Thank you, Chairman. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to warmly welcome you to Fortum's annual general meeting. I can confirm what the Chair just said of good cooperation. Cooperation has been flawless, flexible. The Chairman of the Board is always available for us, and he is very interested in what the company does and is. The cooperation is very well-founded. I start by telling a few words about Fortum today before briefly discussing what happened in 2023, how our performance developed, and what our strategy has been and how it has been executed. Today, Fortum has a competitive and solid position in the Nordics. As much as 98% of the energy we generate is clean, which is reflected in our earnings and the distribution of our production. We are the second cleanest power generator in Europe.
The specific emissions of our power are only 16 g of CO2 per kWh. Our absolute CO2 emissions last year amounted to 1.6 million tons. Caring for the safety and well-being at work is a foundation in what we do and a prerequisite for efficient and stable production. Our aim is to be a safe workplace, not only to our own staff but also to our contractors and service providers. We know that diversity, equity, and inclusion will be essential in our long-term success in all our markets. We value diversity and promote fair treatment and equal opportunities. In our employee survey, we improved the total DEI score, referring to diversity, equity, and inclusion. In 2023, we continued training both managers and other staff in diversity, equity, and inclusion. We had some 5,200 staff in 2023, and mostly they are in Finland and Sweden.
The reorganization in 2022 focused especially on diversity in the management teams of our business segments and support functions, both in relation to gender and nationality. This resulted in a significant increase in the number of women in top management. In 2023, approximately 41% of top managers were women. In the 11-member leadership team, five are women. Let me now introduce the leadership team to you. I am proudly presenting to you the leadership team with me. First, Simon- Erik Ollus. Simon is Executive Vice President for Corporate Customers and Markets. Then Petra Lundström. She is EVP Nuclear Generation. Mikael Lemström, in charge of Hydro Generation. Peter Strannegård, EVP for Renewables and Decarbonisation. Mikael Rönnblad, Executive Vice President for Consumer Solutions. Tiina Tuomela, who is our Chief Financial Officer. Nebahat Albayrak is our EVP for Sustainability and Corporate Relations. Evelina Dahl, she is EVP for People and Procurement.
Nora Steiner-Forsberg is our General Counsel. She is now in training for defense. Bernhard Günther, who used to be our CFO, is now our Chief Transformation Officer. Let me now move on to discussing the important events and the performance of Fortum in 2023. Last year was largely about stabilizing our business. Despite the volatile market environment, we strengthened our financial position, and financial performance was good. Our price hedging gives stability against extremely volatile market prices of power, and we have developed our exposure management with a new risk management framework. Our balance sheet is strong, and our leverage ratio is very low. In May, we returned to the bond markets, which normalized our financial structure and balanced the maturity profile of our debt. One of the major events last year was the changes in our Russia business.
Last year, we closed the books on our Russian operations for good. The Russian authorities unlawfully seized our assets, due to which we fully impaired or wrote them down. The Russia segment was deconsolidated in the second quarter of 2023. The new management, which was appointed by the Russian state, has changed the company name from PAO Fortum to Forward Energo. Since the Russian measures are a blatant violation against international investment protection treaties and deprive Fortum of its shareholder rights, we have initiated arbitration proceedings against Russia to protect our final position and the interests of our shareholders. We are demanding damages for the unlawful seizure of our assets. Fortum is seeking compensation at the value of its shares in PAO Fortum and its investments in Russia, amounting to several billion euros. Our plants functioned very well last year. We commissioned the Olkiluoto 3 plant.
Its commercial power generation began in May. As a consequence of the good availability of our generation plants, the higher power generation volumes and the smaller share of condensing power generation, the specific emissions of our power generation dropped to 16 grams per kWh from 25 grams kWh the year before. After the exit from Uniper a year ago, we published a new strategy, a new operating model, and a new business structure together with a new leadership team and a completely new organization. I will come back to them when discussing the execution of our strategy. Since our financial foundation is solid and the earnings of the financial year are so good, the Board of Directors is proposing to the AGM to distribute a dividend of EUR 1.15 per share. Despite an excessively busy year in a continuously volatile market environment, we succeeded well.
A big thank you goes naturally to our engaged personnel who have made this possible. I shall next address the comparable key figures of the group's continuing operations for the past year. The comparable operating profit of Q4 didn't reach the level of previous years, but was offset by the very strong performance of Q1. Therefore, the whole year's performance decreased only slightly from the previous year. The comparable earnings per share was lower than in Q4, but for the whole year we exceeded the result of 2022. The operative cash flow reached the good level of the previous year. Lastly, the balance sheet, and most importantly, the leverage. The balance sheet continued to strengthen, and the ratio of financial net debt to comparable EBITDA was [0.5x] The low leverage level provides a good starting point for Fortum's future development.
I welcome the latest news from our credit rating agencies in the past week. First, Fitch affirmed Fortum's long-term rating of BBB with stable outlook. Today, this morning, another one, Standard and Poor's affirmed that they increased Fortum's rating from BBB to BBB+ with stable outlook. These are a signal to us that our work and our efforts in the financial performance and stabilizing that and the execution of strategy are now bearing fruit. I am also very pleased with the performance of our generation segment. Its comparable operating profit was at an all-time high. Let us now look more closely at our financial performance. The comparable EBITDA declined slightly from the previous year, but it was still at a very good level, EUR 1.9 billion. The comparable operating profit also came slightly down, being EUR 1.5 billion, whereas the comparable net profit improved to EUR 1.15 billion.
The comparable earnings per share of 2023 was EUR 1.28, an increase from the previous year. It is our dividend policy to pay between 60% and 90% of the comparable earnings per share. This year's dividend proposal corresponds to 90% of the earnings per share figure. Looking at cash flow, the net cash from operating activities for the year was EUR 1.71 billion, which is well in line with levels of the preceding year, although the comparable EBITDA was EUR 122 million smaller. The main underlying reason was the positive change in working capital. The total assets at the year-end were EUR 19 billion. The change from year-end was caused by, among other things, the deconsolidation of the Russian segment. Our financial position is very solid, and our balance sheet is very strong. Our gross debt is EUR 5.8 billion, but at the same time, our liquidity position is very strong.
At year-end, we had sufficient liquidity reserves, EUR 7.5 billion in all, of which EUR 4.2 billion are liquid funds and EUR 3.3 billion undrawn committed credit facilities and overdraft limits. Thanks to our liquidity position, we can continue optimizing our cash and credit limits in order to manage the future impact of excessive volatility in the markets. We aim at a sufficient and optimal liquidity while striving to minimize net financial costs. During the past year, we further developed our risk management tools and created a new risk management framework. It helps us monitor and continuously review our liquidity in different scenarios in order to ensure a sufficient liquidity that corresponds to our needs. The highly volatile prices of power and the current market sentiment make our needs greater than in the past.
It is good to remember that at their peak, the margining requirements for hedging were at EUR 5 billion in the autumn of 2022. I shall next take a closer look at how we implemented our strategy over the past year. Here is the essence of our strategy launched in March 2023. We want to use our energy to build a world where people, businesses, and nature thrive together. To achieve this, we need to innovate and evolve to deliver clean energy reliably and to drive industrial decarbonization. We started to implement the new strategy with determination right away. Let's take a closer look at what we achieved last year. Let's start with our priority: delivering clean energy reliably. Last year, we announced a number of projects that will improve our operations. We won our application to extend the lifetime of the Loviisa nuclear power plant until 2050.
We will invest a total of around EUR 1 billion in the Loviisa plant during the extension period. We will also invest in maintenance upgrades at hydropower plants, for example, at the Untra power plant in Sweden. A major highlight of the year was the start of commercial power generation at the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant unit, where Fortum owns 25%. The acquisition of Telge Energi, Sweden's 10th largest clean energy retailer, fits perfectly with our consumer business. The acquisition increased our consumer and business customer base by 150,000 customers and strengthens our position as the largest electricity retailer in the Nordic region. The construction of the 380 MW Pjelax wind farm in Ostrobothnia is progressing on time and on budget. Our total investment in Pjelax is over EUR 200 million, and this is the third largest wind farm in Finland. It will be commissioned in the second quarter of this year.
Helen, a Finnish company, is a shareholder in the project and will purchase most of the electricity generation under a long-term contract. During the winter months of last year, Fortum's last coal-fired power plant in Finland, Meri-Pori, operated commercially to support security of supply in the Nordic electricity market. As of the beginning of next month, the plant will, under an agreement with the National Emergency Supply Agency, be put into security of supply operation for crisis and disruption situations until the end of 2026. Already 98% of our electricity production was carbon dioxide-free. We will continue our efforts in those areas that are not yet decarbonized. One example is the electrification of district heating systems and the move away from combustion-based generation technologies.
Last year, we decided to invest EUR 225 million in the Espoo Clean Heat Program to make use of the waste heat from Microsoft's future data centers in Espoo and Kirkkonummi. The aim is to cover around 40% of the heating needs of the Espoo region with this carbon dioxide-free waste heat. The total investment in the Espoo Clean Heat Program is around EUR 300 million. Let's now look at our next priority: promoting industrial decarbonization. In our nuclear power study, we explored the potential for both small modular reactors, the SMRs, and conventional large reactors in Finland and Sweden. In the framework of the study, we have established partnerships and are now exploring opportunities for cooperation with both technology suppliers and energy customers. During the past year, we signed several cooperation agreements under the study, including with KHNP in Korea and Westinghouse Electric Company in the U.S.
During the first year, we gained a very good understanding of the new nuclear suppliers. We will continue with the study this year, focusing on the viability of potential projects, identification of potential new building sites, risk mitigation measures, the pre-clearance process, and the evaluation of potential suppliers. One of our strategic objectives is to build a strong portfolio of long-term power purchase agreements, the PPAs. We made good progress in 2023, signing a number of PPAs with industrial customers that not only support the decarbonization of the industrial sectors but also reduce our own risks and stabilize our wholesale power generation revenues and cash flow. Finally, a few words about our renew and evolve priority, which is mainly related to the internal changes underway.
Our goal is to build an effective operating model that fits Fortum's changing operating environment, the size of our organization, and the basis of our operations. At the same time, we are developing our culture and leadership to best support the implementation of our strategy, emphasizing close collaboration with our customers. The reorganization was completed last year, and we are now introducing our new governance processes. In the summer, we also started a strategic review of our circular solutions businesses, which is expected to take about a year. As part of the ongoing transformation, we launched an efficiency program to cut fixed costs by EUR 100 million by the end of 2025. The world around us today is uncertain, unstable, and unpredictable. Demand for electricity has weakened, and our customers' investments have been postponed, and we do not see any growth in electricity demand in the short term.
The low visibility due to uncertainty is the reason why we have divided the implementation of the strategy into two phases. In the near future, we will focus on our core business in order to optimize our strongest activity, electricity generation. At the same time, we will manage our business risks, in particular the dependence of our profitability on electricity price volatility. Fortum will continue to pursue a prudent and disciplined capital allocation, i.e., a balance between balance sheet, dividend, and investments, which I will return to in more detail in a moment. We aim to maximize value creation through flexibility, efficiency, and cash flows. This will prepare us for future growth and enable us to be ready when demand picks up. Electricity demand in the Nordic countries is expected to grow by a quarter by 2030 and almost double by 2050.
We will continue to prepare for this long-term growth, driven by decarbonization through electrification in other sectors. We will seek partnerships with our own decarbonized generation and continue to grow with clean energy together with our industrial customers. In February this year, we published new strategic objectives with clear performance indicators to measure our progress and action. The targets are set in four key strategic areas that we want to develop to ensure optimal performance and risk management. First, we need to ensure high availability of nuclear and hydropower generation to strengthen our leadership in the Nordic region. This will also support security of supply. The availability of our power plants has historically been very good, and we have now set targets to improve it further. We aim to keep the availability of our nuclear plants above 90% and our hydroelectric plants above 95%.
Secondly, our flexible hydropower resources are a clear competitive advantage that add value. We have set the so-called optimization premium for flexible generation at EUR 6 through EUR 8 per MWh compared to the historical level of EUR 1 through EUR 3 per MWh. The optimization premium is one element of the achieved electricity price in addition to the effects of hedging and spot prices. There are a number of factors that contribute to the optimization, the most important of which are flexibility and environmental values. The third objective is the stabilization of revenue streams. To reduce the electricity price risk, we hedge our electricity generation to ensure predictable and stable cash flows. Our objective is to increase the share of long-term electricity contracts in our contracts with industrial operators. We have set a target to hedge at least 20% of Nordic wholesale electricity generation on a rolling 10-year basis by 2026.
Currently, we have hedged around 15% of our production for the period 2024 through 2033. The fourth performance indicator relates to our readiness to invest in longer-term growth as demand recovers. We are developing potential investment projects in onshore wind and solar-powered generations. Our target is to have at least 800 MW of capacity ready for construction by the end of 2026. Currently, we have projects in various stages of development with potential capacities well above our targets. However, they are not ready to be built, and not all projects are progressing towards construction readiness. The project development situation also reflects the current market situation in the Nordic countries, where supply currently exceeds demand for electricity. Some words about capital allocation. As I said, our priorities relate to how we use our balance sheet, how we make investments, and how we distribute dividends to shareholders.
We will closely monitor market developments, but at the same time, we will continue to be disciplined in our capital allocation. Our key objective is to ensure that our credit rating is at least BBB. As we have said, our leverage ratio can be up to 2x through 2.5x. Currently, our balance sheet is very strong, and our leverage is closer to zero. The logic of our capital allocation is that if investment opportunities are limited and we are not making large investments, we will distribute more capital in the form of dividends to shareholders. Conversely, if and when we have profitable investment projects, we will allocate less capital to dividend yields for shareholders and more to promising projects. Given the current sluggish growth in Nordic customer demand for electricity, we do not see profitable investment opportunities in new generation capacity that meet our criteria right now.
Investment is always about building profitable megawatts. However, as I said above, we are building our investment capacity to be ready to meet future demand growth. It is also important to note that our dividend policy does not aim at a stable dividend between years. Our dividend policy is to pay between 60% and 90% of comparable earnings per share. The dividend payout ratio is applied by applying the upper end of the range in situations of strong balance sheet and low investment, while the lower end of the range is applied in situations of high leverage and/or significant investment. For this reason, our current priority is to pay more dividends. This is also reflected in our dividend proposal for 2023, where we would pay 90% of comparable earnings per share. We want to be at the forefront of sustainable development and see this as a clear competitive advantage.
Our work is guided by more ambitious environmental objectives. We have brought forward our carbon neutrality target to 2030 and will phase out all coal-based energy production by the end of 2027. To measure our progress, we have set milestones for specific emissions by 2028. We are also committed to setting science-based emission reduction targets in line with the SBTI initiative: 1.5 degrees Celsius. In addition to the above, we are committed to three ambitious biodiversity targets: no loss of terrestrial nature from 2030 onwards. We will reduce annual upstream impacts on terrestrial biodiversity by 50% by 2030 when the baseline is 2021. We will continue to support local biodiversity, particularly in hydropower production, and we commit to developing a science-based methodology to assess the company's impacts on water. Finally, a short summary about Fortum's position.
Electricity demand in the Nordic countries is forecast to grow significantly in the long term. Enabling this growth is a cornerstone of our strategy. In implementing this strategy, we take into account the uncertainty in the operating environment. Fortum is built on three pillars. First, there are only two players in the Nordic countries that can offer competitive, reliable, and clean energy on a terawatt-hour scale. We are one of them. This makes us a sought-after partner for industrial players as they reduce their emissions through electrification. To maintain a strong competitive position, we need to focus on excellence, maintain high availability, efficiency, and safety in our facilities. This will also ensure good profitability of electricity generation. Secondly, we want to be at the forefront of sustainable development so that we can enable the energy transition and do our part to preserve the balance of nature.
We are one of the cleanest energy producers, and we have ambitious climate and environmental targets. They guide us in creating sustainable shareholder value. Finally, we have a sound financial position which we are nurturing in the face of uncertainty. We are selective in our investments and selectively pursue growth projects. The profitability of our projects is a priority. To ensure value creation, we focus on balance sheet strength, investments, and dividends as appropriate. I thank you, shareholders, for your confidence on my own behalf and on behalf of the Fortum Group. Thank you.