cycle of the products we sell. This means that we are selling different energy products to our clients, and the average content of the energy products that we will sell in, will be 25 lower in terms of carbon than those we sold in 2015. This is possible, of course, because we are developing an offer that is more and more decarbonated, especially in power.
So this is a concrete contribution that we can provide our clients by supplying a more and more decarbonating energy. In 2023, namely, with the growth of sales in renewable energy, the content, the carbon content of energy sold to our clients will see a decline of 13% compared to 2015, thus placing us as leaders in decarbonation of our energy mix. You can see, dear shareholders, that the climate is at the heart of our preoccupation or concerns and at the heart of our strategy. This is important for our credibility, and this is why this Board of Directors is submitting, once again, this resolution to you in order for you to appreciate the progress achieved by the company.
I confirm, ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, I hope you don't doubt that we will hold with this well-balanced strategy for TotalEnergies, proving day- after- day that we are a profitable company, the most profitable, by decreasing our emissions, by massively investing in the future energies, and by sharing the value creating in a fair way and responsible way with all of our stakeholders, whether our employees, clients, our host countries, and you, dear shareholders. This is the last point that of the allocation I wanted to tackle now, the sharing of our value at TotalEnergies. As you know, we are present in 120 countries where we create value. This added value, we consider it as our societal responsibility, and we want to do it in the most transparent way.
In 2023, it represented more than $67 billion of added value. Of course, first, we pay taxes, significant taxes in the country where we have activities and when we make profit. It's an important contribution that is direct to the economic development in our host countries. In 2023, we paid more than $25 billion for taxes, an average of 38%. In France, as you know, we don't produce petrol or gas, oil or gas, but if we consider the taxes we pay and social payments with all of our employees, it's a contribution of more than EUR 2 billion to public finance. Then we also share our profits, and this is quite obvious with our employees, more than 100,000 employees in the world, of which 35,000 in France. It is dear to us for them to be part of-...
this value because they are managing it. So with we, we are paying more than $9 billion of charges, social charges in 2023. In France, our employees represent 14,000 employees, also benefited from an increase, a salary increase of 5%, a bonus between EUR 2,000 and EUR 4,000, and employee shareholding more than $9,000 per employee in average. In this inflationist context, we also took a number of initiatives in favor to help our employees. In 2023, we innovated for the ecology transition. They can now benefit from an envelope of EUR 2,000 for their own consumption of energy or mobility in their daily lives. And finally, this is also a way to share value for our shareholders.
It is the best way to associate employees to the performance of the company, to strengthen their feeling of belonging, to align their interests with the ones of the company. As I said, TotalEnergies has become the first European company of capital held by the employees, and they just invested in the last month, more than EUR 5,000 million. It is a true success and a great pride for us because these figures show how our employees are attached to their company, the TotalEnergies families. They trust what we are doing, the strategy we follow. Employee shareholding has gone up from 5%-8%, whereas the value of the company has increased by 66% during the same period.
To celebrate their faithfulness during the centennial, we have made the decision, because we're only a hundred years once, to attribute 100 TotalEnergies shares to each of our 100,000 employees everywhere in the world, and to increase the sharing of our value. The increase of capital reserve to employees in 2024 planned a discount of 30% on the price of the share. Quite exceptional. Our employees massively answered to this call and invested this year more than almost EUR 500 million in the company, an increase of 35% compared to the previous year. We are sharing finally, and thanks to them, a great thanks once again. They're at the heart of the company. They are creating the value. It is normal to share it with them. Of course, I talked about the employees, but we have clients.
They are also essential to our functioning. We welcome each day 8,000 customers in our service stations in 70 countries. We supply gas and power to almost 9 million clients every day, and we, of course, want, as a responsible company, to act for our clients, be solidary in a context where energy prices remain high. This is why your company has decided to pursue and prolong some of these key schemes in favor of purchasing power. I'm thinking of the threshold of EUR 1.99 per liter for diesel in all of our 3,400 service stations in France. I also think of the scheme, Bonus Conso, for our power clients, that we renewed during winter 2023-2024, that enables them to have discounts for their energy. Finally, of course, the sharing of value concerns you, ladies and gentlemen, shareholders.
I would like to say in this framework, I'd like to come back to something that is quite topical. This year, we have started thinking about the TotalEnergies share. As I said in a listing, we want to set everything back in place. There is no question to leave France. TotalEnergies will keep its headquarters in France, its listing in France. Our attachment to France is very real, as you can see, and I have no need to justify. We see still two phenomena, a lesser valuation of European markets compared to American market, a decrease of our French and European shareholding to the benefit of the North American shareholding.
Is it thus legitimate that your board questions the ways to try to correct this situation and offer American investor the same level of investment that we offer to our French shareholders or European shareholders as the certificates or ADRs and increase the liquidity? This could support the reevaluation also. Concretely, what we are studying, and this is just a study, it is more a technical study today to know how we can offer these shares to American investors by keeping shares on Euronext in Paris, London, Brussels, where they are listed today. And once again, why? Because simply, most of our shareholders are European. What we are trying to do is a cross-listing, transatlantic for TotalEnergies.
I would like to recall that we are already listed in Wall Street via ADR, and we will remain submitted to the same rules if we are able to list TotalEnergies, because we will be considered as what we say, a foreign issuer. We will keep this status since we will keep our headquarters outside of the USA, thus, no additional constraints. These are the elements that are underlying this reflection. Of course, we will not.
... miss out on informing you from the further development, and your board will bear in mind, of course, being the guardian of your French and European interests, all of our shareholders here in Europe and in the US. As we talk about sharing, value, Jean-Pierre Sbraire recalled that TotalEnergies is in good financial health with low debt, and we can ramp up the energy strategy for transition and offer, an attractive policy to return, of return to shareholders. So the global return is at 10%, so higher amongst our peer, and shows the strong attractivity of our share. It is in this context that the board set a new allocation of cash flow for the coming years, announced in last September 2023, to allocate more than 40% of cash flow to shareholders, where we were historically back at 35%-40% previously.
This return to shareholders represents 46% of cash flow of our company, thus $16.5 billion, composed partly of dividends, EUR 3.01 per share, with an increase of 7.1% compared to the previous year, and repurchasing, as, Jean-Pierre explained. Your Board of Directors has recently, well, comforted with the good results and those of the beginning of 2024, confirmed an increase of 7% compared to the first, dividends of the 2024 for the year.
I am delighted that these announcements have been, welcomed by the market, because the excellent TotalEnergies, share performance is at its highest level ever. Dear shareholders, to conclude, I think I can tell you that we are committed more than ever in building tomorrow's energy system.
Decarbonized electricity power and gas will have a more and more share, a larger and larger share, while continuing to supply energies that the world needs today. We're determined to pursue this transition strategy, a clear and balanced one. We bear this responsibility, we claim it, and we are transparent. More energies, fewer emissions for the benefit of our employees, our clients, and yours, dear shareholders. For 10 years, I've been at the head of TotalEnergies, and I've been committed to the development of this beautiful company, but I firmly believe that TotalEnergies is in a good position to meet the energy transition challenges. With your support, dear shareholders, and the support of all of our employees, I vow that TotalEnergies is there, just like it was throughout the past 100 years.
It is source of progress, innovation at the service of a global population growing. It will be new, a new evidence of our pioneering spirit. Thank you for your attention. I think we can now move on to a sequence that I forgot earlier, but thank you, for the secretary to be vigilant. We have a recorded sequence by Mark Cutifani, who will tell you about the resolutions on compensation of corporate officers and a CEO.
My name is Mark Cutifani, and I have the honor of chairing the Compensation Committee, working alongside Jacques Aschenbroich, Lead Independent Director, Anne-Marie Idrac, Independent Director, and Angel Pobo as the employee representative. Today, on behalf of the Board of Directors, I'm very pleased to present a summary of the company 2023 compensation policies, the 2024 compensation policy for your board, and the compensation policy for the new term of office of the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. As I wrote in a letter published in our Universal Registration Document, the Compensation Committee met three times in 2023 to review market developments and the company's performance to ensure that current practices remain sufficiently competitive and are based on a clear alignment between compensation and performance. Regarding the compensation for your Directors, two resolutions are submitted for your approval.
The resolution number 10, on the left-hand side of the screen, concerns the approval of information relating to the 2023 compensation for Directors. This amount is set for each Director on the basis of his or her actual attendance at each board of committee meeting. The maximum annual compensation package for Directors as a collective was set by the shareholders meeting last year at EUR 1,950,000. Given the number of board and committee meetings held during fiscal year 2023, the amount of compensation determined for each Director on the basis of the above allocation rules was set at EUR 1,853,000. That is an amount below the cap set by the shareholders meeting in 2023.
The resolution number 11, on the right-hand side of the screen, submits for your approval the 2024 compensation policy for the Directors. This policy, as set by the shareholders meeting in 2023, remains unchanged, with a maximum annual amount of EUR 1,950,000. Let's now turn to the 2023 compensation for your Chairman and CEO, which is composed of fixed compensation, variable compensation, and performance shares. In 2023, the fixed compensation component amounted to EUR 1,550,000, as voted during the last shareholders meeting. The variable compensation, conditional on the approval of the resolution number 12, amounted to EUR 2,741,950.
That is 176.9% of the annual fixed compensation out of a maximum of 180%, awarded after strict compliance of the results of the economic parameters and the evaluation of the CEO's personal contribution. Finally, as approved previously by the shareholders' meeting, 110,000 performance shares have been granted to the CEO, subject to performance conditions. The final allocation of these shares will only take place in 2026, based on the rate of achievement of performance conditions. I will now present the 2024 compensation for the Chairman and CEO, which is set out in resolution number 13, submitted today for your approval. In the run-up to the Chairman and CEO's new term of office, two external specialist firms carried out an in-depth review of the French panel of 26 CAC 40 companies previously used.
The review of the French panel, which has remained unchanged since 2017, showed a mismatch between TotalEnergies' profile and that of some of the companies on the historical panel of the 26 CAC 40 companies, particularly in terms of business scope and market capitalization. To select a new panel, whose composition is detailed in the report, the Compensation Committee took into account the global presence of the companies, their market capitalization, the private or public nature of the shareholding, and the existence of long-term incentive compensation.
The Compensation Committee has recommended to the Board of Directors for the duration of the new term of office, the compensation policy for the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, which will be submitted for shareholder approval at the general meeting of the 24th of May, 2024, in resolution number 13, that is to say, on pay ex-ante, the main elements of which are as follows: base salary will be maintained at its current level of EUR 1.55 million, despite inflation. The base salary had remained unchanged from 2016 to 2022, and was increased from EUR 1.4 million to EUR 1.55 million on the first of January, 2022. It will therefore remain unchanged for five years from 2022 to 2026.
Maintenance of the structure and amount of the annual variable portion, bearing in mind that since 2023, the outperformance of certain financial criteria is no longer considered in determining the overall rate of achievement of the financial criteria. With the amount of other compensation components remaining unchanged, an evolution in the number of performance shares to be allocated, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer will be from 110,000 to 140,000 shares per year for the years 2024, 2025, and 2026. In view of the renewal of the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Directorship, as unanimously proposed by the Board of Directors to the annual general meeting, this level of performance share allocation is in line with those applied by companies with comparable scope and market capitalizations.
In determining this level of compensation, in addition to examining the compensation paid by comparable companies, the Board of Directors took into consideration the wish to pursue the company transition strategy announced in 2020, and the experience and proven ability of the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer to implement same. For 10 years, Patrick Pouyanné has done extraordinary work in steering TotalEnergies in a complex environment, delivering outstanding financial results and engaging the company in the energy transition more quickly and effectively than its peers. The Board of Directors unanimously looks forward to his continued leadership and his strategic vision to continue TotalEnergies transition with determination and consistency, relying on two pillars: oil and gas, on the one hand, and electricity and renewables on the other.
This vision, which creates value in the medium and long term, and this strategic stability, are an asset and a differentiating factor for TotalEnergies compared with its peers. We believe shareholders will align with our recommendations to strengthen the long-term incentive component of the compensation paid to the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. On behalf of the Compensation Committee, I would like to thank you for your feedback and support and for your time and attention.
... Merci, Mark.
Thank you very much, Mark, for this very accurate and clear presentation. Let's now move on to. I'm checking with the secretary. If I make another mistake, it's great that you're here. So this is the Q&A session time. We'll spend an hour on this session. I think that we are here today about 750 people, here in this room and the other room, so that is a great participation. There are mics in both rooms, four in this auditorium, and mics number five and six in the other room. We will try to make sure we have the connection on the other room. It should be on my screen, but I can't see it. Yes, I can see people in the other room now.
So I will now yield the floor to mic number two in the auditorium, because the mic is already there. Mr. Chairman, well done. Thank you for your past performance. In your speech, you've mentioned the threshold at EUR 1.99 per liter of diesel and gasoline. Could you please elaborate on the impact of such a measure on the volumes and the margins? Thank you. Listen, what's clear, it depends on the price of oil and fuel. In France right now, there are about 1,500 stations on which this measure has an impact. It has an impact on high roads. Drivers usually take oil, depending on what's shown on their dashboard, not depending on the price. So this is great support. It's not only on the highways, it's also in rural areas.
So this measure benefits to different, categories of drivers. It doesn't have a strong impact on market shares. Sometimes during the year, some drivers will go to TotalEnergies stations, it depends on their position, and deliberately. But we are prolonging this measure because when we are carrying out surveys, it is a measure that is satisfied by our company's clients, and it contributes to our reputation in territories, and it shows that the company is close to its clients. So this measure is implemented when the oil barrel is at $90. It depends on the refining margins, but as I said, the income of the company benefit also from the oil price. So this is an exceptional measure. I said it, we are the only oil company in the world inventing such a measure.
It is done nowhere else, nowhere elsewhere, and this is a solidarity measure that is taken by TotalEnergies for its clients. Question number one, and then we'll go into the other room. Denis Branche from Fiducial. Mr. Chairman, allow me to get back to a topic that you mentioned as well, Mr. Sbraire. We have submitted a resolution project. It was not part of the agenda of today's meeting, and the goal was to talk about canceling bought back shares. This redistribution policy accounted for significant amounts in the past two years. It was equivalent to all of our investments. So why, instead of allocating a substantial part of the cash flow to cancel those bought back shares, do you not invest more in renewables, even though their profitability is lower than investments in fossil fuels?
From our point of view, it will enable us to step up the transition of our group and make sure added value is indeed a reality for shareholders. Thank you for your question. It was not part of the agenda because, as you knew, you didn't have enough supporters. We received letters supporting your resolution, but it accounted 0.911 of the shareholding capacity. So let me answer your question: Why are we doing a share buyback? We are doing it because the potential of appreciation of the share is still high. This is a debate that we have on valuing European and U.S. companies. In interviews, I often compare us with Chevron. When you look at the P&L and balance sheet of Chevron and Total, you will not see the difference.
We have the same quarterly income, cash flow. There's one that is worth 1.5 more than the other, so the potential is high. Sometimes people in the street say: How much can we have for TotalEnergies shares? And I always reply EUR 100 , but it's just, it's EUR 65- EUR 75 , 1.5. So, at EUR 100, you can invest in the company. As Jean-Pierre said, this investment enabling us to reduce the net profit per share, or to increase it rather. So, if it's, it is higher, we can make our dividend grow and have a policy that is healthy, and this is the one that we are pursuing. The dividend load on the company remains constant, approximately, and this is what we've been doing in the past three years.
We repurchased 5%-6% of the capital, and we increased the dividend by 6%-7% because our structural income is also growing. So when we repurchase shares on the one hand and increase dividends on the other hand, we maintain the constant load on the company. So this is a guarantee of resilience. That's one thing. Then you say, if we repurchase fewer shares, we could invest more. I do not think this is what would happen in the company for two reasons. First, the trade-off that we make and that the board makes when they decide to repurchase shares, let me remind you, our cash flow allocation policy, first, the dividend, then investments, and thirdly, the balance sheet, and so the debt reduction, and fourthly, repurchase of shares.
If we do more buybacks, it's because we've done the three steps first, and if we do not buy back shares, we will have a positive cash flow, and my CFO would be delighted. But we consider that there is better to do for you all. Why am I saying this? Because you've been saying, "Why are you not investing more in low-carbon energies?" We already invest EUR 5 billion. We need to find the right projects, have the teams, and we have the will to keep some discipline and not make the confusion, and not be confused between investment and profitability. In 2010, 2015, there was a lot of impairment in oil companies, so we drew conclusion from that.
If we were to invest more, the breakeven point that I mentioned would not remain at $25 per barrel. It would reach $30, $40, $50 per barrel. So I think we're trying to strike a balance between a strong ambition. Once again, if I have been told in 2020 that we would be at $5 billion investments in low-carbon energies in 2023, 2024, I would not have signed this document. We did it because we have higher income, thanks to higher energy prices, and because we are part of a virtuous circle. We recruit, we have talent inside, we understand better this electricity market, and we target those markets better and generate activity.
So we are in a situation where we have a lot of opportunities that reach our desks, but I'd rather be selective and have the choice in this diversification strategy, rather than say yes to anything that comes to our desk. The board, during the strategic seminar, that was mentioned by Jacques, rightly, focused on how we could make our business, this business profitable. Some of our shareholders have been saying that renewables is great, but they do not have a great reputation all the time. Some company is cannot demonstrate that, and I think we've shown it. If we didn't have a certain volume of investments, we wouldn't have the size. If we don't have the size, we wouldn't have the scale's savings. So the 12% horizon by 2028 is great. This is less than oil. That is over 18%.
The average is at 19, but 12% is the profitability on the company's capitals when the oil is at $60. So that is the math that we did. So our board is very interested in developing our activity, but as I said in my speech, what's sustainable is profitable. So we're trying to strike this balance, and I think we've managed to strike it. And unfortunately, no, not unfortunately, the decision that we made at the board is not fewer investments on renewables and low carbon emissions, because we've increased our investments. This is a decision or trade-off between reducing our debt, which is already low, and repurchasing shares. And by repurchasing shares, we make it possible, and we plan for the future growth of your dividend.
The share is going up, so that's good for everyone. If we allocate it, allocate EUR 8 billion to it, we won't be at 6%, but at 5%, but you can expect the dividend in 2024 to keep rising. So sorry, I was a bit long, but, this was the explanation and how your board thinks things through. Now I can see, question number five in the other room. You can... You have the floor.
Hello, Mr. Chair and Mr. Rosenberg, an individual shareholder at 30 years of age. I agree with everything you've been doing, so I want to congratulate you. I wanted to mention two things. I am very attached, and as you are, to what you had communicated upon in the past on your French way of doing things and great French companies at Saclay, Polytechnique. Maybe there's a hiatus with people from the school because you weren't able to settle there, but I would like to know where you're at in terms of this reflection. Are you going in that direction? This is my first question, and the second thing, it's just a comment. I arrived at 1:40 P.M. at the foot of the Coupole Tower.
I came into the room number two, as everybody here, 80 minutes later at 3:00 P.M., so I'm really disappointed.
So consequently, I will vote against all of your resolutions, except one, the one maintaining you at the board, because I'm not crazy, and I wish you to remain long at the head of TotalEnergies. Thank you, and I really understand you're being angry. As you saw, we tried to really use the lessons from the past each time we organizing. Maybe we try to strengthen the protection, well, visibly, very strongly. I understood that people told me you were still numerous going through the check at the front door, but we want everything to run smoothly.
So thank you. Try not to be too angry at TotalEnergies. We are trying to improve things continuously.
So I ensure you that if you come back next year, we will make sure that we'll be even more efficient and more welcomed as to send you to the right room directly. So it's a Friday afternoon. We thought we weren't sure how many people would come, but I positively accept your comment, and thank you very much. So I'm coming back to your first question, which is interesting. As you know, our aim, as you said, was to settle research and development teams at Saclay, because we believe in this ecosystem concept that is virtuous. At Saclay, there's the Polytechnic School, but also the University of Paris-Saclay and other prestigious schools. Our teams are at Saclay, not in a new building, at the Polytechnic School.
This, there were a lot of rumors around it, but you know that the CEO, I am, and my colleagues, building a building wasn't our priority. We wanted to have teams settle there to dedicate themselves to R&D on decarbonated energy, because our R&D main center is at Pau, so we didn't duplicate it. We didn't make any noise around it. We just learned some lessons, and I'm not gonna give the address, otherwise, I'm sure there will be trouble. But they're there at the heart of the ecosystem, developing partnerships with not only Polytechnique, but if it was only with that, they would have developed partnerships with the university, and I have to, I'm about to meet them shortly. I'm still a board member of the school, but that has nothing to do with it.
I like to say that we are part of the ecosystem. We believe in the concept, and I think it's a good thing that major companies do it, as at MIT. Sometimes the marriage of different companies is under discussion, and not only for TotalEnergies, but I can say that our R&D teams are there, they're present, and they create partnerships there, including with the Polytechnique School in different fields. So this is the answer I wanted to give you. We're on our way, we're stubborn, and we are able to do what we want to achieve. Who did I not answer? Maybe question number three here in this room. Dear Chair, hello. Mr. Dessoulange for ARPE Association for individual shareholding. A great thank you for having organized this centennial of TotalEnergies at the heart of this tower. It is a success.
We are getting rid of pollutants that came to disrupt the General Assemblies at TotalEnergies. I'd like to come to my new questions now. The first, as you said, TotalEnergies learns every day, and since it is the first time you're organizing this general meeting here in this tower, what about AI, generative AI? Is it going to help and favor learning, and are you going to learn from it, generally speaking, and have better productivity? My second question: you have extremely pleasant cash flow to use. Indeed, there's arbitration to do, but we understood well that you were strongly attached to pay your employees well, and we are also satisfied with that.
We also appreciate the fact that you increase regularly dividends for individual shareholders, but could you also maybe look at something that is dear to them, the inconvenience when offering dividends with a discount? Well, could we also have access to this specific discount for your centennial that you offer your employees? I know that the CFO, when he took his position, didn't like it. It's difficult to implement this kind of dividend. I prefer increasing the dividend rather than adding discounts and but I noted your message. We haven't planned to do it this year. Once again, we have an active policy for dividend, 7% per year. That's quite appreciable. We really want to have the best for our employees, but shareholders also.
I made a note of what you mentioned for our permanent improvement of things. But the Copilot is the Microsoft tool for AI, generative AI. We have deployed it fully. We made this bet to deploy it in the company, to give it to our employees in order for them to get used to this tool that is also in progress and develop. We were a certain number of us, who six members of the board and seven Directors, we spent three days in the U.S. last week. One of the themes was in a learning expedition, and we worked on the AI to understand how this tool can, as you very well said, help improve productivity, because in energy, there's no inflation of the markets, but we need to spend time fighting collective inflation.
We increase our employee salary, so these tools can be more productive, and we have some ideas to where to use them, what fields we could use generative AI in, for example, in relationships with clients. The robot maybe might make less mistakes than the people in call centers, or sometimes in the treatment of invoicing bills or level one, where it can bring more security, fighting against fraud, compliance, or for compliance. We'll see the fields where we can apply these technologies. Maybe I will take the gentleman number five in the other room. Let's alternate between the two rooms. Yes, hello. I am here to represent Fridays for Future, an international group that fights against activism, well, for activism and climate. I'd like to say that I was here a year ago to ask a stop of the EACOP gas pipeline.
You haven't listened to us, and this project continued. So at the same time, it is the first time we have reached our 1.5 degree, because there's global warming every year. This year will be the warmest ever, and scientists are horrified when they see the speed at which climate change operates. The reason for all this, the reason for the suffering of more than 1 billion people who will be displaced in 2030, is the burning of hydrocarbons, your hydrocarbons, and you already know it, I believe so. This is why I'm not here to repeat the question. I'm here to ask you, human, from one human being to the other, why are you continuing on this path, this deadly path, where you very well know that this mustn't be done?
First, one barrel of renewable energies equivalent to 147 barrels of fossil fuels. You produce a lot of fossil fuels, and you continue to do so. I believe that the money in this world is no longer true, if we see how depreciated it is. What I feel from your company and your stinginess shows that it's impossible to speak to a human being or to humankind. This is why I want to say we are a great group, more than 1,000 people in France. I haven't said, but there's the rule of the game, is that there's an hourglass, and you mustn't overcome the time allocated to you. I'm going to give the floor. I think I understood well, and I respect your arguments. You disagree for the company to pursue its activity in hydrocarbons.
If I well understood the question you are asking, you disagree for us to invest in new oil projects. I think I tried to simply explain the reality of things. I know you don't like the world, but it is a reality we, of a world we live in. The reality, the world we live in, is that today, the energy systems in which we are, that make us live everywhere in the world, is an energy system that, unfortunately for the world, that relies on fossil fuels or energies, and the demand in oil continues to increase. It increases by 1% every year, and I explained that if we do not invest, we'll lose 4% of oil a year, which means that 100 million barrels produced a year in 2022 would become 96, and the demand would be lesser.
So then the price creates the demand and offer. So we need to act, and this is why it consists on different levels to change the demand. Once again, it's not TotalEnergies that says that cars must work with oil, and we need time for it to change. We need innovation, and the commitment we made is to decrease our emissions when we produce oil, and on the other hand, investing in these renewable energies that you are calling for. I'd just like to remind you of something, the demand of growth. Last year, we reached a record of renewables in the world, more than 550 GW, more than half in China. This construction of energy represents only 40% of the 80% of the demand. So everybody wants to accelerate.
We have employees who are all as aware as you and support, if they support the strategy, it's because they saw Total becoming TotalEnergies. They are committed, citizens, as we all are, but we are just trying to find the right balance to make it possible, because life today requires this. This is the dilemma we have, and it is a reality that is often unknown of this oil and gas industry. And it's not because all of a sudden we'll stop producing oil as TotalEnergies, that others will not do it, or rather than the demand will disappear. The alignment will come from the price, and a lot of consumers will be angry. This is what I can answer to you, and you wanted us to go faster.
To go faster, we need to commit together, but it's not just our company that is gonna solve this issue, even though we are part of it, and we try to contribute directly to... through the strategy I presented to you, but we cannot solve, resolve the problem together. The society on this whole must do it. I will now give the floor to-
... I will give the floor to number one, the gentleman here.
Good afternoon. My name is Denis Perry. I am an individual shareholder. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. I have one question, if you'll allow me, a suggestion as well. My question is the following: the valuation of TotalEnergies security, you've said that it is below that the level that you would like to reach in a different stock exchange. It is clear that TotalEnergies's business is based on two pillars. First, hydrocarbons, and in the long run, it will be declining, and it is undervalued because its ratio is below eight. So consequently, the second pillar, which is integrated pillar, is valued with the same ratio.
So we can wonder whether you shouldn't contemplate, in the long run, to think of the division between the two businesses, and by in doing so, to increase the valuation of this second, part of the business, which is meant to grow in the very long term. And my suggestion, I heard your interview at Station F the other day, and I noticed how dear to your heart, individual shareholder base is to you. In TotalEnergies, there's a consultative committee that is represented here. That is the third row. All these people are individual shareholders from that come from all corners of France. They are here to support you.
They are here to tell you that we are here to listen to you, to present, the financial statements of the company, but we also support, how qualitative the management of this company is, and we also value the visionary and ambitious strategy that you are driving. Thank you very much. I will have to stop you. To conclude, I will be very brief. We would be very delighted if you could take part in one of our meetings, and we could show you how dear to our heart this company is. I've already done it, but I need to look at my agenda before we set a meeting. But since, Mr. Verre loves to have, lunch with you, I will not deprive him from this, opportunity.
Your suggestion is not part of the strategic plan that we have. If the second pillar grows, it's because we do transfers from the first pillar into the second pillar. So the big pro at TotalEnergies, if we attract a large number of talents, when people have. It's because people have funding to carry out their projects. And if we didn't have that, and the second pillar was an independent company, is now generating $2 billion and possibly $3 billion this year, but they depend on us. If they depended from the external world, then they wouldn't have the same results. So I'm hopeful. I'm not complaining. It's great to have broken records, historical records, but green and brown do not make a beautiful sunish yellow. But this should be an objective, and we should make this business grow.
Otherwise, the second pillar will be like any other renewable developer that is in difficulties. Why do we have a 10% profitability in electricity? It surprises a lot of people. We benefit from the know-how that we have in gas in oil and gas, and trading. We've transferred teams. We're transferring technological talents. Some were used to be working in oil and gas, and now they're working in renewables. Well, we do offshore oil projects. It's the same, it's very similar to offshore wind projects. So we make sure that this, we are making sure that this segment is as profitable. And once we've reached this profitability, everything will be balanced. But of course, I'll keep your suggestion in mind, but this is too soon to do that.
But we will create this value, and we will demonstrate that this is the right model. But for the transition energy, it is healthier that TotalEnergies allocates its oil cash flow to step up in renewables rather than just focusing on the first pillar and focusing on these two pillars separately. Mic number six. I don't think I've given the floor to mic number six. Thank you, Mr. Jean Derac, individual shareholder. A small comment. I feel like I'm in a prison. My... I don't have my phone, I don't have my tablet. No one can do it. So for three hours, we don't have our smartphone to...
I can't even watch the annual report, so that is unbearable, and I think I will write to the AMF, and I will advise the other shareholders to do so. Second question. For our solar projects, projects are very long term. So for batteries, Bolloré wants to get back to solid batteries. So what are the technologies that you are using for storage batteries? And on your new compensation, 140,000 performance shares. I could not log into the internet because I didn't have access. EUR 64, EUR 69 million. Are these the right amounts? Because there's a fixed compensation of 1.5 and 2.7 as the variable compensation. So are these the right orders of magnitude? I will not answer on the compensation, of course, either Jacques or Mark.
Maybe Jacques will answer this question. First and foremost, we apologize for the security issues. As you know, the annual general meeting has been disrupted in the past. We have taken some measures to even protect the individual to also protect the individual shareholders. You disagree? I hear you, but the security measures were taken by security companies. I understand that this was unpleasant. You can also follow the general meeting on the Internet and ask your questions on the platform. We will also take them. Now, to answer your positive question on batteries. We have a battery company called Saft. We purchased it because we early on considered that it was an interesting investment. I think that's one of the very first investments that I did as head of this company.
Solar without batteries, that was an economic problem. Saft is a company with great technologies, a lot of battery technologies. As you saw, we are a partner, but, this is not at the core of our strategy. This market is booming, and Saft is doing well, and Saft is also part of the adventure for electric batteries for EVs. But this is a field in which a lot of money has been invested to reach the solid state. So we are, we have embarked on this journey, and Saft will know when this can be commercialized. So we are putting all means we can to step up and reach the solid state. I am optimistic. I think that there are strong investments in EVs, and we'll benefit from it. Second question on solar power.
We have a large portfolio, as you know, over 85 GW of projects. Our strategy so far, in the past few years, has been to find, in the different geographies, the right partners, and to forge a partnership with a local partner. So having access to land, access to the grid, so there's a lot of local regulation, so we need strong local skills. In Brazil, we forged a partnership with Casa dos Ventos; in India, Adani Green; in the US, with Clearway, one of the top five. 50% of Clearway is the top five in renewables. So we target the markets that we wish for instead of buying a whole company, even if last year we decided to repurchase 100% of the capital of Total Eren.
Knowing that we consider we can create more value if we bought pipelines of projects to develop and to build rather than existing assets. It's very costly for existing assets, and it would be difficult for us to create values for assets with a contract that is already set. So this is how we look at things, and we are really watchful to what's happening, and we are studying different projects around the world to grow and step up. So this is why I'm gonna let Jacques to answer to the last point on the CEO's remuneration.
If Mark will allow it, the compensation committee tried to know what were the levels and the structure of the compensation. Mark reminded it on the fixed variable parts and on what we call performance shares. The first decision that was made was that throughout Patrick Pouyanné's mandate, to set and the fixed compensation on 2022. For the variable part and performance shares, we want to align shareholders' interest with the compensation of Patrick and align the variable part and performance shares on the company's strategy. So there are criteria related to profitability of invested capital, including in the integrated power sector. So for now, that's the only oil company for which the compensation of the Chairman is related to its integrated power part. And there are criteria related to the transition, and there's a whole debate on Scope three emissions.
CO2 emissions related to the life cycle of products sold by TotalEnergies on the market. So the reflection was an internal one. And we also compared, obviously, with our peers at the French level, at the European level, and at the international level. So the conclusion of the compensation committee and of the board, and outside of Patrick Pouyanné's presence, when it came to the compensation, Mark Cutifani chaired the meeting, and he convinced or informed and asked for the approval of the board. And this is the conclusion of the board, and outside of Patrick Pouyanné's presence, that the best compensation level is that one for the fixed variable parts and the performance shares. Thank you very much. Mic number two? Good afternoon, Mr. Duché, individual shareholder in Maisons-Laffitte .
In your last answer, you underlined that electric or gas plants were only working with intermittency when there was not enough renewable power. When we look at the RTE Eco2mix site, I realized that France sells a lot of current outside of France. It means that there is too much, and we also see that there's a production of electric power, and sometimes during the weekend, when it was windy, it was cold, we also had German electricity at a negative rate, and gas plants were simultaneously working. So that is a contradiction, in my opinion. Other question: A few days ago, I was at the BNP's annual general meeting, and Mr.
Lemierre, who is a Director and its CEO, boasted that they were reducing their funding in fossil fuels, and they are going down from 90% to 10%, so I can see another contradiction. So, I don't understand why he's at the board of Total. Thank you. Jean Lemierre shed some light. That was a pun with the word lumière, light in French, and I am delighted that he's been with us. When you are in a board, you bring in your personal experience. He has international experience, and I bump into him in various occasions outside of the board. Every company has its strategy. For TotalEnergies, when we issued bonds, it boomed, and now we also have longer delays, 20-30 years.
So if we cannot find funding at BNP, we can find it somewhere else. But of course, we make the difference between the expertise of Mr. Lemierre and the strategy of every company. And I am the Director of another company, and it doesn't mean that they win tender bids at TotalEnergies, with TotalEnergies, so. Mm, and of course, when I'm at TotalEnergies, I do not talk about the company I am a shareholder of. That is an ethical matter. On your first question? Yes, sorry, I didn't understand your question. Except if there's a devil in the details, but we usually put into service, depending on demand, the production tools, depending on the curve.
If it's negative for the wind, we use the wind and solar, and then the nuclear, nuclear power is also there, and then there's gas and hydropower, if there's enough water or fast enough, and then gas arrives later. Gas plants don't work well at the moment. They are at a lower level than we anticipated, because there's a lot of wind there, so there's a direct effect from the growth of renewables. It is a real growth. So it doesn't mean that at other times when there are peaks of demand, we can see peaks on gas, and this is where we have our profitability. So these tools are flexible. They can be at zero, and they can work for 20, 30 minutes, and sometimes they capture a price that is quite high.
So I will see, I will ask the teams whether or not they have heard of what you said and whether they've exported or not, whether that was the right choice. There can be bottlenecks in the grids in terms of geographies, for example, and this can generate imbalance between the different regions of the grid. The only difficulty is that it cannot be stored. Who else? Number one.
My name is Rasmus Bessing. I am Co-CIO at PFA Pension, largest commercial pension fund in, in Denmark, with approximately EUR 90 billion under management, and we're also a new co-lead, with Climate Action 100+ .... At PFA, we value the dialogue that you, we have with you, and we acknowledge your leadership in the energy transition, and also, with regards to the methane emissions. As the International Energy Agency has also highlighted, we need to do something about this, problem. So I would like to ask the board, and I know you, you shortly addressed it in your, in your speech, but I would like to, to ask the board, on your perspective on how the company will continue and extend the activities on methane reduction, on non-operated assets, and quantify the results, and how you will do that through partnership, joint ventures, et cetera.
Finally, I have a recommendation, and that is that we recommend that you disclose alignment with the International Energy Agency's recent guidelines on best practice levels on the greenhouse gas emissions intensity, Scope one and two, from the respective upstream, midstream, oil and gas activities. Thank you.
Thank you. You said, je préfère-
I prefer answering in French. You have a headset maybe that you can... Maybe someone could give the gentleman a headset so he can answer rather than the opposite, because the majority of people here speak French.
Thank you. Happy to meet you. Happy that you become the trip, and I know that you are very often. Now, on-
So you're asking a great question on methane. We have our own operations on operated, non-operated assets. This is a whole meaning of what happened in Dubai, of my commitment in Oil Decarbonization oil and gas charter. I'm one of the three champions of, one of those that represent the private companies, alongside, ADNOC and Aramco, leaders. And this is how, about how we can make sure that the companies that they're more in ahead of the game can, help others, national companies, often for methane. That's a big issue. And of course, we have our action, our activities with joint ventures. We try to coordinate everything, and we try to. It's important what we're trying to do. We try to apply the same methods, that we, we try to do reporting, measuring.
In this charter, there's one essential aspect, stop flaring by 2030 and aim for zero methane by 2030, because we have the feeling that this is where the oil industry can act more efficiently. We see this in our operation. Of course, we need to convince stakeholders, and one of the ways to do this is to share our technologies. We set up campaigns with, well, with drones, and we have signed in Angola, Sonangol in Angola, Petrobras in Brazil. We did this also with ADNOC at the United Emirates. We measured with them. If we measure first, we can make progress. This is a big issue, and I understand that we need to focus on what is operated, but we also need to take care about what is not operated, and we must play a part as leaders.
And sharing technologies, collectively discussing. Angola, I can say, has joined the charter, the oil... Thanks to the work of TotalEnergies, we convinced them that it was good for them and we could move forward. That's not enough, but it's already, for me, it is part of what a company as ours can do with this leadership in this field, with our colleagues in other oil and gas companies appointed me to represent them as a champion. It's because in this, for this body, it's that they believe it is not only at TotalEnergies, but it is true for partnerships as well. So it is a path we need to move forward on. And I see there's maybe someone in English, number six?
Second room, maybe I see probably in English, you as well. Good afternoon.
Thank you so-
No, I don't hear you. Sorry. Mic is not open.
Thank you so much. My name is Maxwell Atuhura, Director, Tasha Research Institute, Africa, a human rights organization from Uganda. I come from Bulisa, Uganda, where Total is operating a project called Tilenga, and also where in Hoima, where ECOP starts from. I work closely with project-affected persons. I've seen a number of human rights violations and intimidations happening. I really want to understand what is Total doing to stop that happen. The case in reference is a case of 42 families sued by government, and within four days, the case was ruled and court order given out for families to evict and to accept unfair compensation, which they had refused. This is something we have at least have heard Total saying that they do respect universal human rights.
I'm trying to find, from this, where is that aspect coming of respect, when I'm seeing this one happening to the people on the ground? Thank you so much.
Merci, monsieur, pour votre question.
Thank you very much for your question.
You can discuss after the meeting together. I would say, bon, d'abord sur l'Ouganda.
On Uganda first, you know that it's a giant project that required the acquisition of a number of land, a great number of lands, because it is, I have the figures here, more than 19,000 impacted households, essentially through the acquisition of land. It's an operation of a great size, of course, but not everybody accepted it. It's difficult to implement, but there are 18,987 stakeholders. So this is a lot. We're at 98%. There's still a number of cases as that the gentleman presented, and I believe you, people who disagree on the compensations offered. We are speaking with them. For some, it's difficult because then there are sometimes they discuss on the land that is being purchased, but in 99%, there are still litigations.
I still hear there are 40, so we are going to end the process, and our priority is to solve this through dialogue. I heard that you said that in some cases, the compensations were not sufficient. The question for us, of course, is to know why for some specific cases, it is not sufficient, whereas it is for the great majority of cases. I believe that my message is clear. We're not saying that what we are doing is always perfect. We must pursue and continue, and this is why I entrusted a mission to Lionel Zinzou, a politician, an African businessman, to see whether there are topics that could be improved. I don't know if the two cases you presented are those, but know that our desire is to find the means to solve the issues amicably.
A certain number of cases are difficult. We need to use expropriation, but these are very limited considering the number of cases we had to tackle, and know that the dialogue is always favored by the TotalEnergies CEO and his teams. By the way, I think that my teams know you, Mr. Maxwell Atuhura. We already had the opportunity to try to help you, yourself, in a number of difficult situations. It's not easy, but I believe that, as I said, we need to respect one another. This is one of our great values in our company, and we want to help you on the ground. Again, the impacts are great.
I think we have solved most of the difficult cases, but my advice and my will is to maintain this dialogue with you, gentlemen, and I believe that the teams will contact you after this meeting to see how the two or three concrete cases you mentioned can be resolved concretely. Thank you very much for your testimony. I'm going to move to number three. Hello, Mr. Chair. I'm an individual shareholder. I'd like to thank you for everything you did for the group since 1944. It was a difficult situation when there was the accident, and then Thierry Desmarest had to come back to help you. So I wanted to thank you. After there was the COVID crisis, you had to manage, and the energy transition is difficult. Let the gentleman speak.
The question is, if we want to have a low-price petrol, we need to invest in the Middle East. Are we going to invest in countries that are less risky geopolitically? Today, there's a valuation difference between TotalEnergies and Chevron. Maybe in the scope of the country risks, there is a difference between TotalEnergies and Chevron. I don't know. Yes, there is one. We do not invest in Permian shale gas. We don't have the teams. This is the choice we made, a deep choice in 2015. It doesn't. Shale gas doesn't correspond to the definition that I mentioned, low cost, low emissions. By the way, there are great competitors, American competitors that are consolidating Chevron, Exxon. It's difficult to be in competition with them.
Where they are developing and adding their capitals in the USA, and this plays on the valuation. At the same time, there are freer spaces for us to move to in other countries. We do not decide where we find oil and gas or where we have renewables, or if we can do it. We go in the countries, to the countries where we think there's things to do. But the profitability are more important. When I say that TotalEnergies is more profitable, the most profitable of majors, it is perhaps because we go to countries where, of course, there are risk, but there are higher rewards, and this helps us in the end, to have a portfolio which is globally more profitable than our competitors.
So we duly noted your point, and in this meeting, I think a few years ago, we ramped up investments in the USA, in natural liquefied gas with Rio Grande, electricity, renewable energies. Clearly, we are implementing this, and I think that this contributes also to attract more American shareholders and help to the valuation or better valuation. Because once again, since we're at the high level, we don't want to complain, but we still do better and... So I'm going to give the floor now to number two. Thank you for giving me the floor. Hello, my name is Tarek Bouhouch. I'm working for Follow This. I'm going to allow myself to comment before moving to the question.
I thank you for confirming your ability as company, which expresses a leadership in the management of methane leaks, to train others, national players, and this confirms our approach and the theory of change, and this should strengthen our desire to be alongside with you and to support you. This is my question now. The company is involved to change its production of hyro carbons to 3% by 2028, and relying for the strategy on a publication on the IEA, with a demand of an increase of demand 7.5 times lower over the period, and wanting to align with the Paris Agreement.
This is my question: Do you have the intention to revise these growth protections for fossil extraction to align your investments with the agreed Paris Agreement, with one-third, since one—as one-third of your shareholders invited you to so, or with projections of the Energy Agency? Growth, the growth in question comes essentially for a gas growth, not oil. Because with oil, we even aim at less than the energy agency, the IEA. We want to maintain our oil production, whereas the IEA plans to move from 102 to 105, so it's a 1% growth. So this—from this point of view, the growth, once again, that we announce comes from our natural liquefied gas activity. So yes, I explained why. We consider there's a real continuum between gas and electricity, gas and renewables.
Yesterday, I was alongside John Kerry in Paris, and he was advocating for this. We will need to leave gas one day, but as if we have a mix, it's a mix of electricity and gas, then you need to implement. So this is the reason why we can say that it's yes, hydrocarbon. We can say that what is the growth of oil, to answer your question. It's another way to communicate, and maybe we're wrong to mix the two. We need to clarify things, but this is the project we have, and you need to know that in these forecasts, it's rather two than three, and we need all the projects to move forward. Once again, we remain close to everything we announced. We assess, then we...
Well, we haven't said that it was a scenario at 1.5 degree. We admit it. I think it's 1.8 degree. It's a benchmark we did. MSCI said we are around 1.9 recently. We're trying to have a strategy, or we are consistent in our choices of assets. For our shareholders, we need to understand that a company at TotalEnergies is not Saudi Arabia. Jean-Pierre said it, we have 12 years of proven reserves, possibly 18 years. The truth is that when we look at when we'll see the demand in oil decrease, we'll see whether what we'll do with our fields, and we'll land with the vision we have for 2050. The best protection we have for shareholders is to invest in oil fields at a low cost and low emission.
If they're, they follow this for the first quarterlies, they will follow the demand. So we need to have a strategy that is resilient economically, but also vis-à-vis the climate question that we embed in our strategy. I'm going to move on to shareholder number six.
We have reached the end of the hour, so question six, five, and four, and then we will stop there. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. 2023. No, 2023, I couldn't be at the general meeting because the national police prevented me from accessing it. They were more interested in the interests of the activists rather than mine. So thank you. I am here this year, and I've noticed that you have asked security forces that have been much more efficient. Let's acknowledge that certain members of the government do not appreciate Total. There's a small country really close to France, and that is Belgium, that is well appreciated, internationally speaking, more than the U.S. or France. Brussels is a more important capital than Paris or Washington in terms of population.
So don't you think that it would be more serene for you to work in Brussels rather than in Paris? I think you're a previous employee of Petrofina. Yeah, great. I appreciate Brussels. I worked there for two years when I was in charge of the RC branch, and so I know the city well. But I have to correct what you said. If the general meeting is doing well, it's also thanks to law enforcement. The 200 policemen are here to maintain serenity here. So let me repeat it, and this is how it works in our democracies. We ensure security in our private sites, but externally, we are confident and trust law enforcement. And this is why we are here.
The authorities recommended that we are here, so we need to, of course, we need to respect protesters. But they recommended that we did it here, and that is why the general meeting is occurring in good conditions. And so we have excellent relationships. I have a good relationship with the interior minister. But of course, these are political matters, and they all said that they wanted TotalEnergies to remain in France, and now they seem to appreciate us much more. Sometimes you have to provoke them, but apparently, it's working. This is very dear to our heart as well. So I heard your suggestion. We have an important presence in Brussels. As I said, we are listed there as well.
But I think we are very well positioned here in Paris, and we've managed to combine the best of the French culture and the Belgian culture. But I will suggest your advice, a piece of advice to the government. Question number five, sorry, I tried to go a bit everywhere I can see you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, Françoise Lino, individual shareholder for 10 years now. Last year, Mr. Chairman, you deleted the double right to vote. In return, what are you waiting to have the 10% dividend and the increased dividend of 10% for those who have had shares for over two years? And then Thinkerview would like to interview you. Would you be willing to accept the invitation?
And third question: to organize this meeting, are there face recognition technologies that have been used? No, we respect individual rights. We respect the law in France. So ThinkView, yeah, I'm a little bit too much in the media. My job is to manage a global company. I work... I spend a lot of time internationally. When I'm in France, I can see my face too much in the news. ThinkVews invited me, but to be honest, it's not very easy. My communication experts have recommended that I train, so I still have to train a little bit more before I can be interviewed by ThinkView. Maybe when I'm close to retirement. No, no. To be honest, this is a media for politicians rather than for the head of TotalEnergies.
And first question, that is great that you are a nominative shareholder, but most nominative shareholders are employees, so we have other ways to help our employees when there are discounts. But I will think it through. I will see whether or not this is a practice that exists as part of the CAC 40 companies. We are all nominative shareholders, but then we'll have to make sure for... and be careful with the policies supporting employee shareholders. I'm in favor of one shareholder equals one vote, equals one dividend, because then we're all equals. And saying that, the scheme that we are a nominative shareholder or not, that generates an excess in dividend, I'm not sure that is the best way to go. But we're thinking it through.
Thank you for your question, and thank you for your patience. Number four. Michelle Coudrin, individual shareholder from Paris. Last year, I mentioned with you the issues of energy provider supply capacity for a very small enterprises and SMEs. You said that you wanted to coordinate with banking partners. I've heard you at BFM Business TV channel, and you said that you negotiated mid- and long-term contracts to for your suppliers in energies. And I think that was your goal, to provide very small enterprises and SMEs energies at a reasonable cost. So I would like to know what proportion does it account for in your energy resources? It might be very small, but in that case, what are the goals that you are setting yourself in the next fiscal years? Thank you.
For now, we have a supply that remains stable, that can be forecasted because we are part of the ARENH regime. We should put an end to it in 2025, 2026. There are agreements being negotiated for the different suppliers. Energy or electricity suppliers should be under an obligation to be covered by mid and long-term agreements, because otherwise, we just replicate those spot markets, because... And they're really volatile. So our goal is to be able to cover our own production or what's produced by third parties as part of contracts.... The best way to manage, and this is what SMEs bosses want, is to have a predictable cost.
We want to do that either using our production cost, and that is the idea of an agreement with EDF to have access to a nuclear plant. So either I can manage my cost, or I have a supply agreement with a third party under good conditions. I can be, I am predictable, and I can go towards SMEs and offer predictable conditions. So reducing the spot part in our supply is obvious, but since this is a fledgling activity, we do not know how it always works, but this is the philosophy. All the criticism that is leveled means that it is very consistent for us. We call it integrated power, and the key word is integrated between what we produce, what we transport, and what we sell in the end.
I think we've gone around all questions, but I forgot to mention that there were written questions submitted. We received questions from eight shareholders as planned for by regulation. Questions by the Responsible Investment Forum, Assurance Crédit Mutuel, Mr. Bernard Butory, Mrs. Evernier, Les Amis de la Terre, Mr. Clajad, Banque Postale Asset Management, and the IPAC Association. We'll publish this text and all answers to these questions online, because there are 35 questions, and then 52 questions. And we will publish all questions and answers, and they've been read and approved by... for those who have been approved by the board, will be available on our website on Monday morning, as per our commitments.
Let me also say that certain questions were out of the regulatory scope, and we did not receive them in time, but they will also receive answers in separate letters. We have reached the end of the Q&A session. Thank you for your commitment. Let's now move on to the vote for the resolutions. We are running 10 minutes late. I'm supposed to have a document with the quorum. In the last attendance sheet, the present shareholders represented or voted by post, 1,648,854,000, and this quorum is makes it possible for us to vote. So 1,648,789,231 votes. You have the instructions, and we also have hostesses that can help you.
To vote on the resolutions of the general meeting, you have a tablet at your disposal. It is strictly personal and can only be used during this general meeting. When the vote for a resolution is mentioned, a window opens on your tablet, even though this one was on standby mode. To vote, this is very easy. Press the button corresponding to your choice: in favor, abstaining, or against. Press Okay to validate your choice before the end of the vote on this resolution. Once your vote has been validated, you can no longer amend it. Thank you for giving your tablet back when you leave the room. So now, Jean-Pierre Sbraire will tell you about the resolutions before they are subjected to the vote. So, the text of the resolution is on page 34- 45 of the notice, and I will not read them all.
Each resolution will be identified by its number and summarized before being put to the vote. Resolution number 1- 16 fall within the competence of the ordinary general meeting and must receive a majority of vote cast to be adopted. Resolution 17- 23 fall within the competence of the remit of the extraordinary general meeting and must receive a majority of two-thirds of the votes cast to be adopted. Let's now move on to resolution number one. The approval of the statutory financial statements for TotalEnergies SE for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023, EUR 11,232 million. The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is adopted.
Second resolution, approval of the consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31st, 2023...with the consolidated accounts, which show a TotalEnergies net profit of $21.3 billion. The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is also adopted. Third resolution: allocation of earnings and declaration of dividend for the fiscal year 2023. You can choose the distribution of dividend per action of EUR 3.01 for the fiscal year 2023. Considering the three interim dividends of EUR 0.74 already distributed, the balance for the dividend for 2023 is at EUR 0.79 per share. It will be exclusively paid in-
Cash. In cash.
In cash on July 1, 2024. The vote is closed. The dividend is appreciated, and the resolution is adopted. Fourth resolution: authorization granted to the Board of Directors for a period of 18 months to trade in the corporation shares according to applicable regulation. This authorization will be granted for a period of 18 months from this day forward. The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is adopted for the repurchase of shares. Resolution number five: to approve the agreements covered by articles L. 225-38 and the rest of the French Commercial Code. The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is adopted.
The sixth resolution's purpose is to renew the mandate as Director of Mr. Patrick Pouyanné for a period of three years. The vote is open. The vote is closed. Congratulations. The resolution is adopted. Thank you for your support. The seventh resolution's purpose is the renewal of Mr. Jacques Aschenbroich's mandate as Director for a period of three years. The voting is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is adopted. Congratulations, Jacques. The eighth resolution's purpose is the appointment of Mr. Glenn Hubbard as board member for a period of three years. The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is adopted. Congratulations, Glenn. The purpose of the ninth resolution has a purpose to appoint Mrs. Marie-Ange Dubon as board member for three years. The vote is open. The vote is closed. Congratulations, Marie-Ange. The resolution is adopted.
Welcome to the Board of Directors. The purpose of the 10th resolution is to approve the information relating to the compensation of corporate officers mentioned in Article L. 22-10-19 of the Commercial Code, as presented in the Report of Corporate Governance, appearing in the company's 2023 Universal Registration document, Chapter 4.3.1.2 and four. Yes, the vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is adopted. We can compensate the board members. The 11th resolution's purpose is to approve the remuneration policy applicable to the Directors of the company, presented in the Corporate Governance Report, contained in the company's 2023 Universal Registration document, chapter 4.3.1. Voting is open. Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted.
The purpose of the twelfth resolution is to approve the fixed, variable, and exceptional elements, making up the total remuneration and benefits of all kinds paid during the 2023 financial year, or allocated for this financial year to the Chairman and chief executive officer of your company. They're presented in the report on corporate governance, contained in the company's 2023 universal registration document, chapter 4.4.321. Voting is open. Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted. The purpose of the thirteenth resolution is to approve the remuneration policy applicable to the Chairman and chief CEO, as presented in the report on corporate governance contained in the company's 2023 universal registration document, chapter 4.4.3.2.2. Voting is open. Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted.
The purpose of the 14th resolution is to propose to you, as part of a consultative vote, to issue a favorable opinion on the sustainability and climate progress report 2024. This report sees progress made in implementing the company's ambition in terms of sustainable development and energy transition towards carbon neutrality and its objectives in this area by 2030. Voting is open. Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted. The 15th resolution's purpose is to appoint the firm Ernst & Young, Young Audit, statutory auditor, to carry out the mission of certifying the sustainability information of your company for the duration of its remaining mandate under their financial information certification mission, i.e., until the end of the general meeting, called to rule in 2028 on the accounts for the financial year, ending December 31st, 2027. Voting is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is adopted.
The purpose of the 16th resolution is to appoint the firm PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit, statutory auditor, to carry out the mission of certifying the sustainability information of your company for the duration of its remaining mandate under their mission of certification of the financial information, i.e., until the end of the general meeting, called to rule in 2028 on the accounts of the financial year ending December 31st, 2027. Voting is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is adopted. So this concludes the general, ordinary meeting. We're moving to the extraordinary one with the 17th resolutions, which purpose is to grant a delegation of authority to the Board of Directors for the purpose of increasing the capital, either by issuing ordinary shares and/or securities, giving access to the company's capital, or by incorporation of premiums, reserves, profits or others, with maintenance of shareholders' preferential subscription rights. Voting is open.
Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted. The purpose of the eighteenth resolution is to grant a delegation of authority to the Board of Directors for the purpose of increasing the capital as part of a public offering, by issuing ordinary shares and/or securities, giving access to the company's capital, with elimination of shareholders' preferential subscription rights. Voting is open. Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted. Nineteenth resolution has the purpose to grant delegation of authority to the Board of Directors for the purpose of issuing through an offer addressed to a restricted circle of investors or to qualified investors, ordinary shares and/or securities, giving access to the company's capital with elimination of shareholders' preferential subscription rights. Voting is open. Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted.
The purpose of the 20th resolution is to grant a delegation of authority to the Board of Directors in order to increase the number of securities to be issued in the event of a capital increase with removal of shareholders' preferential subscription rights. Voting is open. Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted. The purpose of the 21st resolution is to grant a delegation of powers to the Board of Directors in order to increase the capital in remuneration for contribution in kind made to the company with removal of the preferential subscription rights of shareholders. Voting is open. Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted. The purpose of the 22nd resolution is to grant a delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to carry out capital increases reserved for employees and members of a company or a group of savings plan. Voting is open.
The resolution of the vote, sorry, the voting is closed. Yes, I was right, it is adopted. The resolution is adopted. It's the increase of capital for employees. And finally, the 23rd resolution, the purpose is to authorize your Board of Directors to allocate company shares to the company's employees and executive Directors in accordance with the provisions of articles L. 22-25-197-1 and L. 22-10-59 N of the Commercial Code. Voting is open. Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted. Very well. All of the resolutions having been submitted to vote, and all resolutions granted by the board received your support. I'd like to thank you for that. I invite you to give back your electronic tablets and headsets while exiting the room. Hostesses are at your disposal to guide you.
The detailed results of the votes per resolution will be posted online on the website, General Meeting Section 2024 on May 31st. The date of our next meeting will be mentioned on screen. The general assembly for 2025 will be set for May 23rd, and I think that we'll come back to the tower next year, here. So, I declare now the resolutions have been voted, and the agenda being exhausted, I declare the meeting adjourned. I thank you for your participation. Thank you.