[Non-English content] and welcome to Genesis Energy's first half of FY 2022 results presentation. I'm Marc England, the CEO, and next to me here is Emma Oettli, the Acting Chief Financial Officer. We'll take you through this in stages. I'll give you a few highlights, hand over to Emma to talk about the financial highlights, and then I'll come back and talk about operational and strategic matters. Starting with our highlights on slide five. It's been a strong half for Genesis. Really proud of the EBITDAF performance, NZD 210 million, and an NPAT of NZD 85 million. Emma will explain the vagaries of that and the ups and downs as a result of various movements. We're announcing an interim dividend of NZD 0.087 per share this morning, which is a gross yield of 8.3%.
Our operational highlights of customer loyalty and partnering on solar and the first half year of full generation from Waipipi Wind Farm are things we're all very proud of too. Emma will also talk about the Sustainable Finance Framework in a slide later on, which is something we believe we were a market first on. What we're highlighting today as well is our social achievements through the half. Calling out three in particular, the Ngā Ara Creating Pathways initiative, which for us is an evolution from our long-running School-gen program, which focused on primary school-aged children's STEM education. Now focusing through that Pathways, the more senior secondary school education system and sponsoring kids, particularly in our communities that we operate in, through special courses.
We also use those relationships we had earlier in the year when there was a big push on vaccination drive across the country to engage in the communities and support them with the information they needed to make the choices they wanted to make around vaccinations. Our Power Shout program, which has been running for a long time now, took a step forward in the last half with its gifting, where we offered customers the opportunity to gift their Power Shouts to the communities or people who are struggling to pay their bills. 15,000 opted in for that and that's great and we're going to double that as Genesis and it'll be about 130,000 hours offered for winter.
Those Power Shout hours, which will be free power, will be given when it's needed most, which is when demand is highest during winter and high demand hours. We do have an ambition to eventually allow our customers to donate their Power Shouts to individuals, family members, who they believe they want to support paying their bills too, but that's not yet there, but this is the beginning of it. Manaaki o Kenehi, which we've talked about before, was really important in the last half, supporting customers who are struggling to pay their bills and, you know, not only referring those customers to WINZ and FinCap for support, but also ensuring that as long as they kept paying a little bit of their bill over time, we would stick with them. We wouldn't disconnect them.
Through that, we've generated a lot of loyalty, which is probably also driving some of that net churn and brand NPS up. When you take this holistically, you're seeing a high-performing business, socially responsible and focusing even more so than we have been in the past on a more renewable future for New Zealand. With that, I'll hand over to Emma to talk about the financial results in more detail, then come back and talk about some of the other operational highlights. Emma.
Wonderful. Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. On to slide seven, which shows our half year financial summary. Genesis has delivered a strong first half. EBITDAF of NZD 210 million is slightly down on PCP, but it's worth noting that half year 2021 was a record, and prior to this, Genesis EBITDAF for a first half had never been over NZD 200 million. It's great to see us hitting above this threshold again. FY 2022 is a year of investment, and our increase in OpEx is primarily driven through investing in our strategy. I will provide more detail on this later in today's presentation. Today, we announce an interim dividend of NZD 0.087 per share. This is an increase of 1.2% on PCP and reflects our strong first half and FY 2022 outlook.
Genesis continues to play its part in ensuring New Zealand's energy security, rebuilding the stockpile after a heavy draw last winter. Consequently, inventory has grown, which has had a knock-on impact to operating cash flow and net debt. Slide eight highlights that for the half we are reintroducing the dividend reinvestment plan. Our desire to grow through the transition and deliver on our strategy requires investment, both in OpEx, as I've already mentioned, and CapEx. Our plans are moving forward, and directors felt now is the right time to reintroduce the DRP to strengthen our balance sheet and ensure that it can deliver on our future ambition.
The half year dividend of NZD 0.087 per share is set to half of the FY 2021 full year dividend in a similar trend to what we have done over the last few years, recognizing the importance of dividends to our investors and our aim to grow dividends over time. The dividend remains 80% imputed, and we continue to pay a supplementary dividend to non-New Zealand residents to ensure tax equalization. Notably, the dividend as a percentage of free cash flow remains relatively stable at 60%, and the resulting gross dividend yield remains competitive at 8.3%.
On slide nine, you can see that Genesis delivered EBITDAF, which is roughly equal to FY 2021 once an adjustment is made for emissions costs as a result of the Beach arbitration that should have fallen in the PCP. Momentum in our retail business continues with net backs up across all fields. Our wholesale business proved once again its ability to flex and deliver value in changing market conditions. Running short into low prices and long into high prices, which helped support an energy margin increase between the periods. The half was not without its challenges. The events that unfolded on the August 9th, created a short position where Genesis was forced into the reserves market at very high prices, and this created a one-off headwind. Slide 10 looks at a bit more detail in each segment.
Changes in headline segment performance largely reflect changes in the transfer price between the periods. Our retail segment includes all sales to customers of electricity, gas, and LPG. Financial performance has been driven by improved net backs across all fuels as a result of improved pricing, and sales momentum continued in our LPG business, with customer connections up 8% on PCP. Our wholesale segment covers all of our spot market activities, wholesale sales, and generation. After adjusting for the movement in transfer price, the August 9th, event, and half year 2021 emissions, wholesale performance is broadly flat on PCP. On the back of rising commodity prices, a continuing tight gas market, and rising emissions, the weighted average thermal fuel cost has increased by over 20%. Rising thermal fuel costs have been partially offset by our portfolio's ability to flex and a full half of Waipipi in operation.
This is a great example of our FutureGen strategy in action, as Waipipi displaces higher cost thermal fuel. Kupe EBITDA is down on PCP and reflects a reset of prices for the sale of gas and LPG between wholesale and Kupe. Following the successful completion of the Inlet Compression Project, we are expecting a good result from Kupe in the second half due to increased production and higher oil prices. On slide 11, you can see that NPAT is up on the half due to a net favorable movement in the fair value of our swaptions and PPAs and a realized cash gain relating to coal hedging. We monitor underlying earnings as a better measure of profitability, as our reported NPAT numbers regularly have noise resulting from changes in forecast asset values and fair value adjustments, as I've just described.
Removing this noise, underlying earnings of NZD 60 million is equal to the PCP underlying earnings of NZD 60 million. Slide 12 illustrates that as we deliver on our strategy, this investment is reflected in the OpEx growth across the period. The key drivers of this increase include planning for the future of Huntly, progressing the biofuels trial, discovery work to re-platform our core billing system, and supporting growth in LPG. During the period, we implemented the updated accounting policy in relation to software as a service cost. This resulted in some CapEx being reclassified as OpEx. Of the NZD 3 million NPAT in the half, around 2 of that relates to work to support our retail digital transformation. Again, reinforcing the message that our key driver of operating cost increase has been strategy.
In addition to the inflationary impacts through salary, software, and insurance, Genesis has spent over NZD 1 million to keep its people safe and maintain effective operations throughout this phase of the pandemic. Lastly, in the half, we incurred around NZD 8 million of expenses that we would term one-off in nature, which includes digital transformation project costs, Energy Online rebranding, and planning for the future of Huntly and solar development. Slide 13 talks to our capital investment. Over the period, we have spent slightly less on capital than PCP due to the completion of several significant projects and the accounting policy change. Full year, we anticipate capital spend of up to NZD 84 million. We distinguish our capital expenditure between stay in business and growth.
A number of very important stay in business projects were undertaken this half, including investment in thermal resilience to ensure the long-term continued reliability of New Zealand's thermal backup, a major upgrade at Tekapo B, which will future-proof it for decades and improve plant efficiency by 2.5%. At Piripaua, work commenced on the overhaul of the power station's turbines, one this summer and one next, which will increase plant efficiency by 3.3%. We continue to invest in projects that create growth. Completion of the Kupe inlet compressor being a key contributor, ensuring gas resilience and a return to full production capability. In our retail business, the Powershop program is increasing customer engagement, and as our LPG business continues to grow, this is supported with additional capital. Slide 14 covers our capital structure.
Despite net debt increasing, we are seeing debt to EBITDA fall due to higher expected earnings in the full year. This provides some headroom, which is supported by the DRP being reintroduced to fund our investment pipeline. Importantly, S&P have reaffirmed our BBB+ rating in February, and financing costs are flat, with the increase in debt offset by the mix of debt shifting towards floating, which is at lower rates, and the roll off of higher priced debt. Lastly, slide 15. This is one highlight I am personally very proud of, insofar as what we have delivered through the Sustainable Finance Framework, but also what this represents for Genesis.
A company that stands for a just transition and gives due considerations to climate, social, community, and people aspects as we transition to a more renewable future, and is willing to put some skin in the game vis-à-vis its sustainability-linked loans, which come with higher interest costs if we don't meet our targets. Since its inception, the team has worked really hard, and as at today, 35% of our financing facilities are covered by this framework. This includes NZD 250 million of debt facilities linked to the delivery of our sustainability targets. Now I pass back to you, Marc.
Thank you, Emma. Over the next section, I'll talk about some of the operational context behind those results and then move swiftly into a strategic outlook. Moving on to slide 17. We've talked about engagement before, but at Genesis, I think you all know engagement for us is core to our retail vision. It's about giving customers a reason to engage beyond the bill. We've been focused on it for years, and we're starting to see some of the fruits born from that. Energy IQ continues to grow in numbers, with all the interactions we had in the last half equal to 71% of the full year, from FY 2021. We're really proud of that.
You saw on the highlight slide that our brand NPS is up to 26, and the chart on the top right here shows the trend in that. Most pleasingly, that growth in brand NPS has been driven by a reduction in detractors and removing the reasons that customers choose not to stay with Genesis, which should be playing into a lower churn number, which you've seen. As we move forward, Energy IQ continues to play a really important role, and we will continue to focus on it, and I'll come to that in a good time. Next slide. Slide 18. We're giving you more data on LPG this time, a less visible market to many of the analysts in the sector who report a lot of electricity and not very much about gas and LPG.
We're showing you here for the first time, the sector LPG growth. We've often said it's the fastest growing energy retail fuel in New Zealand, and it is. The dynamic of the wholesale production of LPG shrinking slightly as the demand in the market grows at retail has meant that more LPG is being imported. You can see on the right-hand side, bottom right-hand side, 2021, 21.9% of the retail demand for LPG was imported LPG. Why is that important? Because imported LPG is about twice the cost at wholesale of indigenous LPG production. Genesis' advantage, as it was four or five years ago when we started to invest in LPG, is our vertical integration to Kupe, where most of the LPG we need for our customers comes from.
As LPG netbacks have grown, that's one of the dynamics that's causing it and allowing us to be competitive and grow margins as we go. Residential numbers continue to be up, and we're proud of the growth we're seeing there too. Moving on to slide 19. The Energy IQ app is about to go through a big refresh, and by the end of March, customers will see a different Energy IQ. That shift from what we call Energy IQ 1.0 to Energy IQ 2.0 is to move the emphasis to be centered around the customer's home. The image you see here on the top right is what customers will see when they open up their app. They'll be able to select a home image that most represents their home and their style and architecture of home.
If they have other home energy functionality like solar panels, LPG, EVs, then the image will demonstrate that as a real example of what's in their home. The features that they start to see will start to reflect what matters to them to help them manage their home. You can see that that shift is going to be quite meaningful, it's going to be even more engaging, and it's because of the growth in numbers of Energy IQ users that we've been able to get confident about that and to really transform what we think will be not only a market-leading, but probably an industry-leading app engagement going forward. On slide 20, we talk about the EV products that are now in the app.
If you're an EV customer at Genesis right now, you get about a half price discount between 9 P.M. and 7 A.M. in the morning. What we've seen is about 40% of our EV customers have been engaging with that on a regular basis, and we've seen about a 7% shift in demand to the evening hours. I'm one of those customers, and I promise you, when you know you're going to pay half the price after 9 P.M., you start to put your dishwasher on, your pool pump, and other things on at night that you can shift. It's been a great experiment in human behavior as well for us. We've captured lots of.
Into another phase of our EV pilot, where we're testing dynamic charging, where the customer can choose in their app when they want their car to be charged by, and we decide for them the most economical, cheapest or lowest carbon period during the night to do it if it's overnight, to give them that insight at the end of it as to what they've got active or from a cost perspective for having had that choice made for them. It's a control function, but it's also got huge value for the consumer. It's just to continue to engage customers in energy management, which is about giving them the choice that matters to them in their lifestyle and their home, or also their business. In the bottom right-hand chart here, you can see the growth in energy services being sold with C&I.
We've said to you, our investors, over time that we see that as a competitive advantage. The more services we can sell with energy, the more we can differentiate the energy product. We're winning customers now from competitors or retaining them against competitors who are offering cheaper prices because we're offering a service around decarbonization or energy efficiency that companies want. That's a really important differentiator for us as we go forward, and this summarizes our energy management ambition collectively. On slide 21, we're just showcasing Frank Energy. If you haven't caught news of it, Frank relaunched a couple of weeks ago. It's the old Energy Online. It's got a new brand persona, and it's creating waves in the market, and we're really excited about it. We're giving it enough oxygen to run on its own.
It's not just about the brand, it's also about digitizing the brand and digitizing the experience. You can see the journey started long before we refreshed the brand to move them to become digital. Now we've got some tough targets there to hit, and we hope we will hit them over the course of the next year or two. We obviously measure Frank versus the Tier 2 in terms of churn, which generally has higher churn than Tier 1's. We think it's going to do really well over the next couple of years and are excited to see its growth. The third brand in our portfolio is Ecotricity, which we talked about a year ago. Ecotricity was at 60%. As of today, we've become 70% owners.
We manage it at arm's length, and the numbers from Ecotricity are not reflected in our consolidated numbers. They are in our accounts, but not in our operational numbers. We sit on their board, but ultimately, we let them run the business on their own. They are a 100% renewable certified retailer. Whereas they started life very much in the residential space, which you can see by the light green parts of the bars here, selling to customers who wanted solar panels on their roof, maybe a battery in their garage or EV. They've got a high penetration of that type of distributed energy technology in their portfolio.
They've seen real success of late in converting large businesses, many of them in this Auckland and Wellington area, to their product because those large businesses can then claim they've got zero emissions in their Scope 2 emissions. A really important proposition. It's signed by a government body called Toitū. Ecotricity continue to push the boundaries and stretch the definition of what a 100% certified is. They're going to continue to push it and continue to push it such that it becomes an even more robust measure. They're really committed to that and making sure that where the wind is not blowing, there are offsets to make sure that it is definitely a 100% renewable.
Growth targets abound, and they've also been successful not only in large corporates, but also with some of the data centers recently that you've seen announced, with solar sleeving products as part of the package. Companies that want to put solar on their roof or want solar to be part of their mix. A really exciting proposition, and we will stay close to them. Moving on from Ecotricity to slide 23, back to the generation portfolio. As Emma said, one of the features of this, of the first half of this financial year was the flexibility in the portfolio. If you saw our Q2 operational report, we covered it in that, and we want to reinforce the point here, which is that is the strength of Genesis' portfolio.
We can run along in high prices with our thermal plants, and we can turn it off in low prices and buy off the market. The chart on the right, top right-hand side here shows how we did that in December. It's not perfect in every day and every period, but in general, we were running short at low prices, reducing our weighted average cost we pass through the retail business. Another message coming from this slide is that the deal we did with Methanex last winter to buy a lot of gas, which was a lot of gas for Genesis to swallow, and we demonstrated it in our full year results for FY 2021 as how we absorbed that fuel into Huntly Power Station. What you see on this chart is that we swap the future periods.
We swapped it into the next winter of 2022, and also some of it into 2023, which means we've got a very full gas book going into the next two winters, which means Huntly's Unit 5 and Unit 6 will be able to run at maximum capacity, and that's put us in good stead for the next couple of years. Moving on to slide 24. As well as gas as a key fuel, and you know coal as a key fuel, we look at carbon. Carbon, in the past, we've disclosed the top right chart, our carbon hedge position, but a new disclosure this morning for analysts and investors is the carbon hedge price.
We're not giving you the exact prices in a band, but the bottom right-hand chart shows you our hedge position through to FY 2028 versus the spot price for carbon. We think this is really important because it's a competitive advantage. Of course, the market operates the spot prices, and a lot of our contracts pass through the spot price, but our cost base is based on the hedge price, so that's really important. On the bottom left-hand side, we're calling out the total storage capacity of Genesis, including coal. We're heading into winter in a really good position, as seen in our quarterly report. This coal stockpile is the highest it's been for a long, long time.
That coal was purchased before last winter on long-term contracts with shipping agreements, which means we're getting it at a price way below the spot price or the market price globally for the last six months. Many of you will want to know what that price is, but we can't tell you. We're not going to tell you. It's competitive information, and we're just not willing to disclose at this point. Don't waste one of your questions later asking, because we can't disclose it. Moving on to slide 24. As we move forward, energy security continues to be an issue, obviously, and Kupe is playing an important role in that. We had a successful project with Beach to build the compressor, which started to come online end of September, early October in the half.
Kupe now has the capacity to produce 70 gigas a day again, which is awesome. You can see the long-term gas production forecast on the bottom right-hand side, which we often get asked in meetings about, but we haven't necessarily shown so visibly before. You can see the impact of compression on that. There's work going on right now about a fourth well at Kupe. We expect to be through FID if there is approval for it around the middle of this year, maybe the third quarter. That's exciting, and that will have a strong business case with it if we move ahead. Obviously, the crude oil price on the bottom left-hand corner here is way out of date since Russia decided to invade Ukraine.
Moving on to slide 26. Keeping people safe is a key priority at Genesis. Always has been, and no more so than in the last six months to 12 months as COVID has ramped up. We feel really well prepared for Omicron, as best we can be. We have a COVID safe workplace plan in place. We were one of the earliest companies to start testing our employees as they came to work. That started with saliva PCR testing at Huntly last August, and then migrated into not only PCR testing, but also rapid antigen testing at all our sites from around November. We have a good stock of supply and actually this slide is also slightly out of date, because as we move to level three or phase III, we now have to test daily, even coming into our offices.
Our offices have been open throughout the period, throughout the red phase. As long as you test daily and you test negative, you can come into the offices. We're still running PCR tests every Monday at Huntly Power Station, as well as the saliva testing. We've done a huge amount, 14,500 PCR tests and 15,500 rapid antigen. We got a good bit of infrastructure set up around it. On the bottom right-hand corner, our injuries are trending up, which is a worrying sign. We've been tracking this for a while.
The only silver lining is they're relatively low impact injuries, many of them in LPG, what we call slips, trips, and falls, but we are concerned, and we're keeping an eye on it, and it's a function of the role to some extent, the hard work the men and women of LPG are putting in to making sure bottles are delivered on time. We're keeping a close eye on that trend up. Employee net promoter score is still solid. Slight dip in December, off a peak. Across Genesis today, we've got a very engaged workforce, who feel protected by our COVID safe workplace plan, who are doing their 50% to make sure they look after their peers as well. We're going into this Omicron outbreak in good shape.
Moving on to a strategic outlook now looking forward. Now there's a number of slides in here that take quite a lot of absorbing, so don't worry if it doesn't all make sense right away. We'll have discussions as we roll around our roadshow on some of this. But moving on to the first one, we've just reinforced here what our FutureGen strategy is. Now, our vision in the wholesale segment of our business in the market is to be an active enabler of New Zealand's energy transition. We've said that before, but the word active is really important. We're not going to sit back and just wait for things to happen. You'll see Genesis proactively engaging stakeholders in a number of different ways, but proactively disrupting ourselves in some cases and making change happen.
The renewables, value from flexibility and reliability and transitioning Huntly are all really important, and we won't talk about it all today. You will have seen things from us in the past, and will continue to see things from us around those three pillars. When we say transition Huntly, we often get asked, "Is Huntly going to shut down, and will it ever shut down?" I'd just remind everyone, I think most of you on this call will understand, it is an incredibly important asset to New Zealand, sitting in a really important geographical location, right near the Waikato River, with a gas pipeline from Taranaki, with a coal mine nearby, next to the grid, with great grid connection, with a very well-trained workforce in the community, and in a key demand center of New Zealand.
We don't talk about whether Huntly's going to shut. We talk about what Huntly's future role could be and what the right role is for Huntly as we transition. With that, on slide 29, we're sharing with you today four scenarios for 2030 and 2025 that we've created recently. There's a couple of really interesting insights from this. The first is, while they all came from different places with different assumptions, one, a relatively balanced scenario of demand and supply, another one when we have regulated, a 100% renewable target, one where demand is exceeding supply and supply can't keep up 'cause of build delays, and the other one, oversupply, they all coalesce to say by 2030, this market is going to be between 96% and 98% renewable. I think that's quite insightful.
It's really positive in one sense because there's not much is going to happen even in the pressure cooker scenario, 96% renewable by 2030. It's also insightful because we need to start thinking about what we need to be true in order to have a reliable electricity system in 2030 when we're 96%, 98% renewable. If you flick onto the next slide, 2030, the insight here, and it's not new, but we're calling it out really loudly, is when you look at a 98% renewable market, we're going to be spilling a lot more water. The black line shows the percentage of renewability. The thermal generation obviously comes down, but the faint pink line shows the amount of spill in the lakes goes up.
Our lakes will be high, and they'll be spilling more often. The challenge of getting from 96% to 98% to 100% is that the more wind and solar we build, the more water we displace, and it makes it really hard or really expensive to get that last 2% or 3% or 4% of renewable out of the system or thermal out of the system. The chart on the right shows what that means in a percentage of the year terms, but effectively what it's saying is that in that zone of 90%, we're going to need two things. We're still going to have the risk of a dry year, which is when the lakes are low. We have limited storage in our lakes in New Zealand. They're not massive dams, and that risk will still exist.
It won't exist as often, but it'll still exist. Then we're going to need megawatts capacity to fill in the gap when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine and that cold, windless night in winter comes along. When we look at that, we say we need to start having the right conversations in New Zealand about how we solve those problems collectively across the industry, but also with government and regulators together. We flick onto slide 31. The good news is some of the insight we're gaining from our biomass work could solve one of those problems, which is the seasonal storage or dry year risk problem. It is not going to solve the peaking capacity problems. As we found out in August last year when there were outages, we cannot turn a Rankine on really quickly.
New Zealand is going to need some fast response peaking capacity much more than it has today. Some of that will come from batteries, but possibly not all of it, because batteries are very short duration. This biomass trial is starting to show us that actually it may be possible for biomass to play a role in the 2030s as a dry year storage filler. The Rankines could run until 2040. They're in relatively good condition to many other plants like theirs around the world, and number of reasons for that. One is they haven't been running base load for very long. They used to run a lot on gas, which is much easier and less corrosive to the boiler and the burner. If they were running on biomass, that would also be obviously less corrosive than coal.
They have a possible future, but the challenge is going to be the supply chain. We're going to be doing a trial burn in May now, at Huntly, and we'll announce the date of that when we get nearer. Getting the torrefied pellets, which we believe are the best pellets for the job, from the global supply chain is hard, but they definitely don't exist in New Zealand today. We're going to have to have some discussions in collaboration with others and government on is it possible to create a viable biomass supply chain for the 2030s in New Zealand. If it becomes so, then it should be possible to provide dry year cover through a Rankine in the 2030s. There'll be more on this as we go through the next few months, and there's still much more work to come. Flicking on to slide 32.
We actually have a slightly different take to some of our competitors on the regulatory environment. We think the risk is low. We think the opportunity, though, is high. Most of the reviews that have happened have not amounted to major interventions from the regulator or government, and I think there's a lot too much made of the risk. As we move forward through this year, it's a pivotal year. We're going to have emission reduction plans coming from the government in May. We're going to have a budget that allocates capital to climate change initiatives. If we work together on the solutions, I think we'll come up with some of the answers to make sure that electricity can play a really critical role in decarbonizing New Zealand through the 2020s and into 2030s. It is the moment for the electricity sector to step up.
It's awesome to see all the great new builds coming online, and we'll bring our own with solar in due course as well. But there's plenty of capacity for renewable electricity. We just need to make sure the market can operate in the environment I've just described, and it can provide reliable, secure electricity to a decarbonized energy system into the 2030s. Moving on to the next slide, on to solar and our FutureGen strategy. We've made great progress contractually. We've got the Waipipi Wind Farm. We've had the first full half, as I said, of generation. We've signed contracts for Kaiwāikawe and Tauhara, which is a repeat of one we showed in the full year last year, shows the trajectory of that as they come online, and the solar builds will follow quite quickly behind.
I'm afraid I know there'll be lots of questions on it, but we can't give you locations. We can't give you pricing. We've got a pipeline, and we're working on it, and we will announce projects as and when they're certain. We're not going to be speculating on them, because there's too much of confidentiality involved in it as we move forward. We have moved forward with FRV, who are an awesome global leader in solar. We've signed co-contracts now, moved beyond term sheets, and they are working with us on the pipeline in New Zealand, and there will be announcements through this year. Moving on to slide 34. We are considering what further long-term carbon commitments we can make.
We do have a science-based target to 2025, which I remind you is aligned to limiting climate change to 1.5 degrees of global warming. We do have plans in place that will go beyond that. You can see that in these charts here. The star is the target. The line is the forecast. Obviously, there's going to be ups and downs with hydrology through years, but that's the forecast. What we're thinking through now is can Genesis make an even longer-term commitment beyond 2025? It might be net zero, but the one commitment we're going to make, and we're making it here today, is we will not make those commitments unless we have strategies in place to achieve them. What you won't see from Genesis is a 2050 net zero target with nothing behind it. We're working on plans.
We're working on strategies. When we have them, they won't be perfect and have solved every single problem, but they will be fundamentally clear in the direction we're heading. If we do, we'll then make the commitment. That's what we've done to date, and that's what we'll continue to do going forward. We're sharing these charts because we think for our investor set, this is a really important direction to observe. It's really important to see the downward trend, and it's much more than a single point target. It's a momentum that we're building in Genesis across our Scope 1 and our Scope 3 emissions. Moving on to slide 35. Just briefly on retail.
I've spent a lot of time on the wholesale strategy, but to remind you that our vision at retail is to be customers' first choice for energy management. That's been around now for about five years. The pillars underneath here are relatively recent in the last year or two, and we've talked through the operation update about some of the successes, so I won't go through them all. Our vision remains the same. It's to engage customers in a different way beyond the bill, to some of the choices they have in their hands when we give them the insight. The next slide, on 36, just talks briefly to the digital transformation piece of it, because we've mentioned this to our investors before, but it's well underway now.
We really have the three pillars of it, which is Mahitahi, which is about data, Rubiks, which is about systems, and BOI, which is about operating model. As we work through these, we do expect to see a reduction in churn, cost to acquire, and cost to serve over the next few years. More importantly, this program sets Genesis' retail business up to be a formidably more innovative and fast-paced business in the next five to ten years than it has been over the last five to ten.
All the success to date, which you've seen come through the financials, have been through a lot of hard graft on existing infrastructure, but the teams are really excited now about what the new infrastructure and the new way of working is going to give us as we progress forward into the 2020s and 2030s. I won't go through it, but the use case example on the right just explains how we're looking at the operating model changes and how it affects customers, our people who are working with customers, and obviously even our head office staff to some extent, too. That use case is just one of many we have in the business going forward. Moving on to the last slide before I hand over to Emma to talk about guidance. Really proud that we could now announce the full executive team.
This is a really diverse team, not just in gender, but in terms of experience, baseline, where people have come from, different markets they've worked in, and different career trajectories. What I think I'd like you to take away from it is, it demonstrates the depth of experience we have in Genesis, that we've had three internal promotions. That depth of experience extends beyond the exec. An awesome example of that actually has been Emma over the last few months standing in as CFO, and has hardly missed a beat. The company has kept running really well. The finance team has kept running really well, and I think you as investors and analysts have been served really well. We have that depth of experience, which is awesome. James Spence is an external appointment, who's coming in. He will start tomorrow officially.
He's coming in with experience of retailers in three different markets. He was CFO in Canada of Direct Energy, which is a Centrica subsidiary, CFO of one of the big three in Australia, EnergyAustralia, and then he was also CFO of ERM Power based in Brisbane before he became CFO of Gentrack. He will bring different market experiences as well as depth of knowledge of our sector and obviously the finance disciplines. Across the board, really awesome team. Nigel Clark will step out around the middle of April as Rebecca steps in. We're in a transition phase over the next six weeks until then. All right. I think it's with that I hand over to Emma to take you through guidance for FY 2022, and then we'll come back for Q&A.
Great. Thanks, Marc. Looking ahead, following a strong first half and a favorable outlook across the second, we are expecting to move towards the top of our FY 2022 guidance range. Lake levels and contracted gas supplies are higher than they were a year ago, and we have sufficient coal to back up the system if it's needed. We are updating our FY 2020 guidance range to NZD 430 million-NZD 440 million, subject to hydrological conditions, gas availability, one-off expenses, and any other unforeseen circumstances. FY 2022 capital guidance has been updated to up to NZD 84 million, which largely reflects the change in accounting policy, which has seen more of that CapEx now reported as OpEx. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Emma. With that, I think we'll open up for Q&A. Are we going to hear the Q&A? Struggling to hear the volume in the room, but, Tim, you could just repeat it.
Okay. Just to replay the questions. The first question from Paul, Jarden. The first one I think is probably for Emma. Is the additional NZD 3 million SaaS costs included in your FY 2022 guidance?
Yeah, the short answer is, and I think it's written on the slide. We have included the full year impact of the IFRIC change. You can see there, it's NZD 11 million in the guidance slide. It is now embedded in our new FY 2022 guidance range.
Just to follow up on that one, Emma, do you expect FY 2023 operating expenses to be out by the same amount?
Our default are that we don't guide on OpEx. That would be further ahead than we'd like to look. I would say that the digital transformation project is multi-year, and quite a lot of that NZD 11 million relates to that project.
Morning team. A couple of questions from me. First of all, just on the guidance upgrade, it's around about a NZD 15 million upgrade, I think, from the midpoint, once you factor in the software as a service changes. Can you just sort of explain what's driving that increase? Is it sort of a carbon trading gain that's expected in the second half, or is it some other factors? Just bearing in mind, normally, I think the first half is usually seasonally stronger than the second half.
Yeah, I think we're just seeing some continuation of momentum through the first half, particularly in the retail business, which we hadn't really factored through when we set our range. That's coming through. In the second half, I guess, where the lake levels are higher at the moment, we're going to see potentially increased flows through our renewable generation portfolio, and that will add more upside in the second. The last one to note is we have had the roll-off of one more out-of-the-money contract, and that's been giving us a bit of a tailwind in the second half. That's why the guidance is looking more towards the top end of that range.
Great. Thanks. The next question I just had was just around transfer pricing. I noticed there's quite a big decrease, I guess, in the Kupe prices, but quite big increases on the retail side. Sort of feels slightly counterintuitive in terms of one business is going up and the other one going down, even though the whole market, I guess, been pretty strong. Can you just sort of talk to why there is that, I guess, difference of approach we're seeing?
Yeah, [Ish]. I think it's worth noting the transfer price, as we said, it is very mechanistic. It's very methodical. We kind of turn the wheel in it. In the retail business, what is reflected through that movement in transfer pricing is the higher wholesale prices over time, and that's why we've seen sort of an increase in wholesale and retail. The one between wholesale and Kupe is more about a reset of prices that was done as we relooked at, I think, through the s trategic review.
Yeah, when we were looking at Kupe, we rebased the prices we were selling gas to ourselves. Our equity stake in Kupe to market. They had been tagged to out of the money, PPI escalated gas prices over a long time. That's why you're seeing some of the movement between Kupe and wholesale.
Okay. Bacause I'm calculating out, I think, a gas price of a bit over NZD 10 and LPG of NZD 450 a ton, which feels, I guess, very low compared to what we're seeing. We receive spot market prices at the moment.
Don't look at spot gas. I mean, LPG is different. Don't look at spot gas. We're looking at long-term contract gas. Long-term contract gas was a lot lower than the contracts we had with ourselves between Kupe and Genesis. We rebased those to more market level contracts.
Okay. All right. Thank you for that. That's all from me. Thanks.
Thank you, Andrew. The next question comes through from Jeremy Kincaid, from UBS. Please go ahead.
Good morning, team. Just the first question from me, on slide 34, where you provide some good color on what your potential Scope 1 and Scope 3 carbon emissions will be going forward. Just on that Scope 3 carbon emission chart, you have Scope 3 carbon emissions essentially halving over the next couple of years. Does that suggest output from Kupe for gas and LPG is going to half o r am I interpreting that incorrectly?
No. Good question. We did say this last full year. The reality of that is that we are. Emma mentioned we have one more coming off now. Our long dated out of the money industrial gas supply contracts have been rolling off. From a Scope 3 emissions optics perspective, that looks quite good. Our emissions are coming down in our Scope 3 bucket for that reason. Then you can see it levels off, and the leveling off is our ongoing retail gas and LPG emissions. We've always been very open about that. The question we're addressing, if we're looking out to FY 2040, is what's the long-term trajectory of our retail emissions in Scope 3.
Great. That's very clear. Just my second and final question on growth CapEx going forward. You've obviously turned the DRP on to strengthen the balance sheet. Could you give us an idea of some of the sort of big ticket items that you'll be spending and potentially ballpark of the size of growth CapEx for each of those initiatives?
No, we're not disclosing a forward CapEx spend, but they are going to be things like solar. That's the primary reason. We've signed the joint venture agreement. We're a 60% shareholder in that, which means all else being equal, each project we would invest in at 60%. We have some flexibilities, whether we do or we don't, going forward, but that's what we would choose to do. Think about 500 MW of solar over the next five years, and that's the capital we're looking at spending. There's potential as well for more Drylands type projects in terms of carbon offsets, which could take some capital, too. Then on a much smaller scale, the retail digital transformation is ongoing over the next two or three years.
Okay, great. Biofuels isn't expected to be a large CapEx spend?
Not at this stage. It could be, but at this stage, we haven't got any numbers. The big question on biofuels is the supply chain in New Zealand, and I think it's going to require government and business working together to instigate that.
Great. Thank you very much. That's all from me.
Thank you, Jeremy. The next question comes through from Nevill Gluyas from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Good morning, team. Really just sort of a longer- term question from me. Very interested in where your solution for biomass fueling, excuse me, for Huntly is going. I'm wondering, to set expectations, what kind of timeframe should we think about that as a possible replacement? Obviously aware this is very, very early in the process, but what kind of timeframe are you looking at there?
Yeah. Just to recap, we've got three work streams ongoing. One of them was a desktop review of supply chain considerations. Another one was a technical viability assessment, which would quite involve some consultancies, and we've got the results of that. The other one is the test burn. The technical assessment has given us confidence that these units could run beyond 2030-2040. The supply chain review has convinced us that actually New Zealand will need to start almost from scratch to build this up if we want to do it well. Some of that has also told us, taught us that, for Huntly, if we want to keep the capital costs down at the Huntly end of things, torrefied pellets or advanced solid pellets, as they're shown on this chart, are really where we're heading.
That's what we're going to do the trial burn with in May. They are different to white pellets. They have some advantages in that they can get wet, they can be stored for longer, they're easier to mill, and they have a higher energy density. All those things add up to them being the most viable pellets for Huntly if we wanted to use biomass. White pellets, which are more readily available, are challenged by the fact they can't get wet, they can't be stored for long, they deteriorate, and they've got low energy density, and they're hard to mill. We're really looking at the torrefied pellets, and that's what we've got coming into the country shortly, and we'll be trialing in May. We don't yet have a timeframe for when this would make sense.
What we're saying is it could. We're not saying it definitely will, but it's going to require us to work with others and the government to make it happen, is my belief. We're putting it forward as an option. We're working with the New Zealand Battery Project on that. We're submitting everything to them that they want to see. We think it's a viable alternative once you get to 98% renewable. It's probably only one Rankine's worth, and it's probably a transition between coal and biomass over time.
Lots of unknowns in there, Neville, I'm afraid, but we're working through it, and we're just wanting to disclose today the progress, but not say definitively we think this is a dead cert. We think it's definitely something worth considering given the dynamics of the New Zealand electricity market and given the need for that dry year storage of energy, which is very hard to find another economical way to achieve the same thing.
Great. Thank you. Very clear. Just a question on the terms of the green bonds. If we have a dry year and the Rankines are called on, heavy coal use, one presumes, does that in some way invalidate or put any risk on the terms of those agreements?
No. The bonds, the green bonds are linked as proceeds, so they are actually linked to our renewable generation assets. There isn't any risk that I can see actually in relation to those bonds in a dry year.
You probably mean the sustainable financing loan then.
Yeah. The sustainability-linked loan is more we have targets against emissions and our pathways, our Ngā Ara pathways. Potentially in a dry year, you might have some headwind against your emissions target, but it is balanced. I guess people are open to the fact that there will be ups and downs as we go on this journey.
Okay. Great. Thanks. There is some provision in that you can't get called out sort of by a one-off hydro event.
No. We've altered that w ith all our targets, there's volatility in the system. It's always measured every year. One point. Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah. We seem to get the delay on the line, so it always makes it hard to communicate. Sorry. A third and final question from me is which is now completely gone from my mind because of the delay, is whether or not you've had much engagement in terms of the swaption renewals or kind of what you're thinking about the necessity for that. I get the flavor from what you've presented that question marks about Huntly's longevity sort of are less prominent in your mind than perhaps they were six months ago. Can you give us some flavor for how you're thinking about a swaption process or even engagement with Meridian going ahead?
Yeah. I'd say we've had some engagement on swaptions. Not a huge amount. As we've said previously, we're relatively open-minded as to whether swaptions are signed or not for 2023. Obviously, the existing ones end at the end of 2022. Genesis looks at it as we have done some analysis, some work. We know what the capacity for backup is worth to the New Zealand sector, and therefore, we want to make sure that Genesis gets a fair return for that. We're not looking at it as a plus. We're looking at it as a value. If other market participants are willing to share that and contribute that, then we're open for doing contracts, short and long- term, but we're not driving to one particular outcome. It's all about value. We're open-minded.
We've had some early discussions, but I suspect they'll continue for a while to come. You know, I would say, 'cause I've said it this morning already in another context, that I don't think we should kid ourselves. The Rankines on coal with a carbon price that's continually increasing is underwriting some of our competitors' profitability. That's why some of our competitors don't get change. As we look through to 2030 and go, "Well, what does this market need in 2030 to be able to cope with the amount of decarbonizing required and to be stable and reliable?" We are going to need to have discussions about adapting the market, and I don't think that's the word intervention that's often used. I said, don't use the word intervention.
It's okay to adapt this market, and it'd be more valuable for Genesis to work with an adaptive market to provide that backup in the future than to do single point contracts with competitors. If competitors want us to do the contracts with them and don't want us to push other paths, then they need to step up. But if they don't step up, we see a potential other pathway to creating value for our shareholders with that capacity. Long answer to a leading question, Neville, but appreciate the question. You want to know how we're thinking about it, that is how we're thinking about it.
Very useful answer. That's all for me. Thank you.
Thank you, Neville. Just a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star- one on your telephone keypad or if you dialed in over the web, the raise hand button. We'll just pause a moment to see if there's any further questions. The next question comes through from Cameron Parker from Craigs Investment. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Well done on the good result for the half. Just two questions from me. Just wondering about the timing of the FID decision on Kupe's additional well, and also on your intentions to retain the Castle Hill Wind Farm consent.
Good question, simple answers. Timing of FID on Kupe is likely around the middle of the year. Can't give you an exact month, but it'll be sometime this year, around the middle of the year. We intend to extend the consent on Castle Hill, which I think runs out in 2023 otherwise.
Great. Okay. Thanks, Marc.
Thanks, Cam.
Thank you, Cameron. The next question comes through from Grant Swanepoel from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, guys.
It wasn't personal.
Can I ask?
You're far away, Grant.
Fantastic. What do you reckon your share of the Kupe drill costs will be? Second question, why are you having so much difficulty in getting a solar site up and running? Is that because of grid connection or is it lands that you can't find? Third question on, when you actually are running short generation on purpose, are you tempted to sell some carbon credits and make a bit of a profit on that front? On slide four, you comment that you make a point that Contact doesn't have any North Island storage. Is that because you see them getting out of the Ahuroa Gas Storage contract in the North Island and not having any thermal anymore? My final question. No, actually, second last question. How do you think about coal dispatch?
Are you using the current spot prices, which are through the roof, or are you using your average cost of inventory? That's quite an important one. Final question on your biofuel costs that you're looking at. Does this give us some sort of insight that the dairy companies who are saying that renewable energy doesn't compete with maybe pellets in their own business is actually a bit of a mockery because costs are a lot higher than that? Thank you.
By the time we get to the sixth one, you might have to repeat it, Grant. It'd be easier if you just gave them to me in short bites. The coal one, which is your fifth one, working back up the list is simple. We price it based on spot or the future replacement cost. So we don't give away our cost advantage from a hedging perspective. Carbon storage, yeah, maybe if we didn't need the carbon in the future, of course, so if we decarbonize faster and we have surplus credits, of course we would sell them at spot. Solar consent, I think you said, why is it taking so long? Well, it's not taking that long. What we're doing is we're running in parallel.
We're running multiple potential projects in parallel and then saying, "Let's run that all the way." That may feel longer than you think, but the pipeline will be very full and very fast after that. We just also, you know, unlike, you know, I think often I see commentary, there's a comparison to what Contact are saying about Tauhara. There aren't 50 Tauharas out there to compete with. Contact can talk about the long run marginal cost, the build cost, et cetera, and it's not really competitively sensitive. There are a lot of solar developers all looking at solar in New Zealand, and so we're going to keep it close to our chest until the point we know which project we're going to build. I know that's going to be less satisfying for some of you that want more detail, but that's just going to be the way it is. What was the Kupe question, number one? OI t was 46%. That's our shareholding.
N o. That's your share. You don't have an assessment on drill cost is going to be.
We've said in the past that our share of it will be in the order of NZD 50 million. We've said that in prior rounds.
Thank you.
Yeah. Did I miss anything? Something about biofuel?
Yeah. The biofuel costs that you guys show on your chart, above the gas costs, the mockery of dairy companies indicating that maybe they can go biofuel and not go renewable energy to replace their coal boilers. Are your insights different to their views?
I think it's aligned, isn't it? Well, I don't know why your gas is relevant to that. What we're showing on that chart is replacing coal with biomass is trending towards being comparable on a variable cost basis because of carbon. I think they're probably looking at something very similar and saying they can replace their coal boilers with biomass boilers, at a similar variable cost in time. Gas is just there as a comparison. I don't think they're trading off gas with coal. Remember, some of those are North Island. There, if you're looking at South Island, you don't have a gas, so gas is not really an option.
Yeah. My final question was on slide 24, when you were pointing that Contact doesn't have North Island gas storage anymore in their build-up. Is that because you have some insight into them getting out of Ahuroa Gas Storage, or is it just an oversight?
No, I think that's just an oversight, and we'll have to apologize to them. We missed the gas storage off.
That's the end of my questions. Thank you.
Yeah. All right. Thanks, Grant.
Thank you, Grant. There appears to be no further questions, so I'll hand back to our presenters for any additional closing remarks.
All right. Well, look, thank you for listening. Complex pack, lots of information in here, but hopefully you see a business that's performing well, thinking several years ahead, to the things we need to put in place now for then, and also being ambitious from a climate change perspective and, moving the dial across everything from customer engagement through to energy management to renewable energy and a lower carbon future. We look forward to talking to many of you in person as we go around the roadshow. Thank you.