Thank you for coming along to our tea time. We're going to speak about Centrica Energy and the MAP. And, of course, just before I do that, just a very quick piece of housekeeping: no fire drills planned for today. If you do hear the fire alarm, please leave calmly and leave your belongings. The exits are over here, where you came in. So with that, I will pass over to Chris O'Shea, our CEO.
Thank you very much. I was hoping, Fraser, we'd tell you that the exits were down here and feel like you're in a plane. But look, good afternoon. Welcome, everybody. It's super to see all of you here. And also to have everyone that is with us online. I'm very grateful that you've taken the time to join and already got a round of applause with this. This is brilliant. I'm also delighted to say that we've got our new chairman, Kevin O'Byrne, here with us as well. So, we will be doing more of these events as we go forward, helping you to understand more about the important areas of Centrica and how we drive value creation. So you've heard me speak before about the key dynamics that will shape the energy market of the future.
There'll be more electrification, there'll be more intermittency, and there'll be more consumer engagement. Today's session will focus on two parts of our business that stand to benefit from those trends. You've got Centrica Energy and our meter asset provider, our MAP. These are great businesses in their own right, but they're even more valuable as part of our group.
Centrica Energy is ideally positioned to create value from intermittency and system complexity, and Cassim and John will share how we built our capabilities into a very hard-to-replicate asset-backed optimization business, underpinning our confidence in delivering consistent profitability and creating options for future growth, and a little bit after that, you'll hear from Dan and Gareth, sitting in the front row, about the new meter asset provider, which is a fantastic low-risk business with contracted and regulated returns that creates the foundation for consumers to take control of their energy use.
At face value, these two businesses may seem very, very different. But I think today you'll see just how much they have in common. Both are asset-backed. Both deliver exciting future optionality. Both can maximize the options which arise as a result of being part of the Centrica group. Thank you. I'm a bit jealous as to what they're doing. You'll have an opportunity to ask questions following each session. So we'll have two separate Q&A sessions. And we're also joined by our superb CFO, Russell O’Brien, for any of the trickier questions that you may have. So look, today I'm increasingly confident in the outlook for our business. And you'll see that, hopefully, reflected in the trading statement that we issued this morning.
All of our businesses are expected to deliver 2024 earnings within a medium-term range, two years early, with the exception of services, which is still improving, and it remains on track to deliver by 2026. We've extended the lives of our nuclear reactors again. Our CapEx is ramping up, albeit more slowly than I would like, and our balance sheet remains very, very strong, and it's against this backdrop that we announced a further GBP 300 million extension to the share buyback program, which will be completed by September.
Now, we won't talk about the trading update in detail today, but Russell and I are very happy to answer any questions that you might have, and if we could keep those questions to the end, so we'll have the first Q&A session about John and Cassim's session, and then the second one, Gareth and Dan. And then we'll take some questions on the trading update as you've got it. But before I hand you over to the Centrica Energy team, I want to give you a very quick reminder of our strategy. What we are doing to create value and options across the group. Yeah, it's doing that now.
Earlier this year, we launched our new purpose, which is energizing a greener, better future. This embodies what we're doing for our colleagues, what we're doing for our customers, and what we're doing for the broader energy system. It's why we get out of bed every morning. All of the countries we operate in have ambitious decarbonization targets. These ambitions present big opportunities for and big challenges to the energy sector. And in January, we'll be launching an updated climate transition plan, which will reveal more on how we'll achieve these ambitions. But to capitalize on these opportunities, we have a really simple focus approach. Firstly, we're maximizing the value of our existing businesses and driving operational excellence. Secondly, we're challenging ourselves to deliver the most attractive commercial offers to our customers.
I think we've shown progress in both of these areas, but there's still a huge amount of work to do, and there is still a huge amount of opportunities for us to go after in both these areas. A great example of this is the flexible energy on demand-side response capabilities that we've got, which will help our customers to make the most of their energy use and to reduce their bills. We're already working on how we embed these capabilities into our customer tariffs, and it's not going to happen overnight, but we have the platform.
We have the technology. We have the people. We have the ability to deliver for our customers when the time is right, and thirdly, we're investing for value. Now, we're often asked, what does that mean, so the capital base that we have provides crucial support to the rest of the group.
So as our existing assets wind down, there is a clear strategic need for us to reinvest to secure the future. But we will maintain discipline and remain disciplined to ensure our investments generate value, focusing on returns. We won't focus on some ideological commitment to specific asset types, which we think has led to some pretty poor capital allocation across the industry, although not in Centrica, in the very recent past. We've also said that we'll favor regulated and contracted assets that can make us a more predictable and more boring business and allow us to generate multiple returns on single assets. And we want to invest in assets that create future options. So when I look at the pipeline, I'm increasingly confident that we can meet all of these objectives.
Investing up to £4 billion will deliver a return of capital in excess of 20% throughout the investment cycle. So the obvious question is, how are we doing? We've made good progress this year, including our best operating metrics for many, many years. And some of you might have seen the recent Ofgem market data, which shows that over the last two quarters, British Gas Energy has had lower complaints than Octopus, lower complaints than EDF, lower complaints than OVO. This is a testament to the great work underway. But we're not declaring victory. We will not be happy until we are the best. And we're going to continue to make improvements. We've also launched several new customer propositions, which are gaining traction in the market. I'm really pleased that we've been able to deliver recently our service promise.
What that says, basically, is it guarantees you same-day boiler repair if you call us before 11:00 A.M. with no heating and no hot water. This is an offer that no one else can replicate, and it's because of our unique engineer network. It's great for our customers, and it's leading to encouraging signs, both in terms of customer retention, but also in terms of new customer acquisition. Most importantly, though, this has given the team and services the confidence to be even more ambitious.
The operational performance is in the right place. It's doing really well, but we've got to step up on the commercial side to support the next phase of growth, and this is something that I'm sure my colleagues would agree that I am laser-focused on, so you should expect to see our brands much more prominently in the future with more attractive propositions.
And we look forward to welcoming each and every one of you who are not currently customers as customers. I think we're also demonstrating how we can deploy capital effectively. As you're going to hear, the MAP has made quite an incredible start, deploying not far off GBP 100 million of CapEx this year from a standing start. The Irish peak has remained on track for commissioning next year. And we were really pleased to complete the acquisition of ENSEK, the software company, the software we use for the energy business. This will deliver value in its own right. But it will also expand the range of commercial options for us to generate future value.
So we've already told you that we'll be in our sustainable operating profit ranges for all of our retail supply and optimization businesses this year, two years ahead of schedule, with the recovery in services delivering by 2026. Now, as a reminder, the midpoint of these ranges gets to around £800 million of EBIT, which is roughly a billion pounds of EBITDA. We said this morning that we're in line with consensus for 2024.
And if you look forward to 2025, we expect EBITDA for infrastructure assets of around £600 million, subject, of course, as usual, to asset performance and commodity prices, albeit that we've already hedged the majority of the 2025 production. Now, as part of this, we expect Rough to make an adjusted operating loss of between £50 and £100 million next year. Rough is absolutely critical, in my view, to the U.K. energy supply and security mix.
It can be a crucial part of the future hydrogen economy. But it's clear that making material losses is not something that is either sustainable or will be sustained by us. We're working with the government to see if we can find a regulatory model to support the asset and unlock investment of up to GBP 2 billion, creating about 5,000 jobs in the construction phase and converting this to be the world's largest single hydrogen storage facility.
If you permit me, if we fast-forward to 2028 and do just a little bit of simple math, so the MAP and the Irish peakers should deliver up to about GBP 170 million of EBITDA by 2028. The MAP will continue to ramp up beyond that. And Dan and Gareth will tell you how it will do that. That about GBP 170 million.
Add to that roughly £1 billion at the midpoint for retail and optimization. You get to just shy of £1.2 billion EBITDA by 2028. Then add on over £200 million from assets that we have today, mainly Spirit and the existing nuclear business. And you get to just shy of £1.4 billion. And then if you assume that we delivered IRRs we're targeting, and that is a very safe assumption, because if we don't see the IRRs, we don't sanction projects, then you'll see that we would add another £240 million or thereabouts of EBITDA by 2028.
So you can expect EBITDA in 2028 of around £1.6 billion, with the vast majority, over 85%, coming from activities that are either in operation today or have already been sanctioned by us. Now, the advisors here, even one in the front row, keeping a very close eye. This is not a forecast.
Neither is it new guidance. What we're trying to do is to actually help you understand and do the math. Some of the guidance we've already given you. GBP 1.6 billion EBITDA 2028, the vast majority in flight or sanctioned already today. Now, this brings us on to the focus for today. We've spoken a lot about each part of our integrated business, adding value to the other parts of the group, and allowing us to earn potentially three returns from a single asset: a return on the asset itself, an optimization opportunity, and underpinning the retail business.
The MAP is, I think, a perfect example of our strategy in action. A low-risk, contracted return, which is a really attractive standalone business. It also builds an asset base that supports the group's balance sheet, which in turn supports profitability in both optimization and retail. And it helps to support commercial innovation through new tariffs and data insight. But before we speak about that, I'm going to pass you over to Cassim to talk about Centrica Energy. You've heard me say before, Centrica Energy is the glue that binds our group together through the procurement and route-to-market services it provides to retail and to infrastructure.
It really helps us understand the energy system, identifying opportunities to deploy more capital, and allowing us to create more attractive products for our customers, both corporate and retail. And as the energy system evolves, the services we provide to third parties are helping us accelerate the energy transition, thus offering a growing set of options for Centrica. So you've heard me drone on enough now. I'm going to stop. I'm going to hand over to Cassim and John. We'll help you understand a lot more about how we deliver value from these options. Then I'll come back before we do the Q&A. So Cassim, over to you.
Thanks, Chris. Good afternoon to everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about Centrica Energy. My name is Cassim Mangerah. I'm the Managing Director for CE. I've been in the energy industry for almost three decades across five different companies and prior to that qualified as a chartered accountant. Also joining me today, as Chris said, is John Park, our CFO. In today's session, we will explore three things: how we generate value as a trading and logistics business, how we've built the core capabilities we have, and some of our future growth options. We will also explain how these capabilities support our earnings guidance and create upside opportunities. There is a compelling and enduring opportunity within the energy value chain for a physical trading and logistics business.
This opportunity is fundamentally driven by the complexity in the flow of energy from source to sink and the continuous need to balance supply and demand. As the decarbonization of the energy system accelerates, the need to transfer energy and to balance intermittent generation with demand will continue to grow. The inherent financial risk associated with the movement and the balancing of energy is also going up.
Global events and changing weather patterns can significantly alter these flows and balances, resulting in distressed and volatile markets. Downstream and upstream players will always need to manage risk in the face of market volatility. This requires counterparties with the right capabilities to help them achieve their financial goals and ensure reliable access to the energy they need. We are one of these counterparties. And these factors present huge opportunities for Centrica Energy across the value chain.
Moving forward, the landscape will continue to be shaped by the energy transition, technological advancements, policy changes, and geopolitical developments. And we will evolve accordingly. We have fundamentally built CE to take advantage of the fundamental mechanics of the energy markets. This results in what we consider to be a hard-to-replicate model that generates asymmetric upside opportunities.
Let me explain what I mean by that. First, our model, in a nutshell, we have a portfolio that is anchored in physical assets, diversified across the entire energy value chain and its geographies. We trade a comprehensive portfolio of commodities with long-term growth potential. And we see huge benefits from participating across all of them. Our business model is also underpinned by world-class capabilities that ensure the effective implementation of our strategies. These include our deep market expertise, a scalable in-house digital platform, and sophisticated risk management capabilities.
Furthermore, we are constantly developing these capabilities, giving our fantastic teams the tools they need to succeed. This, in turn, helps us to deliver innovative products for our customers, which ultimately creates value we can capture. Now, coming back to what I said on our model generating asymmetrical upside opportunities, the fundamental value drivers of a physical trading and logistics business are based on creating a network of physical assets spread across a diverse geographic footprint.
For example, when securing physical asset capacity, the initial cost of the investment is known. A baseline return is also, to a large extent, locked in at that point. But the ultimate return from this investment is skewed asymmetrically to the upside. If the markets move in our favor, we can lock in further gains. But if it doesn't, we still secure our base return.
The larger the network of physical assets we have available, and the more geographies we can optimize those assets in, the greater the opportunity to extract value. This extensive network and our expertise enable us to add value to a broad spectrum of counterparts, including other energy companies, exchanges, and grid operators across Europe by providing a range of financial and, sorry, a range of professional services. When taken together, our model and capabilities provide us with substantial competitive advantage and set us apart from other trading houses you may be familiar with. Our operating model is simple, but the markets we operate in are complex. Building this knowledge and the wider capability is hard. And as Chris already touched on, it is also highly complementary to the wider Centrica strategy. We haven't always had this range of capabilities.
Developing our current model has required time and effort achieved through both organic and inorganic growth. Initially, we focused on managing internal commodity risk for Centrica. The precursor to Centrica Energy was established in 2010 with a primary scope centered around the U.K. gas sector. Over time, we have evolved our model by strategically expanding interconnectors and developing a competitive advantage, leading us to where we are now: pan-European gas and power trading with a leading renewables route-to-market business and a global energy portfolio.
Our expansion into new markets or products follows a consistent, meticulous approach where we adhere to a key principle. We start small to test and learn with limited risk capital and progressively expand towards developing full capabilities. For example, when entering a new geography for power trading, we start with small short-term positions using standardized products.
Once we develop a good understanding of that market, we expand the time horizon and the trading and risk management strategies. As our presence matures, we move into longer-term renewables, corporate PPAs, and batteries. This incremental growth approach is capital-efficient because we leverage the scalable platform we have built, and we consistently explore strategies that have synergies with our existing portfolio. This approach also enables us to grow whilst managing risk prudently.
If conditions are not favorable, we can reverse our decision with limited impact. We did this in France, withdrawing from third-party asset management after realizing we couldn't deliver acceptable returns at the time. We have also grown inorganically, such as when we decided to accelerate the building of our valuable renewables route-to-market business through the acquisition of Neas Energy in 2016. This measured approach to growth has worked out well.
As we look forward, the next expansion opportunity for us is in the U.S. market. This is the world's largest liberalized energy market, a key player in an increasingly interconnected system, and a market we are already familiar with from our energy business. Recently, we conducted our first trades in short-term U.S. power trading, and I might add, we made a profit. We are starting small, in line with the iterative approach I just laid out, with the goal of eventually expanding to full physical trading and logistics services, so moving on now to how we are set up. The business is organized into four verticals, and John will shortly explain how we generate value in each. First, gas and power trading, which is the foundation upon which we have built the businesses we have today.
The key value driver here is in the need to move energy through the system to match supply and demand. Through this, we have more efficient markets managing gas transportation across borders, trading power across interconnectors, and optimizing our storage positions. This vertical is now operating in 28 countries, executing over 11 million trades per year. Next, we have renewable energy trading and optimization, or RETO. With the increasing decentralization of power generation, many asset owners do not possess the required trading and risk management capabilities to optimize returns on their investment.
And crucially, they don't have the desire to build these capabilities, which are hard to develop. We provide the valuable route-to-market services that allow them to get their energy onto the grid. With approximately 16 gigawatts of assets under management, we are also able to match our managed generation and flexible capacity to downstream customer demands.
This helps corporates decarbonize through power purchase agreements, i.e., PPAs, another service we can extract value from. Our LNG business has also been built by connecting production to consumption. We began by procuring a few cargoes for our Isle of Grain regasification position, followed by risk managing our Sabine Pass contract. By identifying and building around these two initial positions, we have gradually expanded to trading 250 cargoes in 2023, supported by a flexible portfolio of contracts.
And to date, we've delivered to and from 39 countries globally. Finally, there is the support we provide to the wider group. This includes risk management optimization services across upstream and downstream. And more recently, we have been playing a crucial role in identifying investment opportunities based on our extensive knowledge of the energy system. Now, looking at all four pillars together, I'd like to highlight three points.
First, all four verticals are managed with a highly disciplined approach to the deployment of risk capital and resources. Second, there is a portfolio benefit in building these verticals together. For example, the movement of energy often interacts with the pipeline gas network, adding an extra value dimension. Finally, as we have developed these verticals, we are seeing an increasing balance in the earnings of the business, further enhancing our resilience and underpinning our confidence in the delivery of our GBP 250 million-GBP 350 million operating profit range. That's enough for me for now. Let me hand over to John, who will take you through each business in a bit more detail.
Thank you, Chris. I joined Centrica Energy just over two years ago from a 20-year career in energy trading businesses across investment banks and private equity and I jumped at the opportunity to join Centrica Energy and the team. You have had the overview of Centrica Energy now and our journey to date. Let me take you through our business in a little bit more detail. I want to explain why we believe that our unique portfolio can consistently deliver our operating profit guidance. First, gas and power trading, an area that has been the foundation of our capabilities since inception.
As Cassim Mangerah outlined, today we have a gas and power trading business across 28 markets in Europe and now the U.S. We trade a broad range of products and strategies. The business is backed by our transportation and gas storage positions. Our physical trading allows us to extract value through time and location spreads, supported by our geographical diversification. This also creates a unique opportunity for financial trading, with analytics underpinned by us being a physical market participant.
To give you a sense of scale, we currently have 25 contracted gas storage locations in nine countries, with 500 million therms of capacity under contract. This is enough to heat over two million homes over the winter. We are also a leading player in the power markets, flowing electrons in 2024 across 40 European market borders. Let me give you an example of how our power trading capabilities can support grids in times of need.
In this case, the Hungarian power grid over this past summer. On the 9th of July, the Hungarian power grid saw a number of issues combining, resulting in a distressed system. There was a heat wave with temperatures above 37 degrees. There was low rainfall, which reduced output from hydro plants. Daytime had very high solar production, pushing conventional production out of their generation mix.
There was also a curtailment on the interconnector cable between Hungary and Serbia. This created a big problem during the evening when solar production ran down. We had to act fast to balance the system and capture value from our services. This is where our capabilities truly shined. It started with our ability to predict these events like these. We have developed a number of machine learning algorithms that combine weather data with information from our extensive physical presence to spot these patterns.
This allows us to move faster than the market to capture value from these distressed market events. And in this case, our models had predicted pressure before the distress became apparent to others. Using our grid of interconnector capacity, we were able to flow power into the Hungarian power grid during the evening hours.
This helped to alleviate the pressure and limit price spikes for the distressed system, and of course, we've earned an attractive return for our services. It is important to understand that very few market participants can do what we do. We can only do this because we have a comprehensive portfolio of physical positions with a wide geographical footprint. We have a scalable 24/7 trading and operations setup that continuously monitors the market.
We have sophisticated trading capabilities to manage risk backed by deep fundamental market knowledge, and of course, we benefit from being able to deploy the group balance sheet and credit rating. Let's move to RETO, our second pillar. There's been a massive renewable rollout in Europe and the U.K. The total installed capacity for wind and solar alone was almost 570 gigawatts at the end of 2023.
This is an increase of over 170% in the last 10 years. This will continue to grow as renewables have become one of the lowest-cost new-build technologies across most major European markets. Centrica Energy has grown along with this trend. We've increased from 2 gigawatts of capacity under management in 2015 to around 16 gigawatts of renewable and flexible assets today. This already makes us one of the largest independent renewable portfolios in Europe. We are expecting strong growth going forward, reaching approximately 28 gigawatts of renewable and flexible capacity by 2030. As Cassim touched on, many renewable asset owners and investors do not have the ability to balance themselves on the grid. There are material financial consequences for them, including grid suspension, if they have imbalances with the interconnector operator.
With our capabilities and market knowledge, we can step in to solve these problems for them, earning ourselves an attractive return. We can provide a route-to-market for the renewable generation. We can balance renewable energy and indemnify asset owners against penalties for imbalances. We can participate in insuring markets on their behalf, further increasing the value for the asset owners and therefore the value that they're willing to pay us for our services.
And of course, we can provide bankable products for developers who help their products or projects onto the market. Meanwhile, on the consumer side, we move renewable energy from generation to off-takers who want to decarbonize their operations while managing their risk exposure. Our ability to package up uninterruptible renewable power from our diverse portfolio is a unique value proposition that only a few market participants can match.
This dynamic has obviously come to the fore recently with a growth in power demand from data centers. Our capabilities make us an attractive partner, and in 2023, around 35% of our corporate PPAs was executed with the tech sector. It is also key to understand our markets continue to grow. As cheap renewables transform our grids and thermal generation is retired, the production stack becomes more intermittent.
This creates an opportunity for flexible generation and storage to be deployed at scale. This is an area of focus for us for growth. Our battery portfolio under management is currently at over 400 megawatts, and we are turning a profit on this portfolio today. Overall, these dynamics mean that we have a business with a highly ratable earnings profile. Around 70% of our asset contracts extend beyond 2026. We offer an essential service that the market will pay for.
Therefore, a significant part of this business has fee-based revenue streams. All of this means this is a business setup to succeed in all market conditions. To bring this to life, let us look at an example in Finland of how we adapted our offerings to compete and win. The Finnish market is an interesting and challenging one. As more and more renewables are deployed, there are not enough flexible consumption in the system. This increases the risk of high imbalance cost. Also cold winters often cause icing issues, taking down some of the renewable generation and further stressing the system. We saw this as an opportunity to innovate in how we manage risk for our customers. We were the first in the market with an offering which included protection against financial losses in times of extreme imbalance cost.
In addition, we enabled renewable assets to participate in ancillary service markets. This is where assets are paid by the grid operator to be on standby for energy generation or consumption. We also strengthened our physical trading capabilities in Finland to capture additional value from the distressed market. These innovations made us a highly attractive counterparty, which is reflected in the fact that we have been able to double our operational renewable portfolio in two years towards 1.2 gigawatts by the end of 2023, while delivering very attractive returns on our risk-adjusted capital. Finland is one of our newer market entries and one of our top-performing markets in 2024. This demonstrates how we can profit from renewable rollout across countries.
We were able to achieve this growth in Finland because of the scalable platform we've developed over the past years, and we are using the same capabilities to further grow our RETO business. Let's move on to our global LNG business, our third pillar. Stepping back for a moment and looking at the wider market, LNG has had a transformative effect on the global energy system and is the key driver behind the globalization of gas markets.
In under 10 years, between 2014 and 2023, global LNG trade grew almost 70%. We see the importance of LNG continuing to increase. Demand is expected to approximately double by 2050 compared to 2020, as LNG is used to replace coal, and we see a lot of new LNG supply coming online. The LNG impact on the global energy system is the reason why we got into the LNG business.
Today, we have a mature LNG portfolio. We grew from a business that traded 27 cargoes in 2014 to 260 cargoes in 2023, as Cassim mentioned. Expanding our capabilities has been crucial. This is fundamentally a bilateral physical activity where credibility is key. That includes having the right team and processes in place, as well as group financial support. As Cassim mentioned, originally, our portfolio was anchored around two contracts. This had been past LNG offtake and the Isle of Grain regasification capacity.
That was a solid start, but it meant that we were heavily exposed to the particular dynamics of those assets and markets. So over time, we've added to our portfolio with a combination of short, medium, and long-term positions in the U.S., Europe, Middle East, and Far East. Our new long-term deals grew the portfolio while diversifying our risk and increasing our optionality.
On the buy side, we've added Delfin and Mozambique, while on the sales side, we've added Cheniere Energy, all with common threads of flexibility and optionality. Our optimization activities are supported by two long-term vessel charters alongside a range of shorter-term shipping capabilities. These capabilities meant we can optimize our portfolio through a range of strategies, including, for example, cargo diversions, adjusting delivery timing, or executing on parcel deliveries. Let's now look at a real-life example to illustrate this further. In July this year, we took a cargo from Sabine Pass with a base case delivery to the Isle of Grain. However, market conditions shifted, and our traders found an opportunity to shift the delivery to the Far East, selling the cargo indexed to the Asian market, which was paying a higher premium at the time.
This gave us an uplift of $5 million, which we could only achieve because of our capabilities across trading analytics operations and the flexibility we have in our current portfolio. Crucially, we captured this additional value without carrying any further price risk, as we immediately transfer our hedge positions from Europe to Asia. We also continue to focus on prudent risk management to underpin our portfolio and returns. Looking at the next few years of Sabine Pass contract, we are largely hedged, and we have also recently taken further steps to offset our Sabine Pass price exposure through physical supply deals in the U.S., with Coterra starting in 2028. This deal hedges around a third of our annual Sabine Pass offtake for 10 years.
Importantly, these hedges generate a positive margin, and we retain the physical optionality, as I just described, to improve our returns when market conditions move into our favor. Besides direct LNG hedging, we can also use our capabilities in physical gas markets to support the LNG risk management. Finally, as Chris mentioned, we use our capabilities and platform to create value for the wider Centrica Group.
This includes the procurement and risk management of our energy supply business and a route-to-market and hedging services for our infrastructure assets in a similar way as what we do for third parties through our RETO business. Equally, we can use our knowledge and experience in physical grids to support more informed investment decisions for the group. As a rough guide, we can generally add about 2% incremental returns on investment decisions through optimization.
A great example of this came in September this year when Centrica announced the acquisition of a portfolio of ready-to-build battery projects in Sweden. Identifying that opportunity started with our long-term experience in the Swedish market, where we have been trading since 2009. We saw a structural undersupply in frequency-controlled products in a specific region in Sweden. That led us to work with our colleagues across the broader group to deliver this investment, which is expected to create attractive returns while also strengthening our expertise in managing batteries in the Nordics. As we've gone through these examples, you will have seen how our business is anchored in physical assets. As Cassim Mangerah said, this gives us a fundamental different risk profile to other trading businesses. We are further supported by the group's financial strength.
This gives us the trading capacity, credit lines, and liquidity to capture value under all market conditions, and you saw this value in 2022 and 2023. This does not mean our returns are guaranteed. Price and volatility impact the size of the opportunity set for us, but it adds predictability to our earnings base. We have a more diverse business today with greater capabilities and a track record for growth. You can see this in our financial performance.
In 2019, before COVID and major market volatilities, we delivered £140 million of adjusted operating profit. In 2024 and 2025, we'll deliver within our £250-£350 million range, demonstrating a strong organic growth over this period. We have also a more balanced gross margin contribution across our pillars over the last couple of years. In particular, as we've grown RETO, we've added a more sustainable earning profile to our business.
Looking forward, we remain confident in our £250-£350 million operating profit range under normalizing market conditions, and if you saw the same market conditions as in 2022 and 2023, we are confident we can deliver a similar or better performance as what we did while still operating within a controlled risk environment. This will not be due to luck, but by design of our business, as we've outlined today. Additionally, our strategy and performance are underpinned by powerful market trends in globalization and decarbonization that have come a long way to go, that's come a long way and has got a long way to go. Cassim Mangerah, let me pass over to you now.
Thank you, John. Today, we've given you greater insight into Centrica Energy's model as a physical trading and logistics business and how we create value across our verticals.
What we've built is hard to replicate with a comprehensive product suite across the energy value chain and deep capabilities that leverage cutting-edge technology to make trading decisions day in and day out. You've seen our demonstrated ability to grow the business, such as how we've built one of the largest third-party renewable portfolios in Europe and how we scaled our LNG business. And this has been achieved both through innovation, like how we adapted our offerings in the Finnish market to wind and retail, and how we've changed how we think about managing risk for LNG for a recent Coterra deal, and through a deliberate iterative approach to expand into new products and markets.
As John mentioned, we are confident in our physical outlook and meeting the 250-350 operating profit guidance, supported by a balanced portfolio aligned with enduring market trends and strong contributions from businesses backed by rateable contracts. And of course, we have the ability to capture asymmetric upside potential like we saw in 2022 and 2023. And we will not stop there. We have exciting and material opportunities ahead of us, continuing our track record of growth. Thank you for your time, and we'll be delighted to take any questions you have before moving on to the next session.
Excellent. So look, before we go to the questions, there's a couple of things. If we try and focus on questions on this section rather than anything on the trade number, we just want to emphasize one thing that Christina and John touched on before we do that. We expect the global gas market to be soft over the next two to three years. There's lots of questions, you know, what's going to happen to Russian gas, US LNG. We don't know, but we expect a bit of a glut of gas.
We've therefore hedged the vast majority of our LNG exposure over the next two to three years to limit any downside, and that's through things like the quite innovative Coterra deals that Cassim and the team have done over the last few months and some recent LNG sales, some of which we've announced, some of which we haven't announced because the counterparty wants to keep it below the radar. If the softness comes to pass, we stand ready to pick up well-priced long-term LNG deals where we think we can add value for the shareholders and also energy security for our customers.
But the key thing to know is we've limited that downside. I know that that's been something that some people's minds for the majority, and the numbers that Cassim and John showed in the chart, actually, we debated whether it was something that we moved during the presentation because it is literally moving at the moment as we hedge a bit more of it, so we've got far less exposure over the next two to three years. But with that, let's move to questions. I know there are probably loads of questions.
I will try and moderate, so we'll go Jenny, then Mark, and we'll go here. So I've got microphones. As you just said, people watching this stream won't know, I don't know if you could hear the noise when I refer now. There's a room next door. There's lots of applause. So in case you wonder and you think I've lost my marbles, it was just every time I'd speak at you, a little round of applause. It was rather pleasing. So anyway, Jenny.
Thanks very much. Jenny Ping from Citi. Just on page 19, sorry, on page the one before, if I can get the page number, 17, on the LNG portfolio, can you just explain to us, obviously, what we can see as outsiders is the spreads between the Henry Hub and the NBP, and there's obviously been some sizable margins that appeared in the market. Can you just explain to us what is holding you back from capturing some of those sizable margins that actually reflects in your numbers?
And then in addition to that, I guess in terms of the portfolio mix, if I look back on page 19, you know, historically, pre-Russia-Ukraine war, you've been trading at around 100 or so. So effectively, third, third, third. Is that the direction of travel going forward in terms of what we should expect medium term in that evenly split manner?
Just to answer the question in terms of, let me just break it down into a couple of things. First and foremost, which is obviously markets and spreads are moving around. So when you talk about the current situation between Henry Hub and NBP, to have just the point we were making earlier, we are obviously trying to hedge our portfolio progressively as we go through time. So taking a spread at one time will not necessarily reflect our portfolio. The other dimension to add to that is, since as you look back and you look forward, we've obviously had the period where Centrica was rebuilding the business and the balance sheet.
So our inactivity in 2020, 2021 as part of the story in terms of why we have some of the differences along. Going forward, as Chris said, we are looking to manage our portfolio in a much more consistent manner, which is to progressively hedge our portfolio. We continue to do that, particularly as we see an opportunity to lay off material risk financially and from an FM perspective, but retaining the flexibility to capture upside opportunities that we see going forward. I mean, if I could get out of that, Jenny, do you remember when prices went to the most crazy level after the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
And I remember saying to the board, if we could lift a cargo from Sabine Pass today and deliver it to Isle of Grain today, we would pay $25 million instead of $350 million. So the spread was $290 million per cargo, but we don't operate a portfolio that way. Now, it's not that it could go the other way, but you could see a huge spike in US gas prices. So what we try and do is to make sure that we're pretty well hedged so that we're well set and our two rows at the back and two rows in the team can capture value. But we're very rarely very naked on LNG exposure. And what we're always trying to do is to have a baseline hedge and then to be able to capture that upside optionality.
So you can look at the spreads on any one particular day and say we should have got them. But today we are hedged out into 2028. And the more we think the market is going to be bearish, the more we hedge. And the more we think it's bullish, we might hedge a bit less to keep a bit more risk. So it's based also on fundamentals. And that might change of our view next year changes of how 2028 is going to go. We might lay on more hedges or fewer hedges because it's all about making sure that we've got the right exposure, we can capture the upside, but we don't run too much naked price risk. Mark, and then we'll come over here.
Hi, Mark Freshney from UBS. Can I ask? It's interesting, Cassim, that you're talking about making moves into the US market. I mean, that's very different to Europe, but it's much, much bigger and energy trading in the U.S. is a European activity, right? So I can see. But the last time you went was not successful, right? You lost lots of money in short periods of time. Margins were never there. Polar Vortex. I think NRG had a very bad experience with Direct Energy. And despite being the second largest energy trader in North America, you couldn't make it work. So Cassim, what are you doing differently this time and why are you going back to North America?
I mean, look, let me start with this. I'm not sure we would have, we might have said we were the second largest energy trader. I'd be very surprised if we were. So we did an awful lot of wholesale gas and power when we were in Direct Energy. You're right. NRG, and that was the point at which I thought actually maybe the luck was with us and we completed the deal. I can't remember the name of the storm, but we completed the deal about a week before the storm came, and we calculated the cost was about $1 billion because you would get massively short.
Now, the regulator actually gave NRG and other companies a lot of that back to increase prices, but if you have uncovered shorts, you were really in trouble. Look, I think that it's a fundamentally different business, and I remember when I came into the company, we got caught really short because we had sold a bunch of gas into California. We'd bought the gas in Canada, and there was one route in and the pipeline went on fire. It wasn't our pipeline, and you look and think we are absolutely screwed. We've got a sale here. There's no way to get the gas in. The market's going crazy. I think the initial thing I remember, Cassim, Russell and I were in a meeting. Cassim came in and he was delighted.
He said, "We've done our first four trades in the US." Closed them out and made $16. And so these are very small trades. They're done using algorithms, but they're also trading either in consumer trades, either within day or day ahead. And that's not to say that's all that we'll do. But we took a very, very different approach in Direct Energy. And I was never really clear, if I'm being brutally honest, as to how we differentiated between what was optimization and what was B2B energy supply. And if I'm being frank, it was a good team we had there. I'm not sure that they were super clear.
What was clear to me as soon as I joined the company, and Alex, I think you were based out there. What was clear to me is we did not have expert trading capability in that business. We were, I think, good at marketing to the retail customer base. I think we were good at marketing to the B2B customer base. One of the first things I did when I was doing Russell's job is I changed the point I grouped the Chief Risk Officer in order to understand the risks that were being taken in there because I didn't really think that we had a full handle on it. But I mean, Cassim, you can describe what we're doing, but it is fundamentally different. And of course, we might get to something that's far bigger.
I can promise you it won't be without the Chief Risk Officer and Russell being happy and me being happy, and then I've got to get the board happy as well. This is something we've had lots of conversations with the board, but you should relate to people. Was it $16 in total or was it $4 for all four trades?
No, $15 in total. Four per trade, I think, on average. Just to reiterate, I would agree with everything Chris said. The model and approach was entirely different. I was here at the time as well, as in part of Centrica and part of the senior management, so I think I have a reasonable insight on that. Also, I think when we look at the U.S., the U.S. is not just one market. There are 11 ISOs. We're taking an iterative approach, as Chris said.
So the approach and the model are entirely different. We also see connectivity between the US and Europe because of LNG. And so the Coterra deal has happened because even the US players see that connectivity, which is not the case before. And if you look at some of the dynamics between what we can do in Europe from a renewables perspective, we can take the same model into the US because of the technological advances in your ability to what's happening in the US simply because we are ahead of the curve. We think the same portfolio approach that we are taking in Europe, the same iterative approach to grow, we can apply to the US. So we are confident that we will do that in a measured way, and it is a different approach.
I think a good example, if you look at the deal with Coterra, we effectively give Coterra access to European gas prices, and what we are able to do therefore is effectively have a lot of the LNG purchase now denominated European gas prices. So we've got, the market risk has actually reduced massively. We could have chosen to go in and physically trade gas in the US, but the Coterra deal gave us what we were looking for without having to take all that risk of physical gas trading.
So this will not be something where we come back in February and say, "Surprise, surprise, we've got 50 people in the US and we're trading two or three BCF a day." This is something that if we decide to get bigger, will take quite some time for us. We've got a question over here, and then we've got a couple online as well, I think so.
Thanks for taking my questions, Harrison Williams. It's Morgan Stanley. So actually following on the U.S. topic, I mean, one of the big benefits you talked about in Europe was your large physical presence and the deep market knowledge. Do you think the LNG presence you've got is sufficient for you to pursue this organically or to really pursue this? Would it need to be something more inorganic?
And then the second question is, I think you are building confidence in this long-term £250-£350 just operating profit range. Clearly, you have ambitions to go beyond that. And I'm wondering if you could give us some key metrics we should be tracking, which could help you or help us follow when you might surpass the top end of that range. Is that countries, number of countries? Is that capacity under management or what else?
Thanks. It's a brilliant question because Russell's been asking Cassim as we've been trying to set the budget for next year. So I'm really interested in the answer to this. Go on, Cassim.
I'll come back to that. So just first on the organic, inorganic in the US that you mentioned, look, it's early days. As we said, we are going to take an iterative approach in growing in the US. How we actually grow will be a function of how successful we are. We're taking a small step and we'll grow on that. Can we grow a scalable business in the US? Ultimately, that is the objective, as I said earlier. There's no two ways about that.
But what we're not going to do here today is tell you what steps there are on a predetermined basis because it's not predetermined. It will be dependent on how successfully we deliver on the strategy. In terms of the guidance, we are comfortable, very comfortable with the guidance of 250 to 350 and confident that we can deliver that. And obviously, we are trying to grow and look at growth opportunities. And when we have something to say on our range, you'll be the first to know. But right now, we are sticking with the guidance of 250 to 350.
Perfect. Brilliant. Thanks. Go here, here. Okay. And then is that what you wanted?
Yeah, the second part of this question. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah, go for it.
Just to do you get the answer there on covering the range? You happy with that?
Yeah. Covering the range, happy. Yeah. I mean, if you had anything to add on kind of longer term, you know what we could track metrics wise to kind of beyond that thread, but.
So I mean, look, the critical thing in this is, so we think we've got a competitive advantage in the markets that we're in. We think that others will either be unwilling or unable to replicate what we've got. That might be wrong. So they might come into those markets and then you expect the returns to be bent down a little bit. So this is why we're going to new markets. If we're right and they either are unable to do it or they choose not to do it, we'll keep the margins we've got in existing markets and we'll add margins on in the new market.
But again, covering the downside, if other people come in and they bid that away, then okay, we won't leave. We'll have lower margins in these existing markets, but we're building positions in new markets. And there's a whole bunch of markets we can go into, but very, very cautiously. There's one of the beauties of this business that we bought in Denmark, where the intraday trading team would go into a new market, test the market with very small trades, learn about it, and either come out and say, "Okay, we think we understand this market." And then the retail team would go into the long-term deals or they'd say, "You know what? We just don't think that we can make this work." And I've seen them go in for a few months, come out and say, "Not for us." Super disciplined.
We've been very comfortable applying that in Europe because you're a land border and we say, "Well, why would we be uncomfortable with a sea border?" We'll do that. We might not make all 11 ISOs work, sorry, in the electricity market. We might say these are quite like ERCOT probably quite good to Texas market. We'll test. We'll test MISO first. We'll test ERCOT. We'll probably try PJM. They're probably the three really good markets for us to try and understand. I'd be amazed if we could make all eleven of the markets. Somehow the liquidity won't be right. The market knowledge will be required. We'll just have to see. I thought you'd get an answer there saying Cassim was going to up the range to maybe 350-400, but unfortunately, we're going to have to wait.
So let's go. We're going now. Okay. So we'll go over here, here, here, here, and then we'll go online and then we'll go on to our meter asset provider.
Hi. Charles Fish, the HSBC. Two questions, maybe one to go back to the question on guidance. So just if we look at the route to market business, we think about that 28 gigawatts you're looking to get to by 2030, up from the 16 now. Does that support the medium-term guidance range or is that suggesting potential upside? It's the first question. And then the second one is, is there any read across for Centrica Energy from the current unfavorable economics we're seeing in storage at the moment due to seasonal spreads? Thank you.
So look at that profitability. Obviously, the target for that is out to 2030. The mid-range target is 20, I think 2026. And what else? Things might be a bit away. I would be incredibly disappointed if we went from 16 gigs to 28 gigs and said, "You know what the profit gain is going to see." But we've just got to understand and learn how the market evolves. So I would hope that that would be the case.
But look, and on storage, obviously, we've seen an impact because Cassim's team trade the Rough fuel. So we've seen an impact there, as you can see with the losses. But Cassim and Russell are talking about, we talk regularly about the fact there's no shape in the curve. Actually, summer winter was inverted. So for a wee bit, it's a bit odd, but I don't know.
Yeah. I mean, on the, if I start with the summer winter spread that you mentioned, it is inverted right now. It does provide a challenging environment from a trading perspective clearly because we don't think it is sustainable. We expect it to be traded away before the end of winter.
If it doesn't, nobody's going to store gas in the storage facility across Europe, although there are regulatory measures that force people to do that. The economics of which are not certain. So there's still a compensation package that needs to be agreed and determined. So we think it's a quirk in the market right now. It has an impact on us, to be fair. But we think we'll manage that as it computes away naturally because it has to. Otherwise, as I said, there's no storage in gas storage.
Excellent. Thank you.
Hi. Thanks, Harry Wyburd from Exane BNP Paribas. Turning to the retail business, I'm interested in your thoughts on an asset-light versus asset-heavy model. So, you've gone—you're probably one of the only companies we cover that's gone heavily down the aggregation road, whereas most of your peers are going down the physical asset road, adding gigawatts and gigawatts of batteries in particular. How do you compare the two? Have you gone down aggregation because you think that's better? It's better ROCE.
Do you feel like you should or could add more physical assets? And that would improve your ability to trade the markets you're trading in. And, in particular, if you're thinking about doing that inorganically, I guess there are potential assets in the UK that are trading at quite depressed multiples in the battery space. What would your thoughts be on adding additional capacity? And do you think you could monetize that?
Let me try that. We're agnostic as to whether we own the asset or not. If we think by owning the asset, we can make a better return, we're happy to buy it. We bought a battery in Belgium last week, the week before. We've been operating for five, six years. So we know this thing really well. Opportunity came up to buy it. We're building some batteries. I can't remember what we've got. We're building something in Sweden just now. We're building another one in Belgium. We looked at, I think we looked yesterday, another one in Belgium.
We've got a couple in the UK. So we're very happy to build these things. But we're also very happy to have these under third-party management by Cassim's team. And when we build something, there is no debate. It's managed by Cassim's team. So there isn't a separate team that will manage their own batteries.
But we buy and build batteries, and we're trading them, and we can make money, and we see that somebody else will pay us more for the equity ownership. We'll sell the batteries. We don't have this, as I was saying earlier. There's nothing ideological about what we do. There's just a very strict criteria of can we make money or not. I think we looked yesterday. You've got some chairs of investment committee. We looked yesterday at the investment committee. Cassim sits in it. The number of things that we'd looked at, and there was something like, we looked at like 200 M&A deals this year. Now, some of it's just lots of inbound stuff that you ever look.
I don't know how many we followed up on non-binding offer, but we kicked out something like 85% of them because of price the first round of the non-binding offer. And the team has been like, "Oh, that's a good idea." That is absolutely bloody brilliant. But what we've seen now is the market's coming towards us because people have been overpaying. And we've been very disciplined. If we get in, we get in. If we don't, we don't.
Just now, we're getting through more. Now, we're not getting through more because we've relaxed our investment criteria because the interest rate environment's changed. And as you say, there's some distressed assets there. So we'd be very comfortable in buying them, but sometimes you've got to be very careful. Sometimes assets are distressed, not because the financing changes, but because the distressed assets are maybe in the wrong place.
That's where the knowledge we've got from this team is incredible. We know we chose the Swedish sites because Cassim's team said there's going to be a crunch here for five or six years, and we could make super normal returns, and then it will just be normal returns thereafter. So we picked these sites and went looking for a developer. We owned the sites specifically based on what we understood from the grid constraints that were coming.
So we're quite agnostic. If there's a big portfolio there that looks good, then we're very happy to look at it if it gets through the screening. In fact, even for Russell and the team, Cassim and the team are happy at it. If it meets our hurdle rates, then we'll talk to the chairman, and if we want to put the money, we're happy to buy it. We will. But we would do both, actually. We're kind of very happy to continue with a capital light. We manage it for people and to supplement it with our own assets as well.
Good. Yeah.
Hi, Ahmed from Jefferies. Two questions. I was just hoping if you could sort of help us think a little bit about the sort of the gross margin split more on a contracted, uncontracted basis for 2025, 2026. So I'm thinking retail is a large part of that is contracted. Maybe LNG is contracted as well. So would it be fair to think 50-60% or more than that of this is contracted?
That's a really good question. Honestly, that's commercially confidential. We wouldn't kind of give that out. So just buy it up.
Yeah, but I just wanted to ask you, how has the capital intensity or capital allocation of this business evolved over time as you're sort of going from 100 to sort of the 300 plus range you're talking about? Thank you.
Look, I'm with you. Russell may be joining today. I would say way more sophisticated than it used to be. So we have a very well-calculated risk capital balance. We monitor that very regularly. And I think if I go back two, three, four years, we kind of knew what we were doing there, but we're nowhere near as professional as we are now. And that was one of the prerequisites. When we saw just how good this business could be in 2022 and 2023, we looked and we had long chats with Cassim Mangerah and the team of the board.
If we want to do this, we have to really make it far more like a trading house. And John coming in from a trading really helps us with that. And so it's far more sophisticated now. But Russell, you could probably touch on John. You probably got something you want to come in with.
Yeah. Shall we start, John, and then I'll go for it?
Yeah. I think when you think about the capital that you keep for this business, you also have to think about the risk you're taking every day. So the business has grown. The types of markets we're in are slightly different. And we, of course, need to manage that very carefully. And there's three types of risks that we have to manage every day. You've got your liquidity risk. You've got your market or your price risk. And you've got your counterparty risk.
You actually have to think about them in slightly different ways. Now, one of the things that we do in the group is we make sure that all those types of risks from across the group are pooled into Centrica Energy. Actually, a lot of the price risk for our downstream book, that's included in Centrica Energy. The work that we do for the nuclear reactors, for Spirit, that comes into Centrica Energy. We pool all of those risks together.
That's the most capital-efficient way for the group to manage all of these things. For market risk, commodity risk, we've got a suite of tools to manage that. It's not just capital that you hold. You've got Value at Risk, Profit at Risk, volumetric limits. There's various different tools you're using to make sure that you're managing that business well.
Chris and I set an overall VaR limit for the business. That goes through the Chief Risk Officer who reports in to me, and that's cascaded down into the businesses. So that's one of the primary tools that we use to look at just both risk and capital in that respect. The actual amount of VaR that we use, and there's a question on this online, so I'll just cover that at the same time. That varies. Nominal prices, volatility to market, of course, judge that.
The VaR limits were a lot higher in 2022. They've come down significantly. If you look at the annual report at the end of last year, you can see that the one-day 95% VaR for the business was £4 million. That's for the proprietary book. So we keep those levels relatively tight. Liquidity risk, again, a big focus in 2022.
So margin calls and big movements there. The group at one point had GBP 1.8 billion of margin cash posted out. That was a significant impact for the industry. We managed that really well then. We learned from it as well. So we've now put in new tools, new capital options that we have so that we can manage liquidity in a much more sophisticated way. Margin levels, of course, have dropped down significantly since then.
It's now probably GBP 200-300 million on average that we have on that side. And then in terms of supporting the liquidity and supporting the overall limits, of course, the big thing you've got there is the group's triple-B investment-grade credit rating. And that allows us to go onto the exchanges with very limited amount of margin. It allows us to sign long-term contracts without having to put much capitals behind that.
The sort of primary thing that we want to do is maintain that balance sheet strength. We do that in a variety of different ways, including committed and uncommitted lines that we've got available just to make sure that we can take advantage of opportunities that they come. Then there's risk capital itself. Risk capital would be the actual amount of working capital you might expect to use in a deal plus your risk-weighted potential loss on that. Of course, we've got buffers for that, and we've got a very sophisticated toolkit. We've got various different structures that we use. I think it's either for the existing business, the growing business, the flexibility for that, or even going into the U.S., we make sure that we've got the right toolkit for that. That's the way it's managed.
Yeah, I can just add to that. A couple of things that's also important to me is all these risk and risk capital calculations is calculated by a risk team that does not report to the business. All these calculations are completely independent from Cassim or the business. Every single trade we execute, is it an intraday trade, a day-year trade, or a 15-year LNG trade, gets captured in our risk system on the day of execution and then included into the risk runs. The risk team is run by Chiara Sarda, sitting there at the back of the house. Run by risk professionals from investment banks. She reports into Dan Bell that reports into Russell. And the final decision on risk capital consumption sits with Russell and it does not sit with Cassim.
Excellent. Thanks. Just before we go to Don's question, the question I've got online that talks about how do you measure risk? I think we've answered all that. We've talked about maximum GBP losses. We've also got stop-loss limits. So there's a daily stop-loss, but we've also got profit drawdowns. So as you go through the year, as your profit goes up. And we've had bad days. I've seen them in some of them in operation when I was CFO.
I've seen them in operation as CEO. And you get a bit of comfort. If you have a bad day, you get a phone call, Cassim's a bit sheepish, saying, "Not been a good day. Closed all the positions out. We're redoing the fundamental analysis." That's great because if you never get those calls, you know that you're still having the bad days.
You always worry about risk in business like this. But the key thing to remember is we don't take massive open speculative positions. It's asset-backed. We take storage capacity. We take capacity in pipelines. We take capacity in cables. We take basis differential spreads. We take calendar spreads. But we very, very rarely take an open risk on a commodity. And if we do, we don't take an open risk on a commodity, which could be existential for us or even material enough that you would see it in our results when you look at it. And we executed our (what was it?) 11 million algorithmic trades last year. Sometimes we made two quid on a trade. But we've got our own proprietary software and ability to do that.
So we're not buying 20 LNG cargoes and saying, "We're going to sit because we think the price is going to go up and we'll be heroes if we do and we'll get the spreads that Jenny talks about, or we'll be complete muppets if we don't." So just to say there's also just before we go into Dominic's question, I thought if you join me in signing a PPA with a power price producer, do you hedge it with a third party or do you take that PPA onto your books? That's the second part of Dominic's question online.
It's a combination of things. All these positions are managed in a portfolio, and it will be a combination of financial hedges, physical hedges, all corporate PPAs. All of these decisions are made with consideration of the risk capital and long-term risk measures that we apply to this portfolio. And again, it's something that's independently verified by our risk team.
Okay. Excellent. So good, Dominic. And then we will take the last few questions from Richard, and then we'll switch over and we'll have Dan and Gareth up on the stage.
Hi, there. Yes. It's Dominic Nash from Barclays. Thank you. Two questions for me sort of following up from the risk capital question. Could you actually give us a view of what the actual invested capital tie-up in trading actually is and/or what the returns that you make on that balance sheet usage is or hurdle rate for it? And then the second question is sort of tying it back into the asset. Could you just say, are you going to rule yourself out from bidding for Grain LNG if and when that comes up for sale next year?
All right. Second one. Again, good try. Look, we wouldn't rule ourselves in or out of anything. We're not. I don't know. We wouldn't, but given you've said CFO and CNC, CNC said they're selling 100 stores. We're not going to bid for CNC stores. Completely out of the picture. But energy. That'll be the title of my note tomorrow. I always say something. I'm always going to ask myself one thing. But look, energy assets that are linked to the energy transition that we think we know how to operate, that we think we can make a good return, that we think is more contracted than not, we could be interested in. But as I mentioned, I was surprised yesterday.
Obviously, we see all the stuff that we look at. When somebody puts it all together and you said, "We looked at 202 deals this year," you're going to think, "Bloody hell, that's a lot." Then we filter them all out and we go through. If and when John decides that he wants to send out a memorandum, of course, we will look at it because we know how to run the assets. I think we're pretty good at it. If the value's not there, then we wouldn't look at it. The value was there, then we can have a chat. It depends what else is available because if that comes out and nothing else, they think, "Well, that's quite good as long as the returns are there." If there's two or three other things we're looking at, then who knows?
But I would neither have a note tomorrow saying, "We're going to buy CNC supermarkets that they're going to sell," nor that we're either in or out of Grain, but we would obviously look at that in the same way we would look at nuclear power stations. We'd look at other power stations. We'd look at batteries and the like.
And in terms of the capital charge and how much we've got tied up. And of course, it's a multifaceted business. To some extent, you hold capital in storage. We've got gas in storage in some places. Some capital's tied up in long-term contracts. Some are tied up in terms of wanting to make sure you've got the liquidity resources when you need it to capture opportunities when they turn up. We don't give guidance from that perspective.
You can see the amount of, for example, storages that we've got at any reporting period. What I would say, though, and I think it's fair to say, John, if we've got incremental deals that come to us, we're expecting to get at least a 20% return on the risk-adjusted capital employed. So that would be the sort of metrics that we would use internally for incremental deals.
I think on that, I would add it's one of the real benefits of our business. I mean, this would be one of the best returning capital-employed businesses, probably along with the energy retail business. But the credit rating that we have that allows Cassim and the team that we've got here to participate in the market is underpinned by Spirit Energy, the nuclear power stations, the meter asset provider, etc.
And so that's why we look at the overall, we look at the risk-adjusted return on capital in individual transactions, but we're really interested in the overall return on capital of the group. It's why we keep saying, I think it's probably still not fully understood, that we plan to invest two-thirds of our market cap over the next four years, and we will have a return on invested capital north of 20% throughout that investment phase.
And I think that's quite something. And that return will be north of 20% once we're done, which I think is really quite strong because we have this complementary business. But we've got two questions, Richard, and then we'll switch over. And does the growth in trading across Europe mean you need to keep debt off the balance sheet in the mid to long term?
Do you need collateral to adequately flex a portfolio in high as well as low-price scenarios? No. Is the answer to that, I think?
Yep. Excellent.
And then Sabine Pass, under what scenarios could Sabine Pass gas end up out of the money again? We're unhedged. US gas prices go through the roof and European gas prices go through the floor. That's the basis on which Sabine Pass could be out of the money. But because we're mainly hedged for the next three-ish years, then I'm looking at Arturo. It could be three to four years, actually, depending on the government. Yeah. Yeah. So you would never say never. But that's one of the things I really like, the Coterra deal. And Cassim and I went to meet with Arturo, to meet the CEO, Coterra, and the team.
She said, "Because I think you're doing these deals, you want to understand who you're dealing with." Really impressive people. I think they run a brilliant business. But the beauty of this is if we can get Sabine Pass to be something that we purchase and we buy and sell on the same index, my God, you reduce the risk materially. And it allows you to have what I would say is a slightly more conventional LNG portfolio I would have been used to 15 years ago, where you buy and sell on the same index, and then your optimization becomes a lot easier. Look, Cassim, John, thank you very much. And we'll get Dan and Gareth up onto the stage, and we're going to talk about our meter asset provider.
All right. Hey, Chris, are we goo d to go?
Yep. The mics will be all very good to go. Over to you.
Fantastic. Thank you, Chris. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Dan Rosenfield. I'm the Managing Director of the new business and Net Zero division with Centrica. I'm joined by my colleague here, Gareth Openshaw, VP of our meter asset provider or MAP business. Just taking a step back for a moment and looking at the bigger picture, we set up the new business and Net Zero division at the start of this year to bring a singular focus to our efforts in electrification and decarbonizing homes.
We're really busy building out the Hive platform to evolve from smart heating and the thermostat that I hope you all know and love into a whole-house smart energy platform accessed through our app. That is the gateway to a broad range of capabilities across heat pumps, EV chargers, flex energy, as Chris mentioned in his introduction, and solar and storage.
One of the points I do want to emphasize is that smart meters are the essential foundation for all of this. While I'm really pleased to be presenting the MAP, a new business and a new revenue stream for Centrica, I also want to emphasize that smart meters are absolutely not new to us at Centrica. In fact, we've been a leader in the rollout of smart energy for many years. Our British Gas engineers install smart meters in our customers' homes every day and have done for many years. Those smart meters are the essential backbone of the energy transition. They provide meter readings for our customers' accounts and increasingly support time-of-use tariffs such as British Gas PeakSave and Hive FreeCharge. Up until last year, we partnered with external meter-asset providers, MAPs, to finance those smart meters.
They owned them, and British Gas paid rent on each of those meters. As we strengthened Centrica's operations and balance sheet, we created the space and the investment optionality. And that's why we took the decision to in-house our meter-asset provision, effectively ensuring we capture the full value across the whole metering cycle. And from a strategic group perspective, as Chris alluded to in his introduction, the MAP is a critical element of our overall plan to maintain balance across our retail, optimization, and infrastructure businesses, with the MAP providing an opportunity to build stable long-term cash flows from an asset base that supports the group's balance sheet. So today, our MAP finances and supplies all our new smart meters. Our MAP owns them. British Gas Services installs them. British Gas Energy operates them. Simple.
And the MAP business, I'd like to say, is attractive for three core attributes: scale, predictability, and optionality. And you'll hear more about those as we take you through the session. So scale, rather than a third-party MAP, our MAP receives rental payments across the life of the meter and has an existing in-house pipeline of British Gas customers that equates to around 12 million meter points. That brings scale. Predictability, rental payment flows for the lifetime of a meter, typically 15 years.
This is a natural hedge to churn in British Gas Energy with a continued revenue stream from third-party suppliers who may then go and inherit our meters. And that means predictable, low-risk cash flows with exposure only to other regulated energy suppliers. Predictability. And thirdly, optionality. Those stable, low-risk cash flows equate to an unlevered asset-backed return of 9%. And that provides real optionality to the group.
The MAP operates as a standalone business within Centrica, ring-fencing the ownership of meter assets and related cash flows. Now, turning to the broader metering landscape and why we think we have a right to win in this space. The MAP landscape in the UK, as you'll know, effectively comprises both energy suppliers such as E.ON and ScottishPower and larger infrastructure players, SMS, Macquarie, Calisen, for example.
And they've built long-term sustainable business models from financing the smart rollout. When comparing ourselves to these larger infrastructure MAPs, it is worth noting that our MAP business has a clear line of sight to building a significant meter portfolio without the need to enter the wider market. And that's due to the 12 million meter points in the British Gas customer base. So we do not need to compete in the wider market in the first instance.
It's also worth noting that our MAP is building a portfolio of SMETS2 meters. That's the latest generation of meters, which have a more capable communication and more reliable communication capability, particularly around the points of churn. That means we have a young, clean portfolio of meters with a long life ahead of them.
Finally, as with all MAPs, this is ultimately a B2B, a business-to-business relationship backed by regulation. Within the MAP, we don't have exposure for consumer credit risk. I think that further underlines the quality of the cash flow on offer for those who have the capability that we've been able to build. Now, with a clear understanding of metering and a clear and compelling strategy, we've been able to move quickly.
It took us just seven months from the investment decision to get our first Centrica-owned smart meter on a customer's wall, and I think key to that was building a lean, expert MAP team from scratch, and we were lucky enough, as part of that, to welcome Gareth Openshaw to the company to lead the MAP. Gareth brings a wealth of experience. He spent the first 10 years of his career in the British military, serving in the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, and then followed that with 10 years in civilian life in the smart metering business. He really knows his onions, working with the likes of Utility Warehouse and SMS and also setting up his own businesses on the way, so let me now hand over to Gareth to talk you through our progress in the MAP so far.
Thank you, Dan. I'm proud to say that we've hit the ground running, establishing a lean team with operational and commercial nous and a mindset of ready to scale. We use our systems and our process today as if we were operating at scale. We've diversified our supply chain, and now we have contracts in place with five leading manufacturers, bringing flexibility and resilience to our metering supply chain. Technology and data are at the very center of the MAP. We have clean data flows that track and monitor smart meters and ensure timely and accurate billing for meter rentals. A steady and controlled ramp-up of volumes has enabled us to stress-test processes and operational rigor as the portfolio has scaled. Despite only becoming the sole funding MAP for British Gas since October of this year, we already have close to 400,000 assets now under our management.
We are now billing 25 retail energy suppliers for meter rental revenues where they have inherited one of our meters, and we have a clear line of sight for every single meter that we have funded. When we put all this together, we expect to end the year having deployed up to GBP 100 million of capital, and that's higher than the original forecast as we grow in confidence on our delivery, so now that you have a better view of the overall business, let me walk you through the life of a Centrica-owned smart meter. Revenue into the MAP is determined by the size of the meter portfolio installed multiplied by the rental rate per meter. Each meter equates to a capital investment of approximately GBP 200, and a meter typically has a 15-year life and can often operate well beyond that.
And our meters are all SMETS2 meters, as we've already mentioned, the latest generation of smart meters. Having acquired the meter from one of our meter manufacturers, it is installed by British Gas Services, and we collect a rental payment against that meter. Broadly, we expect the rental rate received for our portfolio to be around the average market rate. When meters churn away from one energy supplier to another, the market operates on deemed T's and C's, where the receiving supplier pays a deemed rental rate. This is covered in energy supplier regulations. Some suppliers will also enter into so-called churn contracts that lock in an agreed rental rate, normally lower than the deemed rate, in return for contractual obligations and protections, including a premature removal charge for any meters removed ahead of the end of their life.
Now, let me walk you through how that single meter builds up to an annual plan to deploy capital of up to GBP 200 million per year, building a business that generates up to GBP 130 million of EBITDA per annum by the end of 2028. First, let's look at our scale. Within our British Gas Energy base, we have 7.5 million customers, which equates to over 12 million meter points, which need to be smart to enable smart products and services in a net-zero world. As of today, roughly 60% of those meters are smart meters, leaving around 5 million meter points in British Gas' customers' homes to go after in phase one. But as the chart on the left shows, that's not the whole story.
Within the current smart portfolio, the 60%, there are also a significant number of SMETS1 meters that over time will require replacing, in particular due to the switch-off of 2G and 3G networks. And don't forget, this continues on past phase one as all the SMETS2 meters that are already partway through their lives become due for renewal, or as we inherit non-smart customers into the British Gas customer base. This all means that we do have significant further headroom to grow, subject to installation capacity and customer demand, and this replacement activity will go on well into the future. As you can then see in the middle chart, phase one will see us deploy around GBP 900 million of group capital by 2028, with phase two providing greater long-term optionality for the reasons that I have just outlined.
Finally, bringing all this together, we can see the opportunity for the MAP to generate an annual EBITDA of up to £130 million by the end of 2028, with adjusted operating profit of up to £70 million annually. This equates to a low-risk 9% IRR with no ongoing sustaining capital required, while generating a higher free cash flow yield of around 11%. Let me now hand you back to Dan to take you through the embedded optionality that the MAP provides.
In thanks, Gareth. Gareth's taken you through the MAP business, and I hope those first two core attributes of scale and predictability have come out in the outline he's given you. Before I turn to the third key attribute of optionality, let me just talk briefly to our confidence in our ability to deploy capital and deliver the repeatable contracted cash flows that Gareth has described. We are confident, as we've already said, you have a very attractive pipeline of in-house opportunity to install and over time replace meters.
The resulting stable recurring rental flows provide a natural hedge to churn of energy retail customers. We know we can do this. The team at British Gas has been installing smart meters for many years, having really led the way in the smart rollout. They have repeatedly installed more smart meters every year than any other supplier. All in all, that equates to the robust business that Gareth has outlined, generating up to GBP 130 million EBITDA by the end of 2028, predicated on stable and predictable cash flows.
So let me now turn to the third attribute, optionality. So first, we have the ability to manage capital deployment carefully. You've seen that even just in-house, we still have headroom to grow into should we want to expand our portfolio more rapidly and deploy more capital. And second, we've set up our MAP as a standalone business, as I said, within Centrica. It operates as its own business, it's asset-backed, and it has arm's-length relationships with British Gas Energy and British Gas Services. And that gives us the optionality to assess the optimal financing structure at any given time should we choose to do so. It's not just financial optionality. It's strategic optionality too. In the MAP, we have effectively built an in-house capability, a new capability to lease and track small assets in customers' homes.
That capability is the team comprising deep expertise from the world of metering and some of our Centrica homegrowners, as well as robust systems and processes that ensure we know where our assets are and we're collecting rental against them in a timely manner. So that capability also gives us strategic optionality, especially in the context of the energy transition and the U.K. and Centrica's net-zero targets.
So smart meters, as I said, are the first step for any household's net-zero journey. We see this as a gateway to new commercial offerings, time-of-use tariffs, and so forth, and supports embedding customers into our Hive ecosystem. And in that context, we'll explore how we can use the MAP's capability to the benefit of our customers. We know that upfront cost is a significant barrier for many looking to cut their energy bills and decarbonize their homes.
So be it an energy-efficient boiler, a heat pump, or solar and storage, we'll assess demand for and the value dynamics of leasing rather than selling hardware. And the MAP's capabilities will be absolutely central to this. And these choices, to be clear, are not reflected in the plan that Gareth and I have presented today. So they would offer potential upside to that plan. They're under consideration and will be hard-headed about whether and how to take them forward. And what's also not included in phase one of this plan is the ongoing future replacement activity of the metering base as and when it comes up for renewal. So whilst we can and will actively explore growing the business by offering this capability to others, we don't necessarily need to.
We have an ongoing pipeline of work, not just installing smart meters for the first time, but also replacing smart meters over time in our British Gas customers' homes, and so to wrap up, I think Gareth and I have been really pleased to present the MAP to you today, effectively a new business and a new revenue stream for Centrica. We've moved quickly with real agility to build our MAP from scratch as a clean, standalone business within Centrica, and I hope we're already starting to demonstrate those three key attributes: scale, predictability, and optionality. Scale, an in-house pipeline that supports CapEx deployments of £900 million. Predictability, stable recurring rental payments that translate into annual EBITDA of up to £130 million by the end of 2028.
This ratable contracted cash flow replaces declining near-term returns from some of our legacy infrastructure business, brings stability to the group, and supports our strong credit rating and optionality, both financial to consider optimal financial structure in the future and strategic to grow into leasing of meters to other businesses and exploring leasing of heating and in-home energy hardware. Thank you so much for your time, so that's it from us. I'll hand back to Chris, and we're very pleased to take your questions.
Dan, Gareth, thank you very much. Look, just to wrap up, I'm super proud of the work that the team have done to create a brand new business from scratch and a brand new revenue stream from Centrica. It's not easy, but Gareth and Dan have made it seem easy. It's also just worthwhile touching on Gareth, one of hundreds of ex-Forces people we've got in the organization. We've found an unbelievable talent stream. So we have FORCES Pathway.
I think we've got well over 500 now that we've recruited in the last three or four years. If every one of them could generate a new revenue stream, my God, we would be very happy. But look, we've got the largest UK energy customer base. We've got the largest in-house installation service and capability. We probably, I think, have the strongest balance sheet and most available cash, all of which makes this a unique proposition that is well within our control. Just to reinforce what Dan and Gareth told you, beyond the first phase, the 4.5 million meters, £900 million or £1 billion depends, as I was saying to Russell and to his auditors.
But anyway, GBP 900 million or so, GBP 130 million of EBITDA, that's just a third of what this could be because another 8 million meters will be replaced. You can do the math yourself, but I think if you multiply that by three, you get to, that's quite a good number, a very material number. SMS was taken private at GBP 1.3 billion. That's smaller than we will be in just a few years. Calisen was recently valued at GBP 4 billion. That's got a portfolio that will have the same size of portfolio that we'll have if we just satisfy the internal demand that we've got. Very material. The only thing it depends on is us having our energy customers and no other competitive pressures.
Clearly, the way the government drives the rollout is important, but no competitive pressures in this which, in a business like ours, with lots of competitive pressures, is actually quite a nice thing to have. It also creates options for financing small energy transition assets across our businesses and for our customers. Dan and Gareth laid out the foundational capabilities, established the ability to finance, lease, track, charge people for small assets. That gives us options. It doesn't give us requirements. So the MAP and Centrica Energy we've created really, I think, very hard to replicate capabilities. It supports the earnings output, creates opportunities for future growth.
And today, hopefully, you've seen a bit of the quality of the businesses that we've got, but you've also seen the quality of the people that we have generating the value, the four people you see on the stage, the people you see at the back of the room that are supporting this. Our focus in the group is very, very, very simple. Number one, we maximize the value of our existing businesses, driving continuous operational improvement. Today will be better than yesterday. Tomorrow will be better than today. That's continuous improvement every single day. You never take a day off. Number two, we're focused on delivering the most compelling propositions for our customers. We're building out further optionality through optimization. And number three, we're investing in assets that will create value. I think we're unbelievably well positioned for the changing energy system.
As I said earlier, for 2028, we expect group EBITDA of around £1.6 billion, with around 85% coming from things in operation or sanctioned today. That includes £200 million from Spirit and nuclear combined, the existing nuclear business. For the avoidance of doubt, this is not a forecast, just helping you with the math. Although we continue to pursue material options such as Rough, Morecambe, Sizewell C, it is super important to remember that we've already sanctioned the projects that will deliver the vast majority of the 2028 expected EBITDA. These other things would be nice, but the majority is already in our hands. We'll deliver that while maintaining a return on capital employed of north of 20%. Look, thanks very much for the time. We're all very happy to take your questions.
I'd like to focus first on the questions on MAP because you get more time to see Russell and I than you do to see Dan and Gareth. So if we start with the MAP, we'll have a hard stop at 4:30 P.M., but we'll take questions and the general trading statement towards the end. But, Jenny, let me go to Dom first because you get the first last name. We'll go to Dom, and then we'll come to Jenny.
Yeah, hi. It's Dominic Nash from Barclays. Thank you. A couple of questions. First of all, on the rental model, could you just let us know whether you are adopting a real or nominal model for the rent, and/or do consumers have the choice as to which one they go for? And secondly, you've got GBP 4.5 million phase one by 2028, looking at sort of the colors. I presume that that is all non-smart. The majority is non-smart meters. But what scope is there for cannibalization of existing meter owner meters in your portfolio, either that you haven't got a churn contract with and/or they're SMETS ones and you want to get rid of them early? Thank you.
Gareth, do you want to take that second one? And Russell, do you want to talk about whether it's real or nominal returns that we're talking about, the cannibalization risk?
Yeah, sorry, second question. So yes, non-smart meters within the portfolio. So the GBP 4.5 million are not smart meters within the portfolio. That's what we're going after. With regards to the cannibalization, so every energy supplier in the market, and we are no exception, has various different contracts in place with MAPs within the market. So there is a trade-off there that you will take a penalty on one side to accelerate progress on another side. But with regards to the 2G and 3G switch-off, there will be a necessity to replace a certain amount of meters as well.
Yeah, and just on the how the inflation plays in this business and real and nominal returns. So when you put a meter on a wall and you create a contract for that, that's a flat rate for the life of that meter that doesn't inflate. If you have certain churn and deemed contracts, elements of them sometimes can inflate. And in terms of the overall recovery, there's a degree of inflation protection there. But the main contract is fixed. Jenny, I will go over here.
Thanks very much. Jenny Ping, Citi, three questions, please. There have been recently talks by NESO, or at least the industry has been talking. Obviously, NESO is trying to promote Net Zero, and one of the route to Net Zero is more take-up of smart meters, and we've had challenges in the smart meter take-up, so I guess two questions from that. One, is there no potential for this market to be effectively taken back by the distribution companies to roll out smart meters in a more forcible way, or to be done by NESO as a change of government policy, effectively?
And then secondly, the GBP 4.5 million that's on the chart going from non-smart into smart, effectively, that's assuming everybody converts, right? So isn't that quite an aggressive assumption? Because you've still got people like me who don't own a dumb meter. Secondly, just on the Capex, GBP 200, Calisen is talking about GBP 220, GBP 225. So what makes you at an advantage in buying that at a lower price? And then I think third link to that, I guess, is your utilization of your engineer workforce. Can you just talk to us a little bit about sort of the efficiency measures you can have there by cross-utilizing that workforce to install the meters? Thank you.
Let me have a rough go and then Russell can keep on talking about the CapEx because there's something there. There's part of the cost that's not capitalized. And then Gareth and Dan will have an idea on utilization. So firstly, on the idea that this will be taken over by the network companies, I haven't heard any conversations about that at all. We haven't had conversations with industry.
What I've said to the government, the regulator, and not yet to NESO, but I will, is so firstly, government has to decide whether or not it wants to mandate this. I have to be really careful because I made that comment in Parliament that government had to decide, and the newspaper headlines were, "Centrica Chief demands mandatory smart meters." I got lots of emails from people saying, "Over my dead body, will I have a smart meter?" So firstly, government's got to decide how it wants to do this rollout or whether it wants to mandate them. If it doesn't mandate them, we can't have a smart grid. If we can't have a smart grid, I don't think we can get to net-zero by 2030 because we just cannot get there by just having more and more and more generation on. It will be too expensive.
So that's a question. It's not an easy one for government, but they've got to figure that out. Then the second one we've said is, and some of the other industry players have said the same, which is you could have a halfway house, which is rather than say, "We're just going to go customer by customer by customer," you could divvy up the people that are not smart meters street by street by street based on proportion of what you've already got. Now, some companies will say, "I don't care, so you pick up a higher proportion." But we said we could be comfortable with that rather than say, "We'll go to every single one of our customers' houses and put this in.
If you give us, if we've got either 25% of the market, give us 25% of the non-smart meters in the market and let us get there." It's kind of linked to utilization because if you go from your house to Fraser's house to Ally's house, and you all live next door, each other, it's brilliant because you're not spending a lot of time in a van. So I think that's probably more likely. I have no idea how you would get something where the distribution companies would suddenly, all of a sudden, take over in this. I mean, it's the best world in the world. We are not quick at making decisions, especially not in the energy space. So by the time we made the decision, we probably had GBP 4.5 million meters on the wall.
So I do think there's a possibility that you could change this and make it better. And I think Russell can touch on the non-capitalized element of the smart meter. And then on utilization, I think that one of the areas, and Gareth will talk about this more knowledgeably, but one of the big issues we've had is on the commissioning of the smart meters. And frankly, the dreadfully poor performance by the DCC, the Communications Center, which is outsourced by NESO, Ofgem, whoever the hell it is, has a contract to a third-party company. And frankly, their performance is woeful. And we have an engineer that can be standing trying to commission a meter, and you've got a third party who's operating this thing who has no incentive to make sure that they're right.
So there are some utilization things I think we can control, and there are some things that we can lobby for, but it is deeply frustrating. But I don't know. Gareth, do you want to touch on that, and Russell, do you want to touch on the smart meters?
Yeah, sure. Thank you. A great question. With regards to utilization, so again, coming back to what Dan said earlier on, smart isn't new to us. We've been installing smart meters en masse for a long period of time. We've got one of the largest direct engineering workforces in the U.K. So we've got massive amounts of experience in installing smart meters, doing that efficiently and effectively. But also as well, we've got the flexibility of using third-party resources as well.
What that means with regards to the utilization, from what we're seeing now, we're more than capable to deliver against the numbers that have been projected today.
Chris, could I just add one point for Jenny? Jenny, your question on the overall rollout, and I think your sort of question, will it become harder to reach customers as we get down that GBP 4.5 million? One of the things we've got to envisage as we're going through the next few years is the energy transition continues, electrification continues, and smart meters, as I said, really are the gateway product. You can't have time-of-use tariffs if you don't have a smart meter that settles your energy supply every 30 minutes. Likewise, Cassim and colleagues can't utilize the virtual power plant if we're not pulling that out of smart meter homes.
So you've got an incentive for government to really make it happen in the VPP space and mitigating the supply headwinds that Chris described. And one would hope we're talking about carrots, not sticks, with customers that actually, as we bring more time-of-use tariffs to markets, you see customers more interested and more engaged and wanting to take a smart meter. And that's exactly what we've seen, for example, in British Gas Peak Save, where you ain't going to get that half-price electricity on a Sunday if you don't have a smart meter. And just on the accounting and the capital for the MAP, so we're setting up this company as a standalone entity. So it has independent relationships, arm's length relationships with British Gas Energy and British Gas Services. So the direct cost of installing the meter is about £200, as we quoted.
The overall cost is about GBP 230-GBP 240. That's probably similar to the number that you quoted. I think that's relatively similar in the market. The difference is that some of these payments are arm's length payments between companies and Centrica, and indirect costs, variable costs, and other things. We can't capitalize them. They would be expensed in the year of installation. So that's the difference between the two numbers.
So let's go here and then we'll come to you, Arne.
Thank you very much. Pavan from J.P. Morgan. I'm paraphrasing what you said, Chris, in terms of the regulatory backdrop being important, and I think you answered previously that there is no smart meter mandate. But can you remind us what is the regulatory environment, whether it's from the government or Ofgem on the installation of smart meters, or does it really rely on customers putting their hand up and saying, "Can I have one of these now?"
Again, there's still the enactment. We have targets, and we have an allowance in the price cap. And we have to write to customers, "Would you like a smart meter?" And those that don't get it, we have to show that we've made it. If we have to contact them, sometimes we lose the customers more. And sometimes customers come and say, "Look, I've told you three or four times I don't want a smart meter." So it kind of goes to the point, is there a threat? And if you keep asking them, I'm going to leave.
So we say to government, "Look, you've got this really weird thing. You tell us to install X. You don't tell customers they have to have it. We have to go and piss off our customers, which is really not what the regulators should be looking for us to do. And if we don't hit the target, you're going to fine us." And so it's funny. I spoke to the previous minister and the previous government that's responsible for this.
And I'm not breaching any confidences. And I said to them, "Look, if you really want this done, you have to think about mandating it." And his answer was, I thought a bit bizarrely. He said, "Well, would it be 60%?" He said, "Would it be 55% penetration?" He said, "Once we get to 65%, let's talk about it. Once we get to 75%, maybe we'll think about it." I said, "Why?
Where's your arbitrary number?" Now, that was the previous government, where we don't tell people what to do, and so sometimes you have this political ideology, so it's a bit odd, but look, everyone's a grown-up. We go in and say, "Look, this is, here's the situation. I'm confident that we'll get to the right answer, and I'm confident we would have got to the right answer with the previous government as well. It's just we're only 50-ish, 55%, 60% penetrated," but it's not without Dan and other colleagues that are responsible for this. There's a wee bit of heartburn each year, and we have the weirdest conversations, but I think we'll get to the right answer.
Thanks, and I have two other questions, please. Firstly, on the reporting of the MAP, is that going to be a separate line, or how are you thinking about reporting that if that's something you can say? And then my last question is, how does the CapEx, sorry, the CapEx of the MAP interact with full expensing, if there is any interaction there? And does that impact or change how you think about returns?
Yep. So for the end of this year, the MAP will be included in the British Gas Energy results. It's not material enough yet for us to split out. I will be providing in the nous enough information so you can begin to see how that's growing. Over time, we'll take a look at segmentation in general as this business grows because it will be a big part of Centrica. Expensing, full expensing, and other things.
We're assuming in our numbers that we just got normal capital allowances. There's a discussion you've seen recently in the budget about various different allowance rules that may allow us over time to be full expensing that. That would just be an incremental benefit for us, but we haven't included that in the numbers at the moment. Mark then would have said.
Thank you. Could I ask on the cost when you take down traditional meters and sometimes SMETS1 and even SMETS2 meters? Presumably, there's a penalty payable. So where would that penalty appear? Would it appear against the actual smart meters or within British Gas residential? And can you sort of talk us through the capitalized labor costs? I'm surprised that you talk about it being as low as, I think, GBP 40 per meter.
I think the evidence when you were passing a lot of the cost over to your third parties was much, much higher, right? At times, it seemed like you were throwing everything, including the kitchen sink almost, into those businesses to capitalize cost. Are those costs going to be - are the labor costs going to be expensed upfront, which would potentially back-end load profits?
You're tempting me as an ex-finance person to try and answer that, but I think you can capitalize the direct labor cost. You can't capitalize the indirect cost. And I don't think there's any way, given the productivity, there's no way that the labor cost is GBP 40 per meter. I think it's probably three times that amount, I think, of what we pay people on an hourly basis. So that's correct. No, that's absolutely right. Yeah. So it's just - there you go.
I'm quite excited that I forgot the first part of the question. What was the first part? So there will be higher costs. There will be costs that you could have previously, yeah, yeah. So it's a, yeah, so we will sacrifice some in-year profitability in the early years of this in order to deliver the value because what you would be charging to a third party, you can't fully charge on that. I don't know how it will work. You'll have some kind of level consolidation adjustment or something. But so the profit would be higher for us if we continue with a third party, but the value would be lower. So we will sacrifice some in-year profitability. But I think it all catches up with maybe the depreciation charge changes.
But for the first, as a note back, for the ramp-up, I suppose until you get to steady state and full saturation, your profits will be a bit lower. I mean, Russell, I think we'll lay that all out in February, and we'll go up and say, "Look, this is what the impact would have been for 2024. This is what you would expect when you get to 2025 and onwards." So the penalties penetrating. That's what I mean. What I'm really impressed with, there's so many different bloody contracts that I think if you're in a deemed contract, you get higher rental, but you don't have a penalty if you're on an agreed contract. Gareth, you can take us through that.
But what's super impressive is, so what we're not going to do is we're not going to just say ideologically, "This is going to rip all these people's meters off the wall." I think you understand the contractual obligation, so you can say, "I can take these meters off, and I've got no penalty, and I can put things on, and these ones have a penalty, and I think it depends on the age of the meter, but you know this far better than anyone else in the room."
No, of course, Chris. Thank you. First of all, so the MAP and British Gas Energy, we are separate entities, so there's certain information that we don't cross the boundary on that, but what I'll speak about is from an energy supplier's perspective.
So all our energy suppliers within the marketplace have relationships with pretty much every MAP within the marketplace because your customer base changes over time. And what that means is that you will inherit customers that have assets owned by third parties, and you'll end up, over a certain period of time, interacting with all third parties within the marketplace. Now, the value of the contracts and the way that the contracts work is the deemed and the churn contracts that MAPs operate to. The premature removal charges, so if you remove an asset, if you're an energy supplier and you remove an asset, it's dependent on the life expectancy of that meter, so how old that meter is. So they are hugely variable, dependent on where the portfolio is at a position in time.
However, energy suppliers do have the choice to remove those assets, but they would normally, in most cases, pay a penalty for it, dependent on the age of the asset. I hope that answers the question.
Excellent. Brilliant. Thank you.
Sid Kumar from Jupiter. Thank you, everyone, for the presentation. That was very helpful. So I have three questions. The first one, you've given an internal rate of return guide of 9% plus IRR post-tax. But if we go with your run rate adjusted operating profit, having invested GBP 900 million by 2028, it only gets us to about 6%. So is that a material step up post-2028? So just that bridge, how does it get to 9%? The second one, in terms of GBP 200 per meter, given that your ambition is to install something close to GBP 4.5 million, are there any benefits to scale in terms of the cost per meter that you might achieve in that? And then the third one, given the predictable nature of this income stream, what is the optimal capital structure you think for this kind of business?
The only two questions. The first one is definitely one for Russell. Look, I think the optimal capital structure is one we'll have to figure out. What we're doing is we're setting this up so that we can, if we want, bring in third-party capital. We can choose to have this 100% Centrica capital. We can choose to dial it up or down through the year.
Russell and the team will make sure that we've got the right partnerships and the right capital providers. And if we find a point where we've got a better home for the capital, then we'd like to dial up the third-party capital, still keep ownership of this, and have some debt in there. But the GBP 200 per meter, I think the meter cost, we've got 40 quid or something for the meter. The meter is a small part of it. It's 50. 50. And the big part of it is the labor cost. I think the big cost benefit from this would be better productivity. Because I think, I mean, effectively, what we do is we already buy the meters, and then we install them.
Even with the third parties, we would buy them, we would install them, and then we would effectively sell them to the meter asset provider. We're not going to see any more scale on purchasing the meters because it's what we've been buying anyway. But the real benefit, if we could get a smart engineer to do four a day rather than two a day, you would almost half your labor cost. That's why if you did go to something whereby we could go street by street rather than from Russell's house to my house, and then you've got two hours travel in time, I think that would be the game changer in the cost there. I can't see whether that will come.
I can see that as we're putting in a new planning and dispatch system in our services business, which should allow us to actually do that a lot better, which is to dynamically change engineer scheduling and therefore reduce as much as possible the travel time that engineers have got. Russell, 9% IRR post-tax step up.
Yeah. The difference between I assume that you've got a sort of base 7% or 8%, as you indicated. What's happening over time, though, is some of your customers are churning. And as Gareth outlined earlier, the rates that you receive on the deemed and the churn contracts are slightly higher. So as you go through time and you see some of your customers churn, that's just helping your IRR move up slightly higher. That's the dynamic there.
Excellent. Thank you, and we've got a question online. Just quickly on that bridge, Russell. So what sort of time frame can we expect from a 2028 starting point as to when it would move from a 6 to a 9? What sort of phasing should we expect?
I don't have a good answer for you there. Maybe I'll come back to you later on that one.
You've got about 15% churn in the market at the moment, I think. If not a bit less, sorry. That's the final answer. So 10% churn. So you can do we're all nicking each other's customers off each other. Now, you want to get really clever about it. We have far better data capability now. We could choose to install smart meters on the customers that are most likely to churn if we wanted to optimize for smart meter income.
If those smart meters were a way to keep customers, we'd choose the customers that were most likely to churn, but also easiest to retain. So Gary, we've got a few customer officers here. We've got a great data capability now within Gary's team. So we could be far more deliberate in how we target smart meters, if we'd so choose. We're not doing that at the moment. We're taking all the customers the way we possibly can. So let me go online and come back to you, and then we'll be done.
The question from Richard Alderman is, are you confident you can hit all of the remaining milestones set by Ofgem regarding domestic smart meter installation targets by taking it all in-house? The penalty for missing the smart meter installation milestones prior to 2018 costs us a fine of GBP 5.3 million for just over a thousand meter shortfall.
Ofgem could decide to become aggressive again. You said you could use third-party providers and engineering teams. Other MAPs would be competing for them, so Richard, what we're bringing in-house is the financing of the smart meters. We have the biggest in-house installation team in the UK, but we also supplement that, whether it's in smart meter installation or other parts of the services business with service partners. Some of them wear their uniform, some of them don't, and so bringing it in-house, as we're talking today, has no impact whatsoever on our ability to deliver the smart meter mandate. I'm confident we can deliver it, but I also know we have to have debates with Ofgem each year because you've got this weird thing, which is you've got to install X amount. You can't mandate them, but we have that conversation.
Last question here, and then we have one minute. So it can only be one question. It has to be quick, and the answer will be even quicker.
So the question is, you talk about a number of capabilities for the MAP business on slide 25, control processes, industry data management. Is it already all set up for four and a half million sort of meters, or is that something you will be building out as you sort of get more customers?
So effectively, the way we set it up was ready for scale. So we'll have to supplement and build the team a little bit further, but it will remain a lean team. But rather like Cassim's example of going and trading in North America and making a $16 profit on your first four trades, congratulations.
Rather the same for us is what we're doing is we're using our systems now and really testing them and have tested them, and they're ready to scale. We've got 400,000 plus or minus meters on the wall already, and those systems are working. And as Gareth described, relationships with 25 energy suppliers really make sure you're testing the billing systems and they work. So we effectively have the systems ready to scale now.
Thank you very much, everyone, for coming. Thanks to those of you that tore yourself away from Liz's lunch. The fintechs and the analysts are all on their way over. They've left for lunch slightly early. So those of you that are at the 7:10 P.M. lunch, thank you very much. We will next be together on the 20th of February for our preliminary full year results announcement.
If we don't get a chance to chat, please have a fantastic Christmas and a great new year. There's team coffee there. A few of us have to make a very short exit, so please don't think we're rude. We've just got a couple of things that we have to go to. Thanks very much, everybody.