Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Analyst and Investor Conference call of Uniper. At our customer's request, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If any participant has difficulty hearing the conference, please press star key followed by zero on your telephone for operator assistance. May I now hand you over to Stefan Jost, EVP Group Finance and Investor Relations, who will start the meeting today. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Dear analysts and investors, I would like to welcome you to this morning's conference call on Uniper's 2021 results. Our CEO, Klaus-Dieter Maubach, and our CFO, Tiina Tuomela, are here with me today. Klaus-Dieter will start with a view on the current situation at the Russian-Ukrainian border and implications for us before moving to the key events in fiscal year 2021, followed by an update on our ambitions and strategic goals. Tiina will then explain the key elements of the 2021 financials and conclude with an earnings outlook for 2022. As usual, there will be a Q&A session in the end. Klaus-Dieter?
Thank you, Stefan. Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining our call today. I would have loved to dive right into the usual topics of a regular full year results call now. However, I obviously cannot leave the events of the last days go unaddressed. Let me be open with you. The situation at the Russian-Ukrainian border leaves us at Uniper profoundly unsettled. Please note that I'm saying this as the CEO of a company where thousands of colleagues work hard every day to contribute a significant share of profits either in Russia or based on long-standing ties with Russian partners that go back more than 50 years. During that time, a lot has been achieved for all parties based on foresighted collaboration, mutual agreements, and trustful dialogues.
My experience is that if solutions based on those principles are not possible, this usually results in consequences with significant costs for all sides involved. Looking at Uniper now, while we are certainly hoping for a de-escalation, we need to be clear about the risks and the potential mitigation tools at our hands. The following chart summarizes the main aspects in this regard. Uniper's key exposure to the situation at the Russian-Ukrainian border can be categorized into four areas. The first one is kind of familiar already. A further escalation might lead to more volatile prices and therefore higher margining and liquidity needs. Tiina will elaborate later on the current margining situation, the liquidity headroom, and the measures that Uniper has already implemented in this context.
While we cannot predict how prices will develop going forward, it is good to see that the last days went by without turbulences and that we are prepared. Moving over to Nord Stream 2. It probably did not come as a surprise that Nord Stream 2 got immediately into the focus of political counteractions. As you all know, Nord Stream 2 is completed and ready for COD once the regulatory requirements are met, i.e. the certification process is completed. Yesterday, the German government has taken steps to put this certification process on hold until further notice. Let me remind you that Uniper is a financing partner of Nord Stream 2. The capital has been provided, and we are already accruing interest income. The interest income becomes cash effective after certain milestones, out of which the commercial start is the most relevant one.
We are evaluating the impact of yesterday's decision on our claims towards Nord Stream 2, including potential impairment implications from a delayed COD. The third section comprises possible sanctions against partners of Unipro and Uniper, including financial institutions. As of today, we consider it unlikely that the business of Uniper or Unipro could be significantly affected in this regard. The last category is related to possible interruptions of Russian gas supply in our portfolio. Depending on the situation, Uniper could be required to source at high market prices to ensure security of supply for our customers. Whether this would have material implications depends on the duration and the magnitude of the interruption. In less severe cases, Uniper could utilize its flexible assets to cover for the shortfall.
On the other side. In more severe cases, regulatory measures would become likely, which would reduce demand and hence close the supply gap to some extent. When it comes to the likelihood of such interruptions, the recent public statements on the Russian and European side provide some comfort. It is apparently understood that maintaining the supply to Europe is in the interest of all sides. As we have stated in the past, throughout over our fifty years of partnership, Gazprom has always been a reliable partner who delivered as promised. On this positive note, I would like to conclude this topic for now. Let me assure you, Uniper is closely monitoring the situation and evaluating mitigation measures. We will keep you updated going forward. However, while this situation is certainly getting our highest attention, we need also to keep our daily business and the strategy execution on track.
Let's move over to this part of today's presentation, starting with an overview of the key highlights in 2021. For the energy sector, the year 2021 was a very clear reminder of the major challenge in our industry: pushing decarbonization without sacrificing security of supply. Accordingly, in 2021, we saw many countries and jurisdictions taking new measures and defining new targets to halt global warming. However, at the same time, 2021 was the year in which the risks of insufficient energy supply led to unprecedented high and volatile commodity prices around the globe. This extreme volatility has pretty much manifested itself also in Uniper's financials. Looking back, Uniper had in total six ad hoc announcements in the last 12 months. When it comes to the financial year 2021, we raised our profit guidance twice.
However, we also needed to take far-reaching liquidity measures and finally communicated the first dividend cut in Uniper's history. I fully understand if people outside of Uniper have a hard time to grasp the overall meaning of those messages in terms of Uniper's financial situation. Let me help you here by taking you step by step through the key elements. Ultimately, we recorded an adjusted group EBIT of just under EUR 1.2 billion for fiscal 2021, which is 19% above the already good prior year result. This positive earnings development showcases once again the ability of our portfolio to capture value in volatile times, especially in our commodity business. Tiina will go into more detail on our 2021 performance later. However, this all came at a price. The hedging positions required liquidity management on a scale previously unknown to Uniper.
The financing measures we took around the end of the year, involving both our major shareholder, Fortum, and banks, expanded our liquidity framework by EUR 12 billion. However, while our earnings performance indicators reflect actual economic value captured in 2021, the liquidity needs linked to margining are only temporary. Accordingly, Standard & Poor's just confirmed our BBB- credit rating in January 2022, underlining the fact that we run a structurally secure business in markets with exceptional price fluctuations. Even though only temporary in nature, we need to properly and carefully manage those liquidity risks going forward, especially in the current geopolitical situation. This involves not only our internal business steering, but also our dividend.
Accordingly, Uniper's management will propose to reduce the dividend from prior years' EUR 501 million- EUR 26 million for the fiscal year 2021, which represents the minimum dividend in line with German Stock Corporation Act. This proposal has been aligned with our majority shareholder, Fortum, and will be brought forward to the AGM on May 18th. Ultimately, the purpose of the dividend cut is to increase the resilience of Uniper's investment capability in a highly volatile environment. Despite turbulent energy markets and often uncertain regulatory conditions, we have a clear focus on leading Uniper into an era of decarbonized energy supply. A focal topic of the Uniper board in charge since spring 2021 has been to speed up the strategy execution. Uniper has accelerated the coal exit and is now well ahead of the original plan.
In addition, we have empowered the Uniper organization, for example, by establishing joint Uniper and Fortum teams for hydrogen and renewables in order to implement growth initiatives more quickly in the future by fully leveraging the capabilities in both companies. Even though more renewables will be the most important building block for the energy transition, the transformation cannot be achieved without maintaining security of supply. For the foreseeable future, gas will play a crucial role here. In 2021, we could see that this view has become more and more consensus across politicians as reflected in the German coalition agreement or the EU Taxonomy discussion. At the same time, we saw that minor shifts in global supply and demand balance, rising geopolitical uncertainties, and unplanned outages have led to unprecedented gas price volatility, and the outlook for the gas market is not very promising. The European gas market remains vulnerable.
Current reserves in European storage facilities have never been lower in the last 10 years. Comparatively warm winter temperatures and significantly increased energy imports are currently slowing down a rapid decrease of reserves. According to current calculations, supply will be sufficient to meet Europe's gas needs in the current winter season. However, uncertainties are growing as to whether market conditions in the upcoming summer season will allow for a sufficient refill of the European gas storages for the next winter season. Hence, the concerns about Europe's energy supply will prevail for the time being. In this situation, Uniper, as one of Europe's largest gas traders and gas storage operators, plays a vital role in contributing to a secure and sustainable energy supply. Uniper continued to deliver reliably in our European core markets in 2021.
In contrast to many of our competitors, we started with full gas storages into this winter. The LNG business offers additional flexibility. Here, Uniper has further expanded the number of traded LNG cargos to over 350 in 2021. Thus, we contribute to the liquidity of markets, and at the same time, we generate higher returns. Those returns are needed to decarbonize our portfolio. Before I elaborate on our strategic progress, let's have a look at the broader picture in terms of sustainability, where we have made significant progress in 2021. The topic of ESG has become an integral part of our daily work. Let's start with the E, which plays a central and integrated role in our strategy. As you already know, we are in the process of transforming our portfolio to ultimately become carbon neutral in the long term.
This transformation comprises three dimensions: exit, transform, and expand. With respect to these dimensions, we have not only accomplished a lot to date, but we also have a lot planned for the upcoming years, as I will explain to you in more detail in the slides to come. Beyond, as part of the annual report, we published not only our first EU Taxonomy disclosures, but also our first TCFD report today. This again highlights the importance of environmental factors and the transformation as part of our strategy going forward. Now over to our major achievements in the broader social area. For the second time since 2018, Uniper has received the Corporate Health Award in the energy industry category, which is the best known and most successful initiative in the field of occupational health management in Germany.
The result of the external audit reflects Uniper's great efforts to promote and maintain the health of employees, especially during the pandemic. This is directly linked to the introduction of our new normal work style that provides our employees with maximum working flexibility for the future. It includes, among other things, providing ergonomic working equipment for home use to our employees. Moving from health and safety to equality. Uniper's Board of Management approved recently a company-wide diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy, which is divided into five key areas of action, talent management, leadership, organization, marketplace, and society. The strategy provides a concrete framework to improve our performance in those five fields. Finally, we implemented a talent development program called Evolve that supports the development of our future talents towards leadership positions and expert roles so that they can drive the energy evolution and successfully lead our company into carbon neutrality.
Moving to the last block on the slide, there have also been some changes on the governance side. Since last year, the long-term incentivization for executives is linked to certain non-financial. One is the successful strategy execution toward decarbonization, the other is the so-called ESG target. For the 2022 tranche, this ESG target has been defined as the absolute CO₂ reduction of the European fleet over the next three years. To make it absolutely clear, with this element, 20% of the long-term bonus tranche for Uniper senior executives will be directly and quantitatively linked to CO₂ emissions. Diversity and expertise is also important when it comes to our governance bodies. We see a positive development here. With Tiina as our CFO, Uniper has one female member in the board of management, which translates into a quota of 25% female members.
When it comes to the supervisory board, the knowledge about climate-related topics becomes more and more important. Therefore, Uniper updated the competency profile for the supervisory board accordingly last year and also foresees an increased interaction on climate topics in the supervisory board. Lastly, in 2021, a sustainable development committee was established at our Russian subsidiary, Unipro, to provide effective support to the board of directors in the field of sustainable development. Let's focus now on the part of ESG that is most important to Uniper, the environment, or more concretely, decarbonization. Let's start with an overview of our CO₂ reduction targets, which form the cornerstones of our transition path in line with our strategy, Empower Energy Evolution. As you already know, our ultimate goal is to become carbon neutral by 2050 on group level.
For the European generation, we are even more ambitious and committed to be carbon neutral by 2035 already. One target that is probably new to you is our Scope three target, which has been published in December 2021. On group level, we commit to reduce our Scope three emissions until 2035 by 35% compared to the baseline 2021. While our Scope one and two emissions are mainly caused by our power generation, our Scope three emissions are primarily connected to our global commodities business. To achieve this target, we will work together with our producers and customers to reduce both upstream and downstream emissions across our value chains. Furthermore, we will gradually transfer our commodity portfolio into low and no carbon alternatives. As I already said, our transition towards carbon neutrality is built on three strategic dimensions, exit, transform, and expand.
Let's have a look at the exit pillar on the next slide. In January 2020, we announced our initial coal exit plan for Europe. Since then, we have been able to accelerate the phase out even further and shut down coal plants earlier than originally planned. This acceleration has secured a roughly 40% additional CO₂ reduction or approximately 15 million tons in absolute terms. To provide you a bit more details, we took the following steps in 2021. In April, at the second round of the German coal exit tenders, Uniper's bid for Wilhelmshaven was accepted. The electricity generation was ceased early December 2021 instead of 2022. In July, the Scholven 3 power plant was awarded closure by the German Federal Network Agency and will be taken off the grid end of October 2022.
In August, we announced that we will close one of the 4 500-megawatt units of Ratcliffe hard coal power plant already end of September 2022, and the remaining units end of September 2024 instead of autumn 2025. In October, we ended our lignite chapter in Europe and transferred the Schkopau power plant to Saale-Energie GmbH in line with our initial plan. In December, it was decided in the fourth tender that Staudinger 5 will end its commercial operations in 2023 instead of 2025. This means that only Datteln 4 and Maasvlakte 3 remain in operation after 2024 in Europe. As stated in the past with respect to Datteln 4, Uniper is open for discussions with a new German government that communicated its ambition to exit coal ideally by 2030 already.
Finally, you see the 2.4 GW lignite exposure in our Russian entity, Unipro. As I've said in the past, every part of Uniper needs to contribute to our decarbonization targets. In this regard, we are actively working in close collaboration with the management of Unipro towards that goal. However, as you know, the regulatory framework and the markets are different here compared to Europe. Accordingly, we need to reflect different circumstances in our decarbonization plans and ambitions for Russia. Nonetheless, we clearly see that the dynamic is picking up here, which is fully supported by us. When it comes to decarbonization, we must not only exit coal, but also transform and expand the other business areas. This brings us to the topic of capital allocation going forward. The following slide provides an overview about the magnitude and the areas of CapEx going forward.
We expect to increase our CapEx in 2022. Maintenance and replacement CapEx will increase somewhat to roughly EUR 450 million. More extensive measures are scheduled for some of our gas-fired power plants as part of the multi-year maintenance cycle. However, looking beyond 2022, our structural guidance for maintenance and repair CapEx in normal years remains at the EUR 400 million mark. When it comes to our growth CapEx in 2022, we expect the investments to end up above the EUR 500 million mark. This is a considerable increase compared to prior years and underlines our ambitions to grow. In 2022, the growth CapEx will be spent, among others, on our new gas power plants, Irsching 6 and Scholven 3. Going forward, all of our CapEx will be spent within one of the three areas on the right side.
While not all of them will trigger material investments in the short term, the year 2022 is key to push those projects significantly forward in order to fill up our CapEx pipeline in future years. The first priority is to get investments in onshore wind and photovoltaics on the ground in Europe. The second pillar, clean thermal generation, aims to further develop our existing platform and competencies in fossil power and heat generation towards a lower carbon offering for green customers. The third focus area is clean gases. Here, we want to drive market development along the value chain for sustainably produced hydrogen and biogases. Let's go into those topics one by one. The joint Fortum and Uniper team for wind and solar, which is steered from Uniper's headquarters in Düsseldorf, will comprise more than 100 employees in the course of 2022.
As a joint team, those colleagues develop assets that ultimately will trigger investments either by Uniper or by Fortum, depending on the characteristics of the project. An important first step was the investment decision taken in December 2021 to commence the construction of a 380 MW wind farm cluster in western Finland. The project will be powered by 56 turbines supplied by Nordex. It will generate around 1.1 TWh per year and is planned to come on stream in Q2 2024. Given the location and the fact that the Helsinki Municipal Utility is both an offtaker as well as a 40% partner in this project, this first investment will be realized by Fortum. This is an important milestone and signal that the team is in delivery mode.
The wind and solar team is currently developing a number of projects in the defined European core markets, which can be seen on the map on the right side of this slide. In Northern Europe, these are mainly further wind projects, and in Central Europe, a combination of wind and photovoltaic projects. This pipeline is the initial basis to have 1.5-2 GW of new renewal capacity ready by the end of 2025 within the joint one team. Now to the second important strategic building block for future growth. Thermal generation with a focus on low carbon energy use will benefit from a rising demand for reliable capacity from decarbonized gas. In Europe, unexpected unavailability of scheduled power generation from wind and nuclear energy has sparked the discussion about sufficient dispatchable power generation capacities in the future.
Thus, Uniper recorded a significant increase in utilization last year with our European gas-fired and hard coal-fired power plants. In the future, security of supply will come under pressure from two sides. Demand for electricity will develop more dynamically and further reliable baseload capacity will be shut down, especially in Central Europe. In order to ensure sufficient supply going forward, there needs to be a better environment for investments in new dispatchable power plants. In the short term, those power plants will need to be still gas-based. Over time, decarbonized gas solutions will take over, be it via new builds or transformation of existing assets. In 2022, Uniper will bring two major gas assets online that will already contribute to the issue of system security and lower carbon energy supply in the short term.
In the fall of 2022, the 300 MW Uniper gas-fired power plant, Irsching 6, will be made available to the transmission system operator in Bavaria as a standby power plant for 10 years. This facility will be crucial to balancing the grid, which is subsequently facing more volatility from the nuclear exit and the increasing feed-in of renewable energy. By the end of 2022, the CHP gas-fired power plant Scholven 3 in the northern Ruhr area is to be commenced and can generate around 130 MW of heat and electricity for an industrial customer and surplus energy for third parties. By replacing an older coal-fired power plant, Scholven 3 will effectively reduce carbon emissions while supplying energy and important products for the nearby industry hub.
Uniper will use its own heat infrastructure at this Ruhr cluster to use waste heat from the refinery site with BP for district heating in the northern Ruhr region in the future and save 60,000 tons of CO₂ annually. In the Netherlands, we are making the district heating supply of the city of The Hague more sustainable together with the Dutch energy supplier Eneco and are developing a concept to make the supply CO₂ free by 2035. In Russia, our subsidiary Unipro received approval in an auction process for the modernization of a total of five gas-fired power plant units with a total capacity of around 4,000 MW. The first of the five units will come back online as early as spring 2022 and will then receive increased capacity payments for 15 years.
For Germany, we see a window of opportunity opening up for dispatchable low carbon gas-fired power plants if the accelerated coal phase out is to be realized by 2030. A joint study by Boston Consulting Group and the Federation of German Industries estimates that Germany will need 60 new gas-fired power plants with a total capacity of 40 GW by 2030. The new German government has put this supply gap issue on its agenda and clearly positioned gas as part of the solution in the discussion. Results are to be provided by a yet to be established commission of experts and involved parties in the course of 2022. The complexity of the issue is further increased by the fact that the EU, with its taxonomy plans, also does not block gas as a transition fuel.
The strict requirements do not adequately take into account the heterogeneous national needs. In Germany, we are prepared to invest around two GW of new gas-fired power plants if the framework conditions are right, and this fits in with our European emissions reduction roadmap for 2030 and 2035. Uniper, as one of the most experienced European gas-fired power plant operators, can contribute expertise and brownfield sites here so that new builds could be implemented quickly. Another crucial building block for Uniper's long-term success is its market entry into the European and global green gases business, and here in particular with sustainably produced hydrogen. Uniper has developed an extensive project pipeline that covers both the production of low-carbon hydrogen in Europe as well as the import of hydrogen and its derivatives such as ammonia, methanol, and sustainable fuels.
In the coming years, Uniper will focus on realizing this project pipeline. A key focus of Uniper along the value chain is the production of hydrogen for stationary industrial applications. In 2021, we worked to establish our industrial site Wilhelmshaven on the German North Sea coast as the hub for green hydrogen, with which we aim to meet around 15% of Germany's hydrogen demand in 2030. A large electrolysis plant is planned here, possibly with offshore wind power supply by our cooperation partner, Ørsted. On the downstream side of the hydrogen value chain, we have just concluded a cooperation agreement with the German steel company, Salzgitter, who is pioneering the transformation toward low CO₂ steel production. In cooperation with strong partners, we have also worked on projects in important European industrial clusters such as Rotterdam, the Netherlands, the Humber region, and Grain in the United Kingdom.
In Sweden, Uniper, together with Fortum, intends to supply the chemical company Perstorp with green hydrogen for the production of climate-friendly methanol. The first significant investment decision is now scheduled for the second half of 2022. This is the German showcase project Energiepark Bad Lauchstädt, with an integrated concept from wind farm over hydrogen production with a 30-MW electrolysis plant up to transport, storage, and marketing. Overall, Uniper aims to build at least one GW of electrolysis capacity by 2030, which is more than covered by our project plans to date. Another focus of Uniper's future hydrogen business will develop in the area of mobility with e-fuels for ships or trucks, as well as sustainable air fuels for aviation. Not to mention our own plans to convert the company's gas-fired power plants.
In 2021, Uniper continued its partnership with Siemens and GE to study the conversion potential of our gas turbines to hydrogen. The next step will be to examine test options for the co-combustion of hydrogen or other biogases. A further essential building block in the hydrogen value chain is global origination, as imports will be needed to meet expected future demand in Europe. Uniper and the HYPORT Consortium from Oman are already working very specifically on concluding an offtake agreement for green ammonia for Europe. Russian gas major Novatek is aiming to supply Europe with low carbon hydrogen in the future. For this, Novatek is working with Uniper on the concept to develop a supply chain. The deep seaport of Wilhelmshaven on Germany's North Sea coast could play a significant role here, as it offers an ideal location for a hydrogen import terminal.
All in all, we are confident that with a now improved and expanded origination platform and an expanded investment budget, we've set the right framework to accelerate the portfolio transition. A strong operational performance, like the one we have seen in 2021, provides further financial tailwind for our journey. More on that from Tiina, who will lead you through the details of our 2021 results. Over to you, Tiina.
Good morning and a warm welcome also from my side to today's analyst call. Let's begin this part with the overview of Uniper's main operating indicators. The physical gas storage levels on the left side followed the overall developments on the European gas market. As you might remember, at the end of Q3, we started into the winter season with nearly full storages of 95%. This is roughly 20% above market average back then. Given high withdrawals in Q4, our filling levels at the end of the year were only about 65% and therefore significantly below prior year, as depicted on the chart. This clearly underlines our role in the system, as Klaus-Dieter just said. The European generation segment followed the trend of the previous quarters and closed the year with a significant increase in power generation of roughly 21%.
Looking at the underlying developments in the individual asset classes, hydro volumes decreased by around 5% year-on-year. Lower volumes in the Swedish hydro business, following particularly high precipitation and snow melt in 2020, were partly compensated by high precipitation in Germany. Improved availability in our Swedish nuclear fleet led to a production upside of 12%. As communicated before, the extended maintenance outages that we saw in 2020 did not occur in 2021. Gas and coal-fired power generation closed the year with a remarkable volume increase of 36% compared to 2020. Significantly higher production in our German and U.K. fleet, especially during the fourth quarter of 2021, more than overcompensated an unavailability at our Dutch Maasvlakte 3 power plant. In 2021, we could observe a noteworthy development.
Historically, high gas prices combined with a healthy demand and lower renewables feed-in fueled a comeback of coal-based generation across Europe, which was also clearly visible for Uniper. Additionally, our Datteln 4 and the Irsching 4 and 5 power plants now both fully contributed to the full year figures for the first time. Also, not to the same extent, we can also report a significant production growth of 8% year-on-year for the Russian power generation business. A recovery of domestic Russian consumption, as well as increased electricity export to Finland and to the Baltic countries, were mainly supporting this stable trend throughout 2021. As already flagged before, the high utilization of our fossil fleet in 2021 resulted in an increase of carbon emission of approximately 19%.
Carbon intensity remained at the previous year's level of 454 g CO2/kWh. When it comes to the expected CO2 emissions for 2022, we will, on the other hand, benefit from our successful coal exit efforts with regards to Heyden, Wilhelmshaven, Scholven, Maasvlakte 3, and the complete divestment of Schkopau. However, given the current market environment, at the same time, we expect significantly higher load factors across our fossil fleet. Therefore, our current forecast assumes a net increase of direct CO2 emissions in 2022. Ultimately, this reflects the fact that offering security of supply still comes at a cost with regards to the carbon emissions. Obviously, this is not the right direction and a clear reminder for the energy system that there are still quite some challenges ahead in order to decarbonize secure energy supply going forward.
With this said, let's move over to our key financials for 2021. First of all, I am very proud of the results that we have achieved in these challenging times. Those would not have been possible without the extraordinary good teamwork within Uniper, as well as the effective collaboration with Fortum. With an adjusted EBIT of almost EUR 1.2 billion, we are a tick higher than the midpoint of the increased earnings outlook. As usual, I will elaborate on the underlying drivers in more detail on one of the upcoming slides. The adjusted net income followed the positive EBIT development and increased by EUR 132 million year-on-year. Here, the economic interest results improved as the prior year saw some negative provisions revaluation effects from the lower interest rates.
However, this effect was overcompensated by a higher economic tax rate, which ended up a notch above 25% as more earnings shifted towards high tax countries. Despite a strong operational set of numbers, the reported IFRS net income shows a loss of about EUR 4.1 billion. Albeit not as negative as at the nine-month stage, this number is still heavily influenced by the IFRS accounting mismatch effects that we mentioned in our previous calls. Higher commodity prices increased the value of our underlying assets like power plants and gas inventories. Due to IFRS accounting rules, those economic gains are not realized in the net income until the corresponding gas or power sales have realized. However, on the opposite side, the concluded forward hedge deals for those assets are subject to mark-to-market valuation.
Hence, the decreasing fair value of those hedge deals is reflected in the net income already prior to realization. As highlighted before, this effect is only temporary and will resolve over time as deals settle. Nevertheless, as you know, the impact on Uniper's liquidity situation is significant. In many cases, the hedge deals are concluded via channels that are subject to margining. As commodity prices surge, those hedge deals led overall to a significant loss in value, effectively ten-folding net margining requirements versus prior year. This has triggered a broad set of measures on our side, which also explains the very high operational cash flow and subsequently low economic net debt. Let's have a closer look at the current margining situation and the measures involved in the next slide.
When we sat down in our nine-month call at the beginning of November, the ongoing commodity price rally had already led to high margining payments, as reflected in the net margining receivables of EUR 3.1 billion. However, since end of September, commodity prices further elevated to unseen and unexpected levels, culminating in the TTF gas price of more than EUR 180 per MW just before Christmas. Even though prices came down a little in the last week of December, Uniper's net margining receivable received a record high EUR 7.1 billion at the end of the year. In light of this development, Uniper took far-reaching financial steps around New Year to secure sufficient liquidity as announced in the ad hoc at the beginning of January. First, utilizing the existing revolving credit facilities with core banks up to the committed EUR 1.8 billion.
Second, extending the credit facility with our major shareholder, Fortum, up to EUR 8 billion, which provides for parental guarantees as well as shareholder loans. As of December 31, this facility was utilized with EUR 2.5 billion in cash drawings and EUR 2 billion in guarantees. The current maturity date on this facility is January 2024. Finally, Uniper agreed with the German state-owned KfW Bank on a further credit facility of up to EUR 2 billion. This facility was concluded on January 4 and will expire end of April. Uniper has not utilized this line so far. In total, Uniper was able to secure about EUR 12 billion of additional financing support around New Year. As of December 31, a bit more than 50% of the additional lines had been drawn. Aside from the external financing measures, Uniper has taken further steps.
This includes, on the one hand, portfolio steering aspects that supported the operational cash flow as a further source of liquidity. We will come to this in a minute. However, aside from creating additional headroom, Uniper also took measures to effectively limit the liquidity risk exposure stemming from margining. This includes, among others, adjustment of hedging strategies in terms of speed and hedging channels. The latter involves recalibrating our hedging activities towards OTC channels that are not subject to margining, as well as altering bilateral agreements to better fit to the current market situation. Finally, Uniper is engaging in discussions with regulators to address the system-level issues and consequences arising from margining regime under current market circumstances. In the current form, there might arise situation where the system might ultimately fight its very purpose to stabilize and secure the energy markets.
Let's get back to the financial results of 2021 and the development of the adjusted EBIT on the next slide. As usual, let's have a look at the main drivers for the year-on-year development of the adjusted EBIT. Overall, adjusted EBIT increased by almost EUR 200 million over prior year. As we have seen already at the nine-month stage, the main reason for this positive development comes from the gas midstream and international commodity business, which together came in about EUR 430 million higher than previous year. The gas midstream business continued its positive trend with another strong quarter in Q4. Once again, the team was able to successfully optimize our flexible assets and to capture value in volatile markets.
Overall, the gas midstream business achieved an adjusted EBIT of more than EUR 800 million for the full year 2021, which is the highest since 2016 and more than EUR 200 million above the already strong prior year. However, please note that a part of this strong performance in Q4 was related to our operational measures around liquidity management. Accordingly, a large part of the Q4 gas result is effectively a shift of earnings that would have otherwise materialized in Q1. The international commodity business, in this case, mostly our U.S. business, also came in more than 200 million better than last year. The effect here is already well known from Q1 when the business benefited from the market developments in North America and Asia during the winter cycle.
Looking at the next line, we see a negative year-over-year effect of roughly EUR 170 million in our power and carbon commodity business, which stems primarily from a lower prop trading result. Next, European fossil generation, which is overall slightly lower compared to the strong previous year. On the one hand, we saw a positive impact from Datteln 4 and Irsching 4 and 5 being in operation throughout the full year 2021, which was not the case back then in 2020. On the other hand, this was overcompensated by unavailability at Maasvlakte 3, and a lapse of very strong optimization results that we saw in 2020. When it comes to our outright business, we see underlying a positive volume and price effects of roughly EUR 100 million year-over-year. On the volume side, we experienced significantly higher availabilities for our nuclear assets after long outages in 2020.
However, this is partly offset by lower hydro volumes driven by the development in Sweden, where we experienced a remarkably high hydro balance back in 2020. When it comes to achieved prices, we see a somewhat positive effect on the hydro side being partly offset in the nuclear part. While the underlying outright business improved year-on-year, the positive development is overcompensated due to an increase in nuclear waste provision of roughly EUR 120 million. This increase results from higher inflation assumption, but is also driven by the delayed political decision on the final repository in Sweden. Our Russian power generation business delivered once again a strong operational performance in 2021, which ended up above the prior guidance of Unipro. Comparing the results against prior year, we see a slight increase.
The strong underlying business was driven by high day-ahead market prices in the European zone and the contributions from Berezovskaya 3. Those positive effects were partly compensated by lower earnings from Shaturskaya, Yaivinskaya, and Surgutskaya, which all moved from the CSA capacity market scheme into the KOM scheme. Finally, we also see a negative FX effect taking its toll here. The other category amounts to roughly EUR 80 million- year-on-year, and reflects for the most part unallocated consolidation effects, lower results from the engineering business as well as higher administration costs. Now over on the operating cash flow. The operating cash flow before interest and taxes amounts to an extraordinary high amount of EUR 3.9 billion at year-end, which is three times higher than previous year's result.
As pointed out before, this is the intentional result of a business steering that focused on high operating cash flow in a time when liquidity was priority. How big is the impact from those measures, and what is the underlying OCF? Looking at our historical cash conversion rate of 80% and an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 1.9 billion, one could have assumed a normal OCF before interest and taxes of roughly EUR 1.5 billion for this year. Accordingly, it is fair to say that our measures generated more than EUR 2 billion of additional OCF this year. The bigger part of those measures sits within the other category that clearly stands out on the chart. As a reminder, this other category generally summarizes all CO2 emission rights related provisions and working capital effects.
On a full year basis, those effects should structurally net out in a normal year like they did, for example, for the most part last year at this point in time. Therefore, those EUR 1.7 billion in the other category represent optimization measures related to CO2 emission rights, which effectively deferred the payoff for the bought CO2 certificates into the future. The remaining effects from steering impulses are reflected in changes in working capital, which are particularly influenced by the development of inventories, receivables, and payables in the gas midstream business. Accordingly, the way how we utilize the different gas assets, including management of the storage withdrawals, optimization of contracts, and selections of different market channels, has the strongest impact here. OCF measures usually increase the cash flow in one time frame at the expense of the other period. This is also the case here.
However, you should not expect to see the full backswing only hitting 2022. The compensating impact will rather materialize over the next years. Moving over to the economic net debt. At the year-end 2021, the economic net debt stood at EUR 0.3 billion, which is about EUR 2.7 billion lower compared to the beginning of the year. The main driver for this reduction is clearly the operating cash flow of EUR 3.6 billion from the previous slides. However, lower pension provisions further contributed about EUR 300 million to the positive development of the economic net debt. The main reason being higher interest rates on pension provisions, which increased in Germany from 0.8% to 1.2%, and in the U.K. from 1.5% to 2%.
Those positive developments significantly overcompensated the impacts from investments and the dividend paid in last May. On the last remark on what is not defined here, let me remind you that margining payments do not influence our economic net debt. Margining paid results in a decrease in cash, but at the same time a margining receivable is recognized. Both positions are included and therefore net out within our net financial position. The same applies for margining payables that get booked when Uniper receives cash from external counterparties. Moving over to the last topic today, Uniper's earnings outlook for 2022. After a very strong year 2021 in terms of earnings, we revised our guidance upwards twice. We are currently expecting 2022 to turn out about equally high.
Concretely, this translates into a guidance of EUR 1 billion-EUR 1.3 billion for adjusted EBIT and between EUR 800 million-EUR 1.1 billion for adjusted net income, all under the consideration of still volatile and high commodity price environment, which is reflected in the applied band, bandwidth. In the middle of this slide, you find the key drivers that explain the adjusted EBIT development from 2021 to 2022. Please note that those are the underlying business drivers. The accounting segment view is further influenced by significant intra-group consolidation effects due to the high carbon prices. However, as those do not influence the group in total, we can focus on the business here.
Looking at the major earnings drivers for 2022 compared to 2021, we see first and foremost a strong result from the European fossil generation, where higher load factors are overcompensating lower U.K. capacity market payments and the lapse of earnings from the disposal of Schkopau Power Plant. Further positive effects are expected in our Russian power generation business, with Berezovskaya 3 contributing for the full year, as well as in our power commodities trading, where we anticipate an improvement in the prop trading. When it comes to our gas midstream business, we expect a stable development year on year. While this might not sound impressive, it certainly is given the year's high results. Finally, with regards to our international commodity business, we see a significantly lower contribution, as we do not expect a reoccurrence of the events that took place, especially in North America last winter.
Again, as a reminder, those extraordinary effects massively impacted, in particular, our Q1 results in 2021. Therefore, when it comes to the quarterly breakdown of earnings mix here, you should expect Q1 to come in significantly lower. Given the lapse of extraordinary effects in the international commodity business, the already mentioned shift of gas margin into the Q4 of this year, as well as the earnings distribution in the other parts of the business, we expect the Q1 currently to end up only in the mid double-digit area. However, given the overall high volatility, there is a high degree of uncertainty around this assessment. To sum it up, the year 2022 will most likely share some similarities with the last year. We will continue to optimize our business and our financing structures in order to overcome the challenges of volatile commodity markets.
This will be the foundation that enables our teams once again to tap the full potential of our assets in the market with high demand for flexible energy supply. Concluding the presentation part for today, thank you very much for bearing with us so far. Klaus-Dieter and myself are looking forward to taking your questions now. Stefan, please.
Thank you, Tiina. We would start our Q&A session now and need to be obviously very disciplined during the remaining time. Therefore, please do not hesitate to ask your questions now. As usual, please try to limit yourself to two questions each. Operator, please.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question for our speakers, please dial zero and one on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you find your question is answered before it is your turn to speak, you can dial zero and two to cancel your question. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. One moment, please, for the first question. The first question is from Deepa Venkateswaran, Bernstein. Your line is now open.
Deepa?
Yes. Hello. Sorry for that. Just had a problem with the connection. My two questions, firstly, just on Nord Stream. In case, you know, you have a loan outstanding of EUR 950 million. In case this is not CODed, I would presume you need to write off and then derecognize all the interest income. Maybe could you talk about what's your current assumption that, you know, maybe it's just a delay or how could this happen? My second question is on the Nordic hedge prices. You know, on a quarter-on-quarter basis, there's a reduction from around EUR 22- EUR 18 for 2022 and 2023. I know the year after is coming in EUR 30.
Could you explain this dynamic, particularly in the context of, you know, broader rises in wholesale power prices? Thank you.
Deepa, hello. I think we can certainly talk a little bit about the numbers and the loan outstanding. I think we have also disclosed some numbers around Nord Stream 2. Please take into account that we are also kind of still in a situation to digest yesterday's decision, yesterday morning's decision, of head of Russia and also the decision taken by German government to suspend and halt the certification process, of Nord Stream 2. I have to admit that we are still trying to figure out what this would mean also around kind of a likelihood of how the project can be developed going forward. We indicated in our statement already that we will look into that, going forward.
I want to still be optimistic that the project can be completed and not only the project also go on stream. Clearly, it's unclear to us, maybe even to the regulator, if and how the certification process can be restarted. You were referring to a loan. I do recall that we had a loan of 700-something million and accrued interest, which would brings us to almost a billion, meanwhile. That's the number that I do recall. I do see thumbs up around me here, so that must be by and large the right number that we have. Maybe on Nordic-
I think the 950 was mainly. I think when the project was initially announced, that was the contribution of all the European partners, including Europe. That was the source of my EUR 950. Wasn't quite your 700+ accrued, but maybe the numbers are still the same.
Yes. I think we can confirm that. On your second question, Nordic hedge prices, maybe Tiina, you want to.
Yes.
As a former head of generation of Nordics.
Yes. Very good. Thank you, Deepa, and hello. Thanks for your question. Yes, the Nordic hedge pricing certainly now are lower for this year and 2023. I would raise in a way two reasons for those ones. First of all, we need to recall that these hedges are in a way done two-three years beforehand. When the hedges were done, we were under COVID. To do the hedges, very low liquidity in the market. Therefore, we used the proxy hedging. The numbers, so those proxy positions have not evolved positively at the moment. The other reason is that looking at the area prices, so particularly the Swedish area two compared to Swedish area three. Area two has been much lower.
That's the balance. We have quite a lot of hydro production in nearly all in area two, which in a way weighs in this overall number.
Okay, thank you. The next question is from James Brand, Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for the presentation. Two questions. One is just a clarification on the last question. Just in terms of the Nord Stream loan, how much interest income did you accrue last year? I seem to recall it's maybe 120 million, but maybe you could just confirm that's roughly correct. On the deliveries of gas that you get from Gazprom, obviously, hopefully they continue to flow, not disrupt it, at least from a pure availability perspective. I won't comment on the politics of it all. If for some reason those gas deliveries were to be interrupted, where would you stand in terms of potential compensation?
Would you be entitled to compensation if you had to procure gas at higher prices, which was the fourth risk you highlighted on your slide three? Is that an entitlement you have under the contracts or not? Thank you very much.
Let me start with your second question. What if and speculating about the future. Maybe there are many other questions that you may have also related to kind of potential scenarios going forward. Honestly, I don't want to speculate. I can tell you that we are looking here on our end at so many different scenarios now that we need to kind of digest and understand, trying to figure out what this would mean with us and so forth. I would really refrain from speculating what it would mean if and so. To your concrete point, for example, also our legal view strongly depends on who would then be the root cause for any interruption of gas supply. Is it Gazprom stopping? Is it we are not buying?
Is it Germany taking action? Is it Russia taking action? Is it sanction related? There are so many questions. Some could end up in a situation in which we call it a force majeure. Some would say it's just a business relation between Gazprom and Uniper. Honestly, I don't want to speculate about that. What we do have to see is we have customers and they need gas, and we need to make sure that gas is being delivered in almost every scenario, and we're working hard on this one. To your first question, that was around the Nord Stream interest income. You mentioned a three-digit number. That I cannot confirm. I think we have disclosed always a higher double-digit number on interest income annually.
That is what I can say with regards to your question.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question is from Sam Arie, UBS. Your line is now open.
Hi. Good morning, everybody. Thanks as always for today's presentation and a ton of very helpful information you provided. I'm just keen, I think, to follow up James's question on the gas supply arrangements. I understand your point that you know, it's hard to speculate about future scenarios. I feel like the question I want to ask is could you just talk to us a bit about your current gas procurement arrangements from Russia? I know it's a very long-standing business activity for you, but I guess the details have always been a bit of a black box for us from the outside. So I kind of I almost could stop my question there and just see what you're able to say.
If I was to tell you the kinda things that are on our mind, I suppose, we're wondering, you know, what share of your gas contract commitments to European customers are currently sourced from Russia, and how much of that is covered by your long-term contracts, and where are we on the long-term contracts at the minute relative to any kind of minimum volume levels? You know, what are you doing? Are you taking the max you can under the contract? Are you not getting everything you asked for, or have you reduced your purchases because price levels are high? You know, I've read a few different stories in the press there.
I suppose, you know, what are your options to offset any future further reductions in Russian supply with other sources given that, I guess, global supply is what it is in the short run? Those are the kind of questions on our mind. But I think, you know, and I know there's limits on what you can say, but if we could just get you to talk for a few minutes on how the gas procurement relationship with Russia is currently standing, I think that would be highly valuable. Thank you.
Yes. I understand your question, and I can tell you many people are interested now in our, again, the business relationship about the details. To be, again, very honest with you, I don't want to disclose the. Not only the details of it, but I can only talk kind of about kind of some general numbers because this is obviously highly confidential and this is business related and so forth, number one. Now, what we have disclosed is that we have what we call an LTC portfolio, so long-term contract portfolio, sort of 400 billion terawatt-hours. What I can say is the lion's share or more than 50% would come from Russia. But that's all I can say.
What I can also say is, I can repeat what I've already said publicly, that Gazprom is delivering according to our contracts. Everything that we have agreed with them on a contractual basis, and we have a number of contracts that I can also say, not only one contract. Everything that is agreed in this contract is being delivered by Gazprom. My understanding is that we are not the only ones having long-term contracts with Gazprom. There are other competitors who have similar contracts, and also Gazprom delivers the volumes according to their contracts. That is something that I can say.
I would also add to that we are at the upper limits of our contractual volumes because clearly in this situation we kind of ask for all the volumes on maximum level, certainly also to provide gas to our customers and to the German gas market. In terms of where the delivery point for us is, this is German border. We have agreed to that. You know that we are not an owner any longer of the transmission system. That is basically the handover point for the gas. Again in general coming back to our contractual situation you mentioned it's a black box for you.
I very much hope that it's a black box for you, 'cause obviously this is highly confidential in terms of our business relationship with the Russians. I should add that we have 50 years, I mentioned that before, 50-plus years relationship with Gazprom, and gas flows were not interrupted because of our Russian partners or because of Uniper. We had a crisis situation many years ago, but the root cause for that interruption was not our partner in Russia, and it was not Uniper. Other kind of reasons for these interruptions.
Okay. Thank you. That's really helpful. I mean, if I just may, a quick comment. I mean, it seems like if you're at the top end of your contracts and the contracts are being delivered, but we know that Russian supply in general is heavily down in recent years, you know, it implies that the shortage is in the spot market, basically. Does that make you wish that you had contracted more with Gazprom? And if we could look past, I don't know if we can, but if we could look past the current situation, would you be a willing buyer of longer and larger contracts?
Look, I mean, in hindsight, you might be right. But I can also say we had other years in which we were rather kind of oversupplied in similar situations. You know, that's how the contracts work. We have an upper limit. We have a lower limit. We have agreed on certain volumes. Sometimes we would have wished for a higher volume, and sometimes we may have wished for a lower volume. Yeah. That's the contract we're in. Yeah.
Really helpful. Okay. Thank you so much for your super answer there. Thank you.
The next question is from Lüder Schumacher, Société Générale. Your line is now open.
Good morning. Yeah, two questions from my side. The first one is going back to your Nordic power hedges. Tiina, you said that the reason for the low prices is that they, these were forward sales entered into a long time ago. Just going back to nine-month numbers, you were at EUR 22 and EUR 21 for the years 2022 and 2023. This has come down to EUR 18, and this in a market environment where even SE2, the lowest price area in Sweden, had an average price in Q4 of almost EUR 45. I still don't understand how we can possibly manage to decrease the average achieved price in this market environment in Q4. If at all possible, if you could elaborate a bit more there, that would be much appreciated. The second one is on variation margin.
Now, you say that they do not impact your net debt, which is interesting. That's different to what we observe with other companies. If you could explain the mechanics there, why variation margin outflows are not part of the working capital that is in the end reflected in the net debt. Connected to this, if it's not variation margin inflows, as you exclude these variation margin flows on your carbon position, what exactly is behind these EUR 1.7 billion you highlight under other on slide 18?
Thank you for the question. First of all, it's going back to the Nordic hedge prices. As mentioned, the area prices was the one reason, but probably the bigger driver for year-end numbers were the proxy hedges. At the time of very, very low liquidity, actually we sold at some point continental instead of the Nordic. Effectively, we had a spread position, long Nordic, short continental. As we have seen lately, the spread has developed negatively. This negative development is reflected to the hedge price. Then-
Oh.
Sorry.
No, this is very interesting. This has nothing to do with Nordic power prices at all. It's just basically being caught off guard by Nordic power prices not moving in line with continental power prices. Hence, this was what do you call a proxy hedge, but that was basically an outright position that went wrong.
Well, basically when the liquidity situation, you know, also in the COVID time, we wanted to secure. This was, at the time, you know, assessed that it is the best to lock some prices and, when the area price, too, liquidity very low. Therefore, we made some other location hedges. Overall, of course, now looking back, we could conclude differently, but I think securing the cash flow is of course very important and reduce our outright exposure. That was the basis risk that we were managing.
Okay.
Going back to the margining. Basically, when we pay margining, at the same time, we recognize a receivable. This is the money, you know, what we'll receive back when we perform our contracts and deliver. These rates also the rating agencies consider this position close to cash, and therefore it is, you know, excluded from the economic net debt. In our annual report on page 45, we explain all these items, how we will record the items.
The EUR 1.7 billion on slide 18, if it's not related to any kind of margin inflows, what exactly is behind that? What do you mean by cumulative CO2 effect?
Basically, you know, in the cash flow, we saw that we did a lot of also operative measures to improve our cash flow, and this other part in the operating cash flow. Basically this is all the impacts from the CO2 and what we did. Actually what we shifted the payments over CO2 certificates to the future period. Shifting the payment to 2022 to release cash in 2021 in this liquidity situation. That's not related to margining. This is the operative actions, what we purposely did at the year-end.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question is from Vincent Ayral, JPMorgan. Your line is now open.
Yes. Good morning. Nord Stream 2, I think we've tried a few times and you already gave a bit of color, so thank you for that. I'll come back again on the trading. It's not the first time there is a bit of an accident there. If we look beyond the Nordics where you explain you were basically long Nordic and short continent, understand. When we look at the continent and in Germany, the implied prices there are almost half the average trading calendar 2022 and calendar 2023 in Q4. Could you give us a bit of color on what happened as well on the continent hedging? That would be the first question.
If we have to stick to two then, I will ask regarding these gas margins which have been moved from Q1 2022 into Q4. You flagged it among other things also to explain that Q1 2022 may be in the low teens, as you said, but how much money has been shifted? It would be important for us to get any idea and do any forecast. Thank you.
Thank you for the question. First one related to the continental hedge prices. The hedge prices, if we compare to the 2020 December numbers, I would say that the hedge ratios are pretty much the same. Nearly fully hedged already the year before. Not much room to, in a way, do the new hedging. I think the slight improvement there tells that we are getting some benefit of the higher prices, but as the hedge levels. As mentioned, during the COVID time, securing cash flow has been fairly high. Of course, in the future, you know, we have an opportunity also to capture the value of the higher prices. This is of course the balance of securing the cash flow and then capturing the values.
If we look at the overall results, I would say that managing the market risk, liquidity risk, credit risks also, the result in 2020 and 2021 is very good. Overall, I think the balance of the things is also good outcome. The margin shift, so to support our liquidity, we did many operative measures and to give a rough indication, how much of the margin was shifted from the Q1 2020 to last quarter. We would say around 200 million adjusted EBIT impact.
Okay. Thank you very much. I would just like just for a bit more precision. When you say liquidity was low and you've done some proxy hedging, what do you mean by that? Have you been hedging electricity with gas? Just could you give a bit of color on this element so we better understand exactly what's been happening? Thank you.
Well, I think what I was referring to is the general market liquidity, not our liquidity situation. How much, you know, there is. In the COVID time, there was available to do the hedges and so forth. More generally the overall. Particularly, I think in the Nordic, if we look at the liquidity in price area two. It has been fairly low, and the congestion with the different areas have really limited the trade.
Thank you.
The next question is from Wanda Słowikowska, Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.
Hi. Good morning. Hopefully you can hear me. two questions from me, if I may. The first one is on Berezovskaya three in Russia. I mean, you said that you are working with the management of Uniper, but yesterday management of Uniper stated that they have no plans whatsoever to dispose the plant given the profitability and the cash flow generation. So how should we read it? The second question is a question about an update on two power plants. One is in U.K., the Grain. Can you give us some update or any numbers around the damage that was done recently in the U.K.? The second one is Datteln 4. Where are we on the court case? Thanks a lot.
Let me start with Datteln 4. There's nothing new that we can say on Datteln 4, the court case. Still waiting for decisions to be taken and I can add that we don't expect a decision by the court to be taken very soon. I would rather expect second half of 2022 a decision to be taken, not in the first half of 2022. On Grain. Yes, there was an accident. Do we have already numbers? Let me. I'll check that here. Obviously there are already numbers available. Well, and it's still ongoing. Yes. We don't have precise numbers on the financial impact this would have.
It would not exceed, or that latest estimate should not exceed low- to mid-double-digit figure as a kind of financial impact that would possibly have. Apart from that, we are trying to understand the root causes for this incident. Eventually, you were talking about Berezovskaya. Look, I mean, clearly, Berezovskaya, and I'm not only referring to Berezovskaya 3, because that is only unit number three. It's in total a 2.4 GW lignite power station, so three units with 800 MW of installed capacity each. Certainly this is something that we have to figure out going forward, how to deal with that, how does this fit to our decarbonization strategy. Let me be honest with you.
I mean, recent developments around the geopolitical situation we are in is clearly also having an impact now on how we see the businesses to be developed going forward. I would understand. I was not in that call that you mentioned on the Uniper side, but clearly also our Uniper colleagues, and we would have to be extremely cautious now about anything that we think that we can possibly do on our portfolio going forward, because obviously we first need to understand the impact of what we have seen or what is still developing in these days around the Russian-Ukrainian border and so forth.
I would be also very cautious now on saying something on value or any other activity in Russia going forward. We have to be cautious and understand the situation before we can make any kind of announcement how to tackle the carbon footprint that we have, you know, in general, but also specifically in Berezovskaya.
Thank you very much. A very quick follow-up, if I may, on the Heyden power plant. Can you talk about how you had your spread position? Because if you cannot run power plant, I would assume you had some volume. I'm trying to understand what the potential risk on your earnings coming from the outage that you didn't expect.
Well, maybe Klaus, if that's so, current assessment is that there's only limited impact on the commercial side to buy back the hedges. I think we have the two units at the moment. They are all offline. The unit seven, so the repair will take longer, but hopefully we can bring back the 2 units soon in operation.
Okay, last question.
Oh, sorry. Okay. I can follow up with the IR.
Yes, please. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Peter Bisztyga, Citi. Your line is now open.
Hi. Yes, good morning, everybody. Two questions from my side, please. The first one, I wanted to understand a little bit, how you benefit from your gas procurement other than from Russia. From, for example, your LNG contract, is there any color you can give us of, you know, the current gas price squeeze, how it helps you, and then is the profitability outlook for the commodity trading business improving into the next year and 2023? Just taking the course. Second question I have on the dividend, because you capped it to the minimum, at what point you will revisit this dividend policy or come up with something precise? You know, you need a more earnings visibility, more balance sheet strength, the commodity volatility will have to go down.
I mean, you know, can you reinstate it at what are the conditions for it?
Well, let me start with your second question on when will we look at the dividend and the opportunities that are ahead of us. I would certainly believe that we, as a board of management, will look at not only dividend, but also our ability to finance once we feel more comfortable with the liquidity situation in general. Since we do not know when this will be somehow different, it's really difficult also to predict when exactly at what point in time we can look at the dividend. I would clearly link that to our liquidity situation we are in.
When it comes to your first question, I mean, the activities that we have, you know that we're not only active with our Russian gas partners, we also have additional long-term contracts. I mentioned that before, referring to the numbers that I was talking about. We have additional long-term contracts that are clearly also helpful and improve our business. We have an LNG business. Also part of that LNG business is again some long-term contracts that we do have. Some of the contracts are clearly linked to prices in certain gas hubs. We have, for example, contracts that are linked to price spreads between TTF and Henry Hub.
As you can imagine and derive from those kind of price developments, that this is a spread that is open and positive. It helps us obviously to kind of contribute to our earnings. To what extent we can in this situation hedge already part of the positions is again something that we have to closely follow and watch. Also again, taking into account our liquidity situation and the high price volatility. You are right saying we are kind of benefiting not only from gas procurement from Russia, but also from other long-term contracts that we have signed in Europe but also beyond, in particular related to our LNG business activities.
Okay, you cannot attach any volume numbers related, for example, to your LNG portfolio or the margin numbers. How reluctant would you be to provide any insight? 'Cause, you know, in the past you-
Sure.
The guidance was, you know, low triple-digit figure for the commodity contribution on EBIT line. But now clearly the last two years have shown that you can benefit much more. Maybe you can say, you know, if you look at the forward, if the next two years could be as good as the last two years or any color would be helpful.
Look, when it comes to our LNG business, I think it's fair to say, and I think we have also disclosed that we have quite kind of expanded that business. I think we've disclosed also a number that we've traded 350+ cargos last year, which is, I think 40% or something more than the year before. So that's a substantial volume. We're not in a position to predict any additional number for 2022. That's maybe one thing I can add or kind of responding to your question. On the position that we have in Freeport, that is a deal that is by and large does have a volume of 14 TWh annually.
Again, this is an exposure, a spread exposure Henry Hub versus TTF, if that was of help to you.
Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our Q&A session. I hand back to Mr. Maubach for some closing remarks.
Well, we are over time. Thanks for your interest. I want to cut this short. Hope to see you soon in person. I understand that you all have many questions, and particularly around kind of the energy supply situation in our gas business. You can come back to our IR team on most of these questions certainly. It's going to be an exciting year, 2022. That should be my final remark. Thank you. Thank you again for joining. Thanks.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This conference has been concluded. You may disconnect.