My job this morning is to welcome you all. My name is Tulpi Aramaka. I reside—I actually live straight across the road, which is probably why I've been asked to come here. I reside from this end of the lake of Ngāti Tūwharetoa. My marae is Waipahihi, which is just down the hill. I'm the chairman of some of the Tohara lands that reside behind us. You can see Tohara just up here, actually, and we're assembled up here today. This is our rohe. This is our region, which we refer to as Ngāti Tūwharetoa. In my kōrero, I just said to you, welcome to the land of Ngāti Tūwharetoa. Tongariro is our mountain. Taupo is our inland sea. Tūwharetoa is our tribe, and Te Heuheu is our leader. I welcome you in that fashion.
Thank you to the Board of Genesis, Barbara and Malcolm, and the team for this opportunity. I'm spending a bit of time with some of you tomorrow, I understand, as we go for a hikoi down to visit some of Genesis assets at the southern end of the lake. I will speak a little bit further then and talk to you about some of the relationship that we have there. Just at a high level, it's fantastic to be able to welcome you all. I understand the work that you are doing and will be considering over the next few days. The relationship that Ngāti Tūwharetoa has with Genesis extends to actually many of the generators and power companies in this area.
Insofar as Genesis is concerned, it extends back to before Genesis, to the time of ECNZ and the creation of the Tongariro Power Development, which is now known as the Tongariro Power Scheme, of course. Notwithstanding that, we've developed several relationships over that period, which our iwi and our hapū, our marae, value greatly. We're now at a stage where we're looking at further opportunities, and I'll get the opportunity to talk a little bit about more of those tomorrow. Thank you again for the opportunity. Hope you have a wonderful day. This is a very special place for us. Most people, I'm sure you've been to Taupo before. For us, Taupo is known as Te Manua Oti Ika Maui, which translated means the heart of the great fish of Maui. Who's heard of the great fish of Maui?
You've probably read those Gosage books to your children or yourselves back in the day. Yeah, you would know the eponymous story of how Maui fished up the North Island. For some reason, we gave it that great name, the North Island, probably because it's north of the South Island. For us, we've got a much more exciting name, and that is Te Ika Maui. Maui is an eponymous ancestor to many of us across Polynesia. Who's been to Hawaii? There's an island over there called Maui. Same person. I share that because relationships are what connect us all. For us, Tūwharetoa, we come off the Te Arawa waka. The Te Arawa waka first landed at a place called Whangaparawa up the east coast, not Whangaparawa north of Auckland, where the high real estate property is, more along the east coast.
From there, we made our way inland to this place here. I'll go into that story a little bit more tomorrow. Why I share that is because this picture here for us actually paints a big story. It paints a story of relationships and connections. From here flows all of the major waterways of the North Island. You've got the Waikato and all of its activities that end up at Port Waikato, of course. That river connects ourselves and the likes of Waikato Tainui and all the other river in between. This lake also, whilst has high cultural values and recreational values, we also recognize as a significant water storage vessel for essentially the North Island. We view it in all of these ways. We have abundant natural resources in this area.
You will know some of the geothermal activities that we have here, the hydro, and all these different things. I guess the key message that I'll leave with you is not just a message from Ngāti Tūwharetoa, but it's iwi Māori in general. There are three things that I think make the world go round: access, capital, and expertise. You guys, I understand, have significant capital and expertise. We certainly have capital and some expertise as well, but we also have access. On that note, I'll leave it there and look forward to catching up with you all tomorrow. Ngā mihi.
Thank you, Tulpi Aramaka. Thank you to the people of Taupo and Ngāti Tūwharetoa. I paid homage to all of the local things that are important to the people of this area.
Aramaka is one of those very important people from this place who represents the many faces and all corners of this particular lake. The relationships, the partnerships that they have here and across the motu to other iwi, Tulpi Aramaka represents those people today. I want to thank you, Tulpi Aramaka, for coming to share with us this space today and welcome your illustrious people and Genesis. Tēnā koutou. I'll now hand it over to our emcee, Matt. Tēnā koe. [Foreign language]
[Foreign language] Kia ora koutou. Welcome to Genesis Investor Day 2025. [Foreign language] Nau mai, haere mai. At Genesis, we're delivering the future of energy. Right now. [crosstalk] Whatever the weather, our flexible generation is set up to deliver returns our shareholders can rely on. [crosstalk] Our pipeline of new renewables means we can confidently build for decades to come to meet the future demand of our loyal customers, about 500,000 of them.
Two years ago, we set our strategy for growth. It's called Gen35. First order of business, getting future fit. That meant simplifying everything, becoming one brand, kicking off digital transformation, and looking for opportunities for immediate impact. [crosstalk] Now and for the next three years, we're accelerating our transition, creating a dynamic business that will deliver results well into the future. How will we do it? [crosstalk] The solar we're building will make water more available and reduce our need for gas. We will deliver more wind than we are now, a mix of PPAs and our own development. We're building the country's most economic grid-scale battery right here. [crosstalk] Two years on from launching Gen35, we're focused on growing value over volume and helping our customers to electrify. We've delivered what we said we would and have the options to keep delivering. We know how we'll win.
All the way to FY35 and beyond. At Genesis, the future of energy is now. It is all around us. It'll never stop. Mauuri ora.
[Foreign language] Kia ora koutou and a very warm welcome to everybody here in Taupo and online to the 2025 Genesis Investor Day. Thanks, Kruger and Tulpi Aramaka, for the opening words. [Foreign language] Kia ora. Also, Mana Whenua for their very warm welcome today. It's very nice to see some familiar faces across the room. I am Matthew Osborne, Genesis Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, and I'll be chaperoning us through the day today. Before we kick off, just a little bit of the usual housekeeping. For those who haven't figured it out yet, the restrooms are outside the back doors. Take a hard right, and it's right immediately beside you.
If there's an emergency alarm or evacuation or the lake starts to rumble a bit, just leave your belongings behind and follow the green exit signs. Once you're outside, the assembly point is on the grassy knoll in front of the hotel. If anyone, for any reason, needs any first aid at any time, some of the news is a bit harsh for you, Genesis staff at the back of the room will be happy to assist. Lastly, could I please just ask everybody in the room to turn their phones to silent for the sake of the day? This year's Investor Day comes at one of the most pivotal and challenging times in recent memory for New Zealand's electricity sector and more broadly the energy sector.
Activity in the sector has gathered pace over the last 12 to 18 months against a backdrop of considerable political and regulatory scrutiny, culminating in the recent release of the government's response to the Frontier Economics Review and the Energy Competition Task Force's comprehensive work program. I've no doubt that everyone in the room is well versed in the details of these particular work streams. Ours is very much a company and a sector that is in transition and with a critical role to play in the country's social and economic future. The signals are very clear. A couple of weeks ago, the International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook Report acknowledged the global energy transition is structural and irreversible. Renewables and electrification form the backbone of economic resilience. These are pivotal, challenging, and very interesting times for Genesis and the sector.
Almost two years ago to the day, we introduced a refreshed strategy for Genesis, Gen35. Today, with Horizon One of that strategy now behind us, you'll hear details about what has been achieved to this point over the last two years by the business, our ambitions for the next two years as part of the execution of our Horizon Two goals and ambitions, and directionally what lies ahead for the Genesis portfolio through to FY28 and beyond. I'd now like to introduce our Chair, Barbara Chapman. Barbara will run through the agenda for the day and recap the rationale for our Gen35 strategy and summarize our investor value proposition. Over to you, Barbara.
[Foreign language] Kia ora. Tēnā koutou, katoa. Good morning, everyone. I'm Barbara Chapman, Chair of the Board of Genesis Energy.
On behalf of our Chief Executive, Malcolm Johns, the executive team, and all of Genesis employees around New Zealand, welcome to our 2025 Investor Day. Thank you for taking the time to hear from us today and over the next couple of days. As we work through our agenda, we're pretty excited to share with you where we are in the execution of Gen35, how that is delivering value to shareholders, and how that value uplift will continue to provide benefits as we move into Horizon Three of our strategy beyond FY28. The key areas we want to share with you today begin with what we have delivered over the past two years, and Ed Hyde will speak to that shortly. After lunch, Tracey Hickman and Stephen England-Hall will cover what we will deliver over the next two years.
Julie Amey will then spend some time covering our capital plan and allocation framework, sources and uses of funds, and funding toolkit. Julie will also provide an update on our pathway to mid to upper NZD 500 million EBITDA by FY28, which we are on track to deliver. Malcolm will finish the main part of the presentation by addressing our portfolio plan looking out to FY35. I'm sure you'll have plenty of questions, so we have set aside some time for a Q&A followed by some quick breakout sessions. These breakout sessions will provide in-person attendees the opportunity to find out more about our electrification, biomass, AI, and culture and community strategies. By the end of today, you will have a clear understanding of strategy delivery, long-term portfolio direction, and our approach to capital management.
You will then have time to relax before drinks at 5:45 P.M., followed by dinner at 6:30 P.M., where we will spend some time discussing the fuels part of our business, including gas scenarios, gas storage, and LNG. A clear investor proposition that delivers growing shareholder returns has been at the center of everything we have delivered over the past two years. This has been driven by our focus on improved margin quality, cost discipline, and strong capital management across a market-leading portfolio of customer, renewables, and flexibility. On customer, we have a strong customer book with around 520,000 customers and around a 15% demand share. Our customers are central to what we do, and they provide a strong commercial basis to invest in new generation assets and energy security products.
On renewables, our portfolio is anchored by our three well-positioned hydro schemes, which produce around 2.8 terawatt hours per annum and can store around 500 gigawatt hours of reserve generation. We are accelerating our development of new renewable generation and undertaking value-accretive short and medium-term power purchase agreements. On flexibility, we have a market-leading position with our flex gen optionality across our hydro schemes and the Huntly Power Station. This gives us the capability to optimize revenue across minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months of firming and provides earnings resilience and reliability to our shareholders, irrespective of how much it rains, it blows, or it shines. As we said at Investor Day 2023, our core role is electricity generation. Our investor proposition has six key components, as seen on this slide.
We are driving growing shareholder returns through our portfolio of customer, renewables, and flexible generation while focusing on continuous improvement in margin quality, cost discipline, and strong capital management. The team will cover all six components today and tomorrow. In 2023, we said Genesis would be a transition within the energy transition, and this remains the case. Our strategy, Gen35, is anchored in three core elements of the global energy transition: more electrons, more energy storage, and more data-driven systems. For the New Zealand electricity sector, the key deliverable is the 60-95-100 formula, as shown on this slide, and our portfolio aligns to this. By 2050, at least 60% of New Zealand's total energy must come from electricity, up from around 30% today. Electrifying New Zealand will be the most important deliverable to reach net zero by 2050.
It also means we'll be part of a growth market for at least 25 years from here. The second part of the 2050 formula is that at least 95% of electricity must come from renewable sources. Greening the electricity system will be the easiest deliverable over the next 25 years. Lastly, electricity must be available 100% of the time. This means energy storage across minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months, alongside flexible generation assets that will all become critical, valuable in the electricity market of the future. Over the two years since our 2023 Investor Day, we've focused on how to draw the most value from our portfolio, taking advantage of our large customer base, putting in place a pipeline of renewable development options, and monetizing our flexibility.
We will show you how this will grow earnings over the coming years, and as Julie will cover later, we remain on target for delivering mid to upper NZD 500 million EBITDA by FY2028. While we're positive about growth over the coming years, we do face some potential headwinds in gas and LNG margins, given the uncertainty around near and medium-term gas scenarios. The team will provide more detail on this today and at dinner tonight. Better technology and data is key to optimizing for the future and continuing to deliver productivity gains, and we have three major technology projects underway to drive this. We are investing around NZD 145 million in these three core uplifts, which cover our retail billing and customer management system, our financial management system, and our electricity risk management and trading systems.
Since commencing this program of work, AI has arrived at scale and will positively impact what we can achieve from these new platforms. The team will provide more detail on that today. On capital, as I said at my recent speech at our ASM, we welcome the clarity from the government's recent comments following the release of the Frontier Report. Genesis is well positioned to both support and monetize many of the objectives outlined in that report. I also acknowledge and welcome the letter sent to all mixed ownership model companies clarifying the government's position on potential future capital raises where there is a clear commercial case and when the purpose of the capital aligns with government's priorities. The board believes the type of investments we have in our pipeline align well with the government's priorities as set out in the minister's letter.
The board is looking at all options to accelerate the delivery of Gen35 and continuing to support security of supply, including considering the potential for additional capital in the future, and will take the minister's letter into account as we do this. However, there is nothing to announce in that regard over the next two days. As indicated at our 2023 Investor Day and subsequently confirmed in my FY24 and 2025 annual shareholder meeting speeches, the board made the decision to move to a fixed dividend of NZD 0.14 per share in real terms as at 2023. We indicated we would maintain this level for the period FY25 to 2028 while we delivered Horizon's One and Two shareholder value enhancing initiatives, with an expectation that Genesis may return to a more market-aligned position beyond this period. We are delivering on what we said we would.
The board understands the importance to shareholders of being appropriately rewarded for investing in a growing company. We will continue to review our dividend position annually as a matter of good governance, balancing delivery of competitive shareholder returns with the long-term growth objectives of the business. Once again, on behalf of the board, we welcome all of you here and online and thank you for your interest and support. I'm now going to hand over to Ed Hyde, our Chief Transformation and Technology Officer. Ed will take you through the first presentation of the day, discussing what we're committed to at Investor Day 2023 and what we've completed since then. First video on our journey to become future fit. Thanks very much.
Thank you, Barbara, and good morning, everybody. It's great to see a number of familiar faces in the room.
In November 2023, we laid out a strategy over three horizons to take us out to 2035. Today, we're going to follow a simple format. We'll look back on what we've achieved over the last two years, talk about the here and now through to FY28, and then lift our sights out to 2035. Horizon One was about execution and ran for just over a year, setting a clear plan and delivering against it step by step. Two years ago, we said we'd get Genesis future fit, simplify operations, strengthen the portfolio, and lay the digital foundations for growth. We mapped out the milestones, had measurable goals, and we've tracked them relentlessly. Horizon Two is where we are now. We're super focused on delivering our FY28 EBITDA goal of mid to upper 500 millions, and Tracey and Stephen will talk about the great work that is going on here.
Horizon Three is where our sights push beyond FY28 out to 2035. This will be more strategic and directional in nature, and Malcolm will share more about our thinking in this space later today. Let's start with the headlines for Horizon One. We have achieved Horizon One. Genesis is now future fit for growth out to 2035 with solid foundations. We've demonstrated resilience against market and supply chain challenges beyond our control, and our technology transformations are well underway, driving the next phase of digital capability and efficiency. Horizon One was about setting ourselves up for success, getting the key building blocks in place to begin our journey, and starting the shift in organisational momentum. I'll now provide a little bit more detail of our three key pillars of customer, renewables, and flex.
When we launched Gen35, our purpose was clear: create long-term value for our customers, shareholders, and New Zealand by managing the transition to a low carbon future. We framed that ambition through three key cogs: customer, renewables, and flex, and I'll talk about each of those one by one. For customer, helping our customers electrify their lives through better products and technology. Renewables, building the generation that will power New Zealand for the next 50 years. Flexibility, providing the reliability that keeps the lights on no matter what the weather brings. The customer cog. In the customer space, we said we'd simplify retail, and we have. We're reshaping around a single Genesis brand. We've simplified our structure, and we've removed duplication. Around 200 roles have been reduced while maintaining strong customer experience and digital engagement. We've launched broadband.
We've improved pricing and acquisition discipline, and retail is now simpler, stronger, and positioned for sustainable margin growth. We're building a modern-day energy business, customer-focused, data-enabled, and disciplined on value. Stephen will talk more about how we'll leverage these foundations to unlock even more value through Horizon Two. The renewables cog. The renewables story is equally strong. Lauriston Solar Farm was delivered on time and on budget and is now delivering 100 gigawatt hours annually. Edgecumbe has moved through to final investment decision, and we have more projects in the pipeline. We have a total of 700 megawatts in our solar pipeline, and we feel confident that this will allow us to meet our target of building up to 500 megawatts of solar. We've also diversified our energy supply with the addition of Tauhara Geothermal and Kaiwaikawe PPAs.
This is in addition to our existing Waipipi Wind PPA, balancing scale with speed to market that allows us to hold a longer demand, a larger demand position, and allow us to grow into it over time. This disciplined approach means we're growing renewables that are aligned to our Gen35 goals and our capital management framework. Finally, our third cog, flexibility. At Huntly, flexibility has become a competitive advantage. Our 10-year firming options provide 150 MW plus rights to an additional 75 MW of reserve firming capacity to the market. This is structural for energy security in New Zealand. Later this afternoon, we'll be talking in more detail about the headway we've been making in biomass, and we also have our GM Fuels, Angela Ogier, set up to talk to us over dinner around the national gas situation.
Together with our hydro schemes, our Huntly assets form one of the most resilient portfolios in the country, turning volatility into value. Tracey and Stephen will talk in more detail about how this capability will unlock our goal of mid to upper NZD 500 million by FY28. All of this has not been easy, however. Over the last two years, we have faced low inflows, a tightening gas market, and periods of low wind, creating extreme market volatility. Genesis has been built for moments like this. Our integrated portfolio, hydro, thermal, and renewables, allowed us to respond in real time. Our fuel flexibility, in particular the heightened role of coal relative to gas, has translated into financial strength. We delivered NZD 470 million of EBITDA during FY25. That is up 15% year- on- year and a 29% lift in NPAT over the same period. A solid result considering the conditions. These results were not luck.
They show the value of inherent flexibility that our portfolio enjoys and our increasing ability to use these levers to effectively adapt to changing market conditions. I'll now switch gears and I'll move to an update on technology. It's going to be partly a look back about what we've achieved, but also a look forward as we move into Horizon Two. If we move forward to the technology slide, our transformation rests on three key pillars. Platform: modernizing our core systems to create a stable cloud-based foundation. Delivery: our capability to deliver a successful major technology program. Data: unifying information across retail, finance, and generation so decisions are made using one single source of the truth. In the platform area, we've made significant strides in running our technology operations more effectively.
We have taken several million dollars per annum out of operational costs and significantly rationalized our software spend. We are expecting some—we are experiencing some software inflation, but our cost management activity is working hard to offset this so we can hold our technology operating costs flat. We are tackling a large program of delivery in the technology domain, as you all know. The last 24 months have required a significant build of large project capability, some of which we have done in-house and some of which we have partnered for. Our relationship with TCS, Accenture, Slalom, and DDS IT in particular have been highly successful and are helping us navigate our complex delivery program. In the data space, and this is something that's really, really close to my heart, we've made fantastic progress on getting our data foundations in place.
We've been working hard, making sure that our data is cleaned, it's prepared, and now increasingly leveraged. Our people-led AI transformation is bearing fruit. OpenAI, our partner in this space, has been telling us that the adoption that they're seeing within Genesis is some of the best that they've seen anywhere, which is absolutely awesome. With these three pillars firmly in place, I'm now just going to switch topics a little bit and talk about the three technology programs that we've got underway. These technology programs are R2G2, which is about our billing and CRM modernization, Powered Finance, upgrade to our finance systems, and Amplify, which covers our wholesale and trading portfolio. Each play a distinct role which is critical to our transformation. Firstly, R2G2. The retail replatform is now live with our first release of just over 50,000 ICPs.
It's already streamlining how we serve customers, improving billing accuracy while setting ourselves up for a unified customer experience across our brands. We are very pleased with the results of this first release. The platform is performing really well. Average handling time is lower than expected. Customer experience is stable, and billing processes are operating more smoothly than we had planned for. We remain confident in the cost-benefits case for the whole project. There are pricing innovation and agility, cost-to-serve optimization, and the ability to unlock adjacencies like broadband. Focus is now on completing release two, which is about LPG and gas, and release three, which is about complex business. All of this before the end of FY2027.
The rate and pace of innovation coming from our CRM partner, Salesforce, is seriously impressive, and we look forward to being able to leverage this opportunity over the course of the next couple of years and beyond. If I move on to Powered Finance, Powered Finance is about modernizing our finance systems and is being built on the Workday platform. It's about providing real-time visibility of performance and creating a single source of the truth for our finance data. It will empower investment decisions and is particularly relevant as we step through our vision for Horizon Three later today. Amplify, our wholesale and trading technology program, is transforming how we monetize our generation portfolio with enhanced market modeling, derivatives tools, and margin tracking. It's turning data into decisions, improving risk management, and commercial performance.
We have recently gone live with a number of new derivatives features, which are already creating value for our trading team, and the team are excited about the opportunities that we're going to be releasing over the course of the next couple of months. As I mentioned before, data and AI is moving so quickly. As we look further out, we're even clearer in our own minds about the transformational benefits that data has to offer in the trading and wholesale space. These programs are far more than IT upgrades. They're business transformation engines connecting our people, processes, and data. They're setting the rhythm now for how Genesis Energy operates: simpler, faster, and smarter. We remain on track for the completion of these projects by the end of FY2027 and within the previously communicated budget of NZD 145 million for the big rocks.
Powered Finance and Amplify will largely conclude in FY2026 and move to more BAU levels of activity in FY2027. R2G2 is forecast to conclude towards the end of FY2027 and move to BAU levels from FY2028 onwards. From FY2028 onwards, we expect our stay-in-business ongoing project spend to be somewhere in the order of NZD 15 million per annum from that point forward. To wrap up, Horizon One is delivered. We have made significant headway across a number of key areas for Horizon Two, and we have renovated our foundations, taking cost out and simplifying the business. We have reorientated our portfolio to be ready for the transition and focused on value, not volume. We have built a fantastic pipeline of new generation.
As we now look—as we know—and we look forward to Horizon Three, you will also note that we have integrated our eight by 28 strategic initiatives into our baseline business and commercial opportunity performance management. We will continue to report on the progress of each of these initiatives when we reach key milestones, when we provide releases, and revisit those every half year through our reporting process. I'll now pass to Matt, who will talk a little bit about plans for lunch. Matt, over to you.
Thanks, Ed. What we've just heard in that first session from Barbara and Ed was a comprehensive recap of Gen35 commitments and what has been achieved in the last two years in terms of sweeping our own front yard as a business and making sure that we're future-fit and execution-focused. I think everyone in the room from Genesis would acknowledge that the work that's been undertaken in Horizon One has represented a significant program of work. It's been successfully delivered against the backdrop of some fairly challenging market conditions, macroeconomic conditions as well. It's been a real team effort from top to bottom in the business and all across the business. We're all very pleased and proud about that.
Genesis as a business is now very well placed to build on the progress that we've made to date as we accelerate further into Horizon Two and beyond. In our next session, Tracey Hickman and Stephen England-Hall will speak to us about what lies ahead as we look forward out to FY2028. Before we do that, we're going to break for a bite to eat, for some lunch. For those who are on the live stream, we have allowed for lunch to run until 12:50 P.M. We'll be back here seated at 12:50 P.M. if I could ask everyone to be back for that. Lunch will be served in the saloon across the hall. When you exit that room, it's a buffet lunch. You just walk straight across the hall to the saloon and grab your lunch.
You can either enjoy your lunch in here or outside suit. We look forward to seeing you back here at 12:50 P.M. for the next session. Thanks very much.
[Audio distrotion] Kia ora [Foreign language] to everyone. Welcome back. I trust everyone's been adequately fed and watered as to put you to sleep in the next session. The next session we've got is built around our second horizon, Horizon 2, accelerating the transition. In terms of timelines, as we said before, Horizon 2 takes us through to FY2028. Recognizing the well-known physiological challenges of keeping post-lunch attention levels up, we'll split the session into two parts. Part one, we have Tracey Hickman, our Chief Operating Officer. She's going to take us through our renewables pipeline and flexibility development.
For the second part, Part Two, Stephen England-Hall, our Chief Revenue Officer, will focus on where we believe we can create the most commercial value, exploiting that flexibility and optionality. Before I hand over to Tracey, we'll just first have a very brief video that brings our accelerated transition to life, and then I'll invite Tracey up on the stage. Thank you.
[Foreign language] Kia ora koutou, and thanks for the introduction, Matt. As we move into Horizon 2, I'd like to highlight three key themes that define our current momentum and strategic direction in the wholesale operations and fuels area of our business. Firstly, our enhanced people capability is clearly demonstrated by the progress we've made over the past two years in building our pipeline and creating flexible asset and fuel optionality. We are accelerating our renewables build program and rapidly reducing reliance on baseload thermal.
We are reshaping the portfolio to be more flexible and responsive, positioning ourselves to capture new value from existing and new assets as market dynamics shift. The strength of our renewables and flex gen strategy starts with the capability of our people, and first to our asset development capability. Over the past two years, we've built a highly capable development team that is now delivering quality results at pace. In November 2023, as I stood before some of you, we had two and a half FTE in our development team. As I stand here today, we now have 20 specialists across strategy, partnerships, pipeline development, commercial analysis, engineering, and project delivery. We've attracted a blend of local expertise and global renewable and project delivery talent, enabling us to take projects from concept to operation with confidence and competence.
As our pipeline grows and we accelerate our build program to meet our current renewable and flex gen targets, we will continue to expand project delivery and specialist capability, including brownfield hydro opportunities and in time even geothermal, new thermal, and other emerging technologies. Secondly, to our fuels capability. In an increasingly stressed market, we have significantly strengthened our fuels team to build optionality and resilience into our fuels portfolio. Flexible generation needs flexible and secure fuels, and fuel resilience requires fuels diversity. Over the past two years, we have recruited deep fuel-related talent across global and local procurement, supply side management, commercial negotiation, upstream and subsurface engineering, and emerging low carbon fuels. The team has grown from six to 14 people with substantial international experience.
We are now demonstrating sector leadership as New Zealand navigates fuel challenges and the opportunities ahead for lower carbon fuels, potential LNG import, and gas storage. Thirdly, to our operations and maintenance flexibility capability. Responding to increasingly volatile market conditions requires agility and operational mastery. We've developed the capability to run little or no thermal generation when conditions allow and to sustain full thermal output for extended periods when the market demands, as it did during winter 2024. Our workforce and contractor model are built for uncertainty. At Huntly, our operator maintainer model provides a multi-skilled, flexible workforce that shifts between operating or maintaining plant as market conditions change. Contractor support scales up to cover maintenance during high run periods and scales down when thermal is not required, creating a low fixed cost and more variable cost base.
As new assets come online, including our best one now under construction, and as new fuels such as biomass and closely located renewable assets emerge, such as the Rangaredi Solar Farm, we will continue to build the operational, maintenance, and engineering capability at Huntly needed to support an increasingly flexible and future-ready portfolio. With our strengthened asset development capability, we have rapidly expanded our pipeline, adding 1.7 gigawatts of solar, wind, and gas since November 2023. This acceleration reflects our portfolio approach to new generation, using the full suite of options, including building on balance sheet, partnering through joint ventures, and securing long-term PPAs. This gives us the flexibility to move at pace whilst retaining the ability to recycle capital if or when it makes sense.
Our capital management framework guides these choices to optimize value, manage risk, and maintain balance sheet strength, and Julie will talk more to this point shortly. It is also worth highlighting that not every project announced to the market by potential or wannabe developers will reach construction. It is very clear to us that many of these projects lack the fundamentals required for an investable business case, and we're seeing this firsthand as one of the most active assessors of solar opportunities in New Zealand. Our rigorous screening process gives us a strong understanding of project quality and feasibility, ensuring we focus only on projects with real and accelerated delivery potential and value. By purchasing or partnering on advanced, low-risk projects, we are shortening the path from announcement to FID and commissioning and improving conversion from development to build and operational assets.
This disciplined portfolio-led approach is enabling Genesis to move faster than others in the market, and I can tell you that our momentum is continuing to build. When we presented to you in November 2023, we had bold ambition, but I admit limited proven options. Two years on, I'm really pleased and very proud to say that we now have a substantial advanced and de-risked pipeline. Best Stage One is under construction. Our wind options are building. We have secured new generation volume through PPAs, both PPAs and balance sheet projects. Across Lauriston, Edgecumbe, Leaston, Rangaredi, and Foxton, our solar pipeline now exceeds our original 500 megawatt target, giving us real optionality to choose on sequencing and timing to maximize value. Our case studies on this slide show our strength in identifying, acquiring, and delivering high-quality projects.
Edgecumbe and Rangaredi combine strong solar resource with premium North Island grid connections and complement our Huntly BESS One and the near-term BESS Two option, reinforcing our capability and securing value accretive assets. We've demonstrated greenfield delivery capability as well. With BESS Stage One through FID and well under construction, BESS Stage Two is now well positioned to be the most cost-efficient battery development option in the market, supported by existing land, consents, grid connection, and importantly, shared balance of plant infrastructure, which has already been paid for by BESS One. Wind is a core portfolio of our renewable growth strategy, adding high-value generation that strengthens our path to 95% renewables by 2035. Our wind pipeline includes a range of advanced and de-risked opportunities across New Zealand designed to accelerate delivery and optimise capacity. Castle Hill is our flagship onshore wind option.
It has a world-class wind resource supported by now over 10 years of wind data, extended consents, and secured land rights. While connection has been the key constraint to date, we're now working closely with Transpower to unlock capacity through the wider upper circuits, creating a viable commercial path for the Castle Hill wind farm. In addition, I'm really pleased to advise that Genesis has now secured an exclusivity agreement with Jensen Renewables, a global renewable energy developer who have the largest independent wind development pipeline of onshore wind projects in New Zealand. This will enable Genesis to participate as an off-taker and/or a co-investor in their onshore wind projects in New Zealand. Jensen's projects are at various stages of development and represent a significant pipeline of wind opportunities in New Zealand.
Jensen will be responsible for the delivery of the projects, and Genesis will have the ability to participate in the projects as they mature. Through this partnership, we are excited to have secured significant additional onshore wind development optionality. We're also exploring offshore wind. In Genesis and Taranaki Offshore Partnership, the JV between the New Zealand Super Fund and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners have entered into an MOU to assess future offshore opportunities. With our ownership in the Kupe JV nearby and our ability to firm renewable supply and write long-term off-takes, there is a strong strategic alignment in exploring this potential together. These partnerships and development options give Genesis the expertise, optionality, and confidence to progress high-quality wind projects at a greater pace. Genesis now has a diversified, high-quality portfolio pipeline across solar, wind, battery storage, and geothermal, with a clear focus on optionality.
Key milestones have already been delivered with Lauriston in operation. FID just reached on Edgecumbe and BESS Stage One now under construction. Even better, we are well on track for more solar investment decisions expected in the year ahead. Our growth pipeline combines near-term certainty with long-term optionality, including committed growth investments, progressed opportunities, and discretionary projects. Since Investor Day 2023, we have secured PPA volumes for Tohara Geothermal and Kawakaue Wind, further diversifying our portfolio and demonstrating our ability to deliver scalable volume across multiple technologies. This portfolio-led approach gives investors a clear view of our pipeline, showing that we are delivering on our commitments, accelerating renewable growth, and enhancing flexibility to maximize value across the Genesis portfolio. Genesis is using new renewables and flexibility to maximize the value of every asset.
By integrating solar and wind with hydro and thermal plants, we can conserve water, reduce thermal running, and release capacity when it is most valuable. Upgrading generation assets through life cycle investment, combined with advanced analytics and AI, are improving efficiency, reliability, availability, and operational flexibility across our fleet. We have a program of investment underway and already delivering margin gains across our hydropower schemes. Mark Haines, our GM Operations, and Jane Vader, our GM Engineering and Projects, will discuss this further for those of you joining us at the Tongariro site visit tomorrow. Investing in new renewable generation not only displaces baseload thermal generation, but it also enables Genesis to use its hydro and thermal assets more strategically. When intermittent supply is high, hydro storage can be conserved and released during higher value periods, improving GWAP/TWAP outcomes.
Thermal plants can maintain similar margin levels while running fewer hours, freeing capacity for firming and flexibility products that are becoming increasingly valuable in a more volatile system. The Rankine units with life extension enabled by the Huntly Firming Options recently demonstrates this model in practice, generating strong cash flows by providing capacity and flexibility regardless of whether the units are ultimately dispatched by the market. This integrated approach maximizes earnings, optimizes asset use, and delivers reliable energy and capacity products, strengthening system security while accelerating the transition to a renewables-focused energy system. Stephen will talk more to this portfolio value uplift shortly. Water storage is going to become increasingly important to support short to medium duration firming and in order to accommodate the forecast shorter cycles between wet and dry quarters.
Like other hydro operators, we are also looking at options we have across our hydro fleet to increase storage and utilize water to its maximum opportunity. Such initiatives naturally involve a wide range of stakeholders and potential partners, and we will not be rushing announcements on projects before we have appropriately assessed initiatives technically, commercially, and environmentally, and most importantly, until we have involved partners and fully consulted with those stakeholders. As New Zealand adds more renewable generation, the system is increasingly driven by intermittent generation, and shifting weather patterns are adding even more volatility. This creates growing value for firming across multiple durations, from minutes and hours to weeks and seasons. Genesis has engaged Concept Consulting to model the future requirement for flexible firming generation across a range of scenarios.
Naturally, the exact value pool varies with the different scenarios, but the high-level growth trend stays the same and aligned with our internal modelling. The model calculates the total market reward pool for flexibility, that is, the total market requirement for firming across the different horizons and inclusive of all generation types, both existing and new. It shows that the total pool grows as intermittent renewables are built out and that short-duration firming is the greatest growth pool. Short-duration flexibility, such as managing daily peaks and troughs, can be delivered through batteries and peaking units. Medium to long-term flexibility, including dry years or seasonal variability, comes from flexible thermal generation and diverse fuels. Huntly Power Station, with its multi-fuel capacity and potential for further development, is central to meeting these needs for New Zealand. These flexibility value pools allow Genesis to optimise operations in multiple ways.
Batteries capture high-frequency, short-term price spikes, thermal plants generate revenue by providing capacity when renewable output is low, and stored water or fuel can be deployed strategically to capture high-value periods. Together, these levers unlock both growth margin and system security. Combined with our expanding renewable and storage assets, Genesis is uniquely positioned to maximize these value pools through our flex gen strategy, driving returns from existing assets, strengthening system security, and capturing the increasing value of firming in a renewable-led market. Rankines and Huntly Firming Options showcase Genesis's ability to monetize long-duration, dry year flexibility. Flex gen leverages Huntly's diverse assets and fuels to provide firming across all timeframes, from daily adjustments to multi-season needs, and HFOs let customers access Rankine capacity when needed, while Genesis manages the fuel and maintains the reliability of the plant.
The 10-year HFOs, approved by the Commerce Commission three weeks or so ago, cover 150 MW and share a 600,000-tonne coal reserve, the latter unlocking almost NZD 100 million in working capital for Genesis. These HFOs now underpin Genesis's planned investment in all three Rankine units out to 2035, now included in our forecast spend. Despite their age, Rankine units have proven to be reliable when invested in appropriately. To date, a total of 235 MW of short and long-term HFOs have been sold, equivalent to almost one Rankine unit. As Genesis develops new renewable generation, it creates further opportunity to offer additional and broader range of firming products, including potential biomass-backed options using Rankine capacity that is no longer required for baseload thermal generation.
The success of Rankine-backed HFOs also provides a blueprint to monetize flexibility from other thermal units, including our existing units five and six and potentially unit seven, maximizing value from Genesis's flexible fleet in a gas-constrained market. Genesis is well positioned to navigate gas market volatility and future uncertainty and capture opportunities across multiple scenarios. Huntly Power Station's flexible generation, supported by coal, gas, and potentially LNG, provides a strategic advantage. High gas prices can be managed by switching to coal, while low gas prices in our unit five to run is the most efficient thermal plant in the market now. Genesis has recently further enhanced our relationship with the Tareiki Gas Storage Project through the execution of an MOU with Tareiki Joint Venture Partners, which involves NZEC and L&M Energy.
This agreement sets out a clear program to close out remaining studies and negotiations toward a gas storage services agreement. This will assist the Tareiki JV and ourselves in having an aligned pathway for prosecution of this project. Securing Tareiki gas storage would further enhance seasonal flexibility, optimise fuel use, and support LNG optionality. Overall, by dynamically flexing between fuels and units and by optimising our use of gas storage and demand-side flexibility, Genesis can manage price swings and supply risks and monetise fuel flexibility to provide market security. We've already proven our ability to enhance flexibility and value through deals such as with Balance and Methanex, and we have the potential to build even more flexibility in going forward. This strategy strengthens generation resilience, unlocks value from existing assets, and ensures Genesis can respond effectively in a volatile renewable-led market.
Angela Ogier, as mentioned earlier, will talk about this over dinner tonight. For those of you worried about two long days, I promise you it will be interesting and entertaining. To sum up the progress we are making across the renewables and flex gen strategies, Genesis is building a diversified, flexible portfolio designed to deliver value across a volatile renewable-led market. Our proven development, delivery, and fuels capability and our operational agility combine local expertise and global best practice in driving portfolio growth and flexibility. By monetizing flexibility, capitalizing on fuel diversity, and taking a proactive investment approach, we enhance generation resilience and optimize asset use. This agility allows Genesis to respond to evolving market conditions, manage weather and fuel volatility, and position the business for long-term success in a renewable-driven future. I'll now pass on to Stephen.
He'll talk more to you about what his team is doing in customer and also how he's strengthened trading and portfolio capabilities are leveraging additional value from our increasingly renewable and flexible portfolio. Nāmihi nui.
Nāmihi tēnei. Just give me a minute. I've just got to close down my little looking at the current state of the market, not the stock market, just for the clarity, the energy market. It's good to see that prices are hovering around NZD 25-NZD 30 at the moment. The team are doing everything they can to get as short as possible. It's going to be a good day in the trading room. Again, thanks, Tracey. Look, before I get into talking a little bit about our commercial strategy, I thought we'd start out by talking about the market that we are operating in.
As Matt spoke to earlier, the energy transition is both structural and irreversible. New Zealand is entering a period of meaningful electricity demand growth, and for the first time in a long time, it's a broad-based, structural, and sustained change. Electricity demand is expected to lift from around 40 terawatt-hours today to somewhere around 50 terawatt-hours by 2035. We expect a similar step change through to FY28. This has been driven by three big shifts. The first, mass market electrification. Homes and small businesses moving from non-electric to efficient electric heating, transport, and hot water. The availability and cost of non-electric options is likely to continue to accelerate this further. Transport electrification is the second area. A major driver of this demand growth is the continuing adoption of electric vehicles, both private and commercial.
We're seeing electricity use for EVs grow at double-digit rates, and public charging demand is set to increase nearly 20-fold by 2035. Genesis is committed to supporting this transition, ensuring our network and our services are ready to meet the needs of a more electrified transport sector. The third driver of market growth is data centre expansion and industrial electrification, a new class of large, flexible load reshaping demand profiles everywhere. This isn't just more load. It's new types of load. It's a market becoming more electrified, more flexible, and more valuable. That is where Genesis sees its opportunity, growing with the market, but doing so in the parts of the market where value, not just volume, ultimately wins. Against that backdrop of structural growth, our commercial strategy is very clear. Genesis is not chasing volume for volume's sake.
Our focus is on operational cash flow uplift, built through higher quality earnings, optimized customer portfolios, and better monetization of our supply and flexibility. With the investment that Tracey is leading in renewable generation and flexible capacity, we must match that with stronger commercial capability, capability that ensures every incremental megawatt is monetized with discipline. We now operate as one commercial portfolio. Retail, commercial, industrial, and trading work as a dynamic and integrated demand book, and one shared group gross margin objective and clear roles within the system. Trading manages exposure, portfolio sets shape and balance, and customer channels drive and deliver the financial returns. This removes silos, reduces channel cannibalization, and ensures total portfolio value is maximized, not just individual P&Ls. My job is to lead a team that solves two outcomes simultaneously.
The first, monetize portfolio optionality to maximize group gross margin, and the second, to lower the cost of energy to our customers through electrification of homes and businesses. That ambition is captured in our brand strategy, Energy That Never Stops, lowering the total cost of energy for customers while strengthening New Zealand's energy security. Our operating model makes Tracey's supply investments and Julie's capital settings pay off. Our focus on value over volume is directly aligned with the electrification of New Zealand's economy. For example, by enabling more New Zealanders to switch to EVs and by investing in public charging infrastructure, we're not just growing demand, we're creating value for customers and for Genesis while helping lower the total cost of energy for New Zealanders and capturing higher portfolio margin while we do so.
We're going to do this by growing our demand position alongside the market, harnessing the electrification tailwinds across transport, industrial process, hot water, and homes, and using deeper demand data and richer customer insights. We're building a more resilient, flexible, and profitable commercial model. Different roles, one objective: grow portfolio value while optimising for risk and optionality. Creating the capacity to deliver this isn't a project. It's an ongoing capability build and a defining strength of a sustainable organization in the energy industry. Horizon One built the foundation. We simplified retail, excuse me, integrated trading and portfolio, and created a common commercial operating model. Those changes gave us the structure, clarity, and focus to perform at a higher level. Horizon Two is where that capability comes to life.
The same people who rebuilt the business are now using those foundations to execute faster, operate smarter, and deliver stronger returns from the resources we already have. We've united three brands into one, aligning our channels to a single customer experience and connecting every commercial decision through one view of risk and reward. We're applying new analytics, data, and digital tools to uplift value from our portfolio while creating new products and enhance flexibility and strengthen market resilience. We look to adopt global and local best practice across our commercial team, including tools and strategies, processes and practice, data and analytics, as well as trends and insights. At the heart of it, it's all about our people: capable, connected, and commercially savvy. They're the engine of our performance, turning systems and strategy into lasting results. Our commitment to Energy That Never Stops is a unifying thread behind that capability.
Our Genesis brand signals a relentless commitment to keeping the lights on through flexibility and supply-side innovation while lowering the total cost of energy through electrification and intelligent products. Built on three pillars, we challenge, we deliver, and we reward. It connects what we do inside Genesis to the outcomes our customers and stakeholders expect and need. The Genesis brand is seeing a resurgence amongst non-customers and business segments, while our loyalty proposition remains market-leading and something that our customers continue to love. Focused and considered growth through our brand, product, and segment strategy to balance demand, to balance our strong demand position as a key enabler of our generation investment strategy, and to ensure we all benefit from the role of distributed energy technology as it enters the system.
I think that's what makes Genesis different: a business built on capability, powered by its people, and focused on delivering enduring value from its unique portfolio of assets. As Barbara spoke to, electrifying New Zealand is a whole-of-country challenge. We are all in it together, and Genesis has set itself up to lean into it and create value from that transition. It's that capability, the simplification, the unified model, and our people that enable us to now drive sustained operating cash flow uplift in Horizon Two. This next phase isn't about chasing growth for growth's sake. It's about electrifying New Zealand one customer at a time and doing it in a way that maximizes earnings across the entire commercial system. There are four levers that underpin how we're going to do that. Number one, lifetime customer value. We are optimizing for the right customer, not the most customers.
Across homes, businesses, and C&I, we're selecting demand that fits our portfolio shape, strengthening earnings quality and creating long-term customer and Genesis value. That means products like renewable sleeving for large corporates, flexible demand programs, and TOI 2 certified climate-positive tariffs through EcoTricity products, all designed to deepen engagement, extend tenure, and lift margin over a customer's lifetime, not just in one year. Ed spoke to R2G2 earlier. Release One of our new billing and CRM system is proven, and we are building on it to unleash additional value from Release Two, enable new products and services, and bring forward opportunities for automation and AI. Together, our new operating model, Digital Core, and customer strategy will increase margin per customer while helping customers benefit from the energy transition. We are deploying advanced digital tools and analytics to support customers, including smart tariffs and flexible demand programs.
These innovations not only enhance customer experience, but also enable us to monetize new value streams, improve retention, drive higher lifetime value per customer, and key levers to long-term profitability. In delivering value through every channel, retail, C&I, and trading each create value in different ways. The uplift comes when they all operate as an integrated book. Retail improves net back. C&I anchors the load shape. Trading monetizes flexibility and optionality. When these channels are connected through one commercial model, their strengths compound and earnings quality improves. Advancing our data capability and introducing new portfolio and trading tools with our Amplify program, alongside the capability of R2G2, the new retail platform, we will continue to maximize our ability to drive value through all of our channels. Group gross margin uplift through portfolio flexibility. This is a unique multiplier. Electrification creates new shape and timing of demand.
Our portfolio and trading capability convert that flexibility into higher gross margin. We can shift shape, optimize timing, and respond to market conditions without increasing risk, turning flexibility into value. Our ability to convert information and data into value-accretive action is underpinned by our people and digital capabilities, and increasingly the use and deployment of AI. Productivity uplift. Everyone wants more for less. Finally, we continue to structurally improve our cost to serve. Digitization, automation, agentic AI, better self-service make every interaction cheaper, faster, and more scalable. A month after R2G2 went live with our first customer cohort, we are seeing average handling times around 11 minutes, and roughly 50% of all inbound inquiries are successfully deflected using AI. That's after our first month in operation.
These numbers will continue to improve as the system is embedded and more capability is brought to bear in front and back office functions ahead of the migration of the main customer cohort next year. Productivity isn't a one-off exercise. It's a continuous rhythm that protects margin and manages costs while we grow and adapt. When these four levers work together, they create a commercial system that is flexible, resilient, and consistently profitable, a digitally enabled and data-rich ecosystem that's continuously learning and optimizing for group gross margin growth. This is how we're going to deliver sustained operational cash flow uplift, value over volume, delivered one customer at a time. These levers only really reach their full potential when the business operates in an integrated way. That's why we are integrated. Value creation depends on coordination.
Across the whole book, we can make faster trade-offs between retail, C&I, and trading, all optimized through a common portfolio lens across different time horizons and risk profiles. All the levers Genesis has to shape and monetize outcomes are sitting around the same commercial leadership table, better connecting the risk-reward and group gross margin discussions, the decision-making needed to improve returns, allocate energy, understand demand both today, tomorrow, and well into the future. Trading sharpens insight and execution with AI-assisted forecasting, lower market-making costs, and new flexibility products like HFOs. The team can move faster, getting shorter when prices are low and longer when prices are high. We're enhancing the Genesis smile by actively monetizing our demand and supply positions. Portfolio focuses on finding the highest margin, risk-adjusted route to market, securing value-accretive PPAs, aligning hedges and assets, and monetizing flexibility across every channel. Customer turns scale into sustained margin.
Our unified brand strategy lifts average net back. Digital transformation lowers cost to serve, and adjacencies like broadband add new accretive value. Together, these three engines make Genesis a fully integrated commercial system. Insight, route to market, and scale working in one flywheel. With this approach, we're going to pursue and unlock more gross margin by FY2028 while better matching supply and demand and optimizing for market conditions. The outcome, our path to mid to upper NZD 500 million EBITDAF, comes from portfolio and channel optimization alongside resource coordination, not just more megawatt-hours produced. Our integrated approach is already delivering measurable results. Since FY2023, we've delivered a NZD 515 million uplift in contracted revenues, driven by disciplined channel optimization and monetizing flexibility in wholesale markets. This isn't growth for growth's sake. It's quality growth, deliberately shifting sales towards higher margin customer segments and strategically aligning our demand.
That focus has lifted realised price by around 16% since FY2023, even as overall volumes have remained broadly stable for the same period. Our retail channel continues to strengthen margin through pricing discipline and customer value initiatives. Our C&I customers are anchoring the load shape and providing long-term stability, and our trading channel is monetising that flexibility Tracey spoke of, ensuring every electron finds its most profitable route to market. The next horizon is about extending that alignment, ensuring demand growth through electrification continues to match shape of our renewable build. We are maximising portfolio while maintaining resilience and profitability. Let's take a quick look at retail. As Ed spoke to earlier, over the past two years, we've fundamentally re-engineered our retail platform, resetting costs, structure, and systems to create a business that's leaner, more focused, and ready to scale.
Horizon One was about getting our retail house in order and ready to embrace the opportunities of new technology systems and the wider economy's energy transition. We took out about 200 FTE, simplified our operating model, and unified three brands into one, removing duplication, resetting our baseline costs. That delivered an NZD 11 million OpEx reduction and helped lift total net back by 22% since FY2023. That uplift reflected the low-hanging fruit. Simplification, cost reduction, seeing EcoTricity's contribution above the line for the first time. It proved the power of consolidation and focus, and we managed to deliver brand, customer satisfaction, and cost-to-serve outcomes while we made that change. It's probably worth noting that net back is calculated differently by different retailers. Horizon Two builds on Horizon One and focuses on channel and portfolio monetization, plus further customer experience, brand, and cost-to-serve benefits through digital transformation and targeted adoption of AI.
Now that the foundations are set, we're focusing on optimizing pricing, shaping demand, and allocating energy across our channels to lift group gross margin quality further. Our renewed C&I strategy will see us continue to better align customer load and demand flexibility with portfolio optionality to create value for both parties. As we integrate the EcoTricity operation into our enterprise team alongside C&I, we also benefit from their technology platforms and product capability. We're growing adjacent value pools like broadband and other digital services that strengthen customer relationships and lifetime value. As R2G2 rolls out, unified systems and digital tools will help further reduce cost-to-serve and improve responsiveness. Together, these initiatives position us for a further 10-15% uplift in net back by FY28, achieved through mixed shape and cost efficiency, not just volume.
Building on what we have already delivered, we will bring 32-37% improvement in net back performance over the five years to FY2028. In Horizon One, we got match fit, and in Horizon Two, we're accelerating the transition. Tracey shared this slide earlier, and I'd like to return to it briefly. Adding in the portfolio margin dimension as this is the heart of our portfolio strategy. Building new renewables unlocks flexible value and changes the role and increases the value of our existing assets. As renewables grow, the way we dispatch our flexibility changes. Daytime solar increasingly displaces hydro, allowing us to hold water and generate in higher price periods. Thermal runs less often, but earns more when it does. The value comes from timing, not volume. That's deliberate, deliberate, not incidental. As renewables grow further, three key levers for flexibility come into play. First, thermal.
As renewables are built, thermal shifts into the firming and peaking market, running less often, but earning more when it does. Its role changes from base load to balancing, from volume to value. Gas storage. With six to nine PJs of potential gas storage COD around 2027, we will gain the ability to shift gas into higher price periods, capturing value in winter and firming or peaking events. Flexibility allows us to decouple gas procurement from generation timing, turning volatility into opportunity. Thirdly, hydro storage. Our 500 gigawatt-hours of hydro storage becomes more valuable, especially in the North Island, as it balances intermittent renewables and enables us to generate during higher price periods. Together, these assets create a coordinated, flexible portfolio. Hydro, thermal, and trading all working in sync to lift GWAP over TWAP and drive stronger gross margin for our book.
It's flexibility across the value chain, from generation to trading to customer demand, earning more by being smarter, not just by producing more. As renewables grow, our portfolio shape continues to shift, presenting powerful opportunities for higher margin, lower volatility, and greater resilience. It's a structural evolution from base load generation to a flexible, earnings-maximized portfolio that thrives in a renewable and more unpredictable future. The positive trends illustrated on the chart, excuse me, are not a matter of luck. They are the direct result of our strategic investment, disciplined operation, and purposeful decisions regarding when, where, and how we generate, store, and dispatch energy. When we bring it all together, this is where we are today. One commercial group, different roles, one objective: lifting total portfolio value. We're driving operational cash flow through value over volume, integrating customer portfolio and trading under one cost center.
We are positioning Genesis to be resilient, flexible, and profitable through the transition. That brings us to the next chapter, Horizon Three. We keep tuning the machine, and we are going to continue to make it sing. Genesis is better placed than ever to scale the next wave of electricity demand growth. Horizon Three is about scaling with electrification, growing with the market as demand accelerates, leveraging digital and data even further, and expanding our integrated value engine to capture emerging opportunities in the energy transition. Our leadership in supporting New Zealand's EV transition and expanding public charging infrastructure will be central to market and our growth in Horizon Three. These initiatives are not only aligned with national decarbonisation goals, but are also designed to deliver resilient, high-quality cash flows and superior returns to our shareholders over the next decade.
Genesis is positioned for resilient, flexible, and profitable growth, creating sustainable cash flow while powering New Zealand's transition, electrifying New Zealand one customer at a time. Thank you for listening. I'm now going to pass over the podium to my very talented colleague, Julie Amey.
Kapo, Stephen, and kia ora to everyone in the room and actually online as well. It is my great pleasure to be talking with you today about capital management and this critical enabler of Gen35. Before I do, for those of you who did not get the chance to sleep in this morning and got up early to review the material that we put out, you might have noted in the material that we have not provided financial projections for Horizon Three and beyond.
I just want to call that out because that is deliberate, because today is about Horizon Two and Horizon One, what we have delivered and what we said we would deliver. What you will have today is some key insights into the value driver assumptions that are shaping us up for Horizon Three in the future. What we want you to do today is really get a good understanding of those value drivers, because as we build up to our half-year results, we will be sharing longer-term financial projections for you. Moving on, Gen35, oh, sorry, we've just gone a bit further. Gen35 was launched. Actually, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to share a couple of reflections as my first year as CFO for Genesis.
Gen35 was launched two years ago with clear strategic aspirations and objectives and a very strong outcome-focused plan of delivery. I joined Genesis a year into that journey, and my experience to date is that the momentum, the value opportunity, and the pathway that is locked in for financial year 2028 EBITDAF is very real. This is despite some of the challenging headrooms that we have been navigating. When I joined Genesis, Malcolm said to me that our capital management framework in itself cannot be the reason we do not move forward with our opportunities at pace and with conviction. With this clear directive firmly implanted, we have worked incredibly hard to ensure capital management is an enabler for growth, for our resilience, and most importantly, for strong shareholder returns.
As part of our Gen35 Future Fit journey, I have initiated a transformation of the Genesis Energy finance function, and that includes the systems that Ed spoke to earlier today. I have secured a strong finance leadership team to lead out the change that we want to see. As part of this transformation, I have established a dedicated capital markets team that has single-point responsibility for driving robust capital management, with clear guardrails and expectations that are set across all of Genesis Energy, with no exceptions. As an organization, we ensure that every dollar we earn and every dollar we spend counts, and we continue to be really measured about that. We are all well aware that we need to deliver based on performance and not just on promises. This is exactly what we are doing and will continue to do well into the future.
There are three key messages I want to reinforce to you today. We are optimizing margin quality and cost discipline through our strategy, our productivity, and with impactful delivery. We are ensuring strong capital management and quality investment decisions, and we are delivering sustainable EBITDAF growth and competitive shareholder returns. We believe Genesis has a very simple but hugely valuable investment case, which is enhanced by the interplay between our earnings growth and balance sheet resilience, both ensuring strong shareholder returns. I now want to talk you through how we activate this through our capital management framework, and in particular within the context of Horizon Two, our accelerated transition phase, and how this enables further growth with a strong foundation for our future state. What you now see on the screen is a simplified overview of our capital management framework.
As I mentioned earlier, having a robust capital, a robust framework that is activated across the entire organization is fundamental to ensuring the full value is realized from that pipeline of opportunities that we have today, and of course, those opportunities that we will have in front of us in future. Our framework is not overly complex. It is enduring, with our capital allocation, with our capital allocation priorities being specific to the strategic objective of the horizon we are in. That means that the prioritization that you see indicated on this slide is deliberate, and it reflects the accelerated transition phase of Gen35 Horizon Two. As you heard from Ed, Stephen, and Tracey earlier, our focus across Horizon One and Horizon Two is on growing our cash generation sources through self-help initiatives and delivering earnings uplift from our commercial opportunities.
We are prioritizing our uses of these funds to ensure we sustain our business and we balance our distributions with our growth through Horizon Two, which is consistent with the commitment that we made initially at Investor Day 2023. We supplement our capital allocation priorities as necessary from a range of funding options that are contemplated against strategic and tactical considerations. Let me take you through now how this is playing out for Gen35 Horizon Two. Operating cash flow generation drives our intrinsic value, and it is a critical source of self-help during our accelerated growth horizon. While this in itself is multifaceted, margin quality and cost discipline are the key drivers of operational value. As Ed spoke to earlier, delivery is evidenced in our improved financial performance that has sustainably locked in the upsides and the benefits while successfully offsetting a range of the challenges.
This delivery and focus brings credibility to our financial year 2028 EBITDAF pathway. We have taken out around NZD 30 million of annualized average costs from our business through decisive action to simplify our operations for efficiency, to consolidate business and brands for synergy, to drive technology transformation and digital enablement for our productivity. We have more initiatives in progress as part of our continuous improvement focus. As you heard earlier, we've uplifted margins through the monetization of flexibility products and assets, our pricing strategy optimization, and delivering value-focused customer adjacencies. We are focusing in on uplifting value and growing returns from our electricity business segment while maximizing the earnings margins that are available to us from our gas, LPG, and Kupe business segments. As mentioned earlier, our pathway to financial year 2028 EBITDAF is clear.
Moving to capital allocation, during Horizon Two, our priorities are premised on ensuring our balance sheet resilience, ensuring the reliability of our assets, and ensuring balanced returns as we grow during an accelerated transition. The sanctity of our investment-grade credit rating is fundamental. It underpins not only access to more competitive funding, but ensures access to bankable commercial opportunities, strategic partnerships, and financial security across our full portfolio. Working within the investment-grade credit rating range across the cycle is a key financial setting for our capital management framework. We are also focused on unlocking balance sheet value, with a great example being our new 10-year HFOs releasing around NZD 100 million from our working capital this financial year.
We remain very focused on ensuring the long-term sustainability of our schemes and our assets, from strong reliability through to extending the asset life to maximize value realization, closely manage the risks, and ensure operational flexibility across our full portfolio. As a reminder, while the level of spend to sustain our assets might vary in each financial year, we are committed to managing this based on an annualized long-run average of around NZD 70 million-NZD 80 million. While this is not an area of spend that we are compromising at all in our accelerated transition phase, it is an area we are focused on for cost discipline and efficiency. Finally, given the importance of distributions to our shareholders, our dividend settings are also prioritized. As Barbara spoke to earlier, the reset to a fixed dividend in financial year 2024 currently remains the board's desired setting through Horizon Two.
This ensures that through our accelerated transition phase, we are balancing consistent returns with the long-term growth of our business. Horizon Two is focused on ensuring we are well positioned for a Horizon Three returns proposition that is aligned with our earnings growth. Moving on, another critical enabler of our framework is to ensure an optimal balance of our sources and uses of funds. What you can see from the slide is the sufficiency of our estimated operating cash flow to financial year 2028 to sustain our business priorities and our committed growth opportunities as we progress towards FY2028.
Our funding toolkit, alongside the cash flow we will generate beyond financial year 2028, is poised to enable these opportunities that we are currently progressing and those discretionary growth opportunities where there is more optionality over execution sequencing and timeframes to ensure that we are working within our targeted financial settings. I refer you to the table of development pipeline opportunities that Tracey spoke to earlier and the classification of these opportunities that we have provided. Our committed growth investments are our advanced stage projects that are either under construction or at FID, with a strong investment case and funding certainty. Our progressed growth opportunities are those with a targeted financial investment timeline and a pathway to funding, but with some optionality over execution and timing.
We also have a very strong pipeline of discretionary growth opportunities that are being pursued by the business, with the potential for acceleration subject to market conditions, commercial returns, and funding certainty. Given our dynamic environment, we are continuously assessing these opportunities and how they are progressing through our funnel. Managing a growing and varied pipeline that has the potential for acceleration does require a very disciplined approach to ensure high-quality, risk-adjusted investment decisions. I will now speak to our investment decision quality framework using our recently announced Edgecumbe Solar FID to demonstrate how this plays out. We assess our opportunities based on three fundamentals. Each investment is assessed on standalone merits to ensure the opportunity and the risks are well understood alongside the commercials and the returns.
As an example for Edgecumbe Solar, we assess both on-balance sheet and off-balance sheet funding options and what this means for value capture, for risk management, and opportunity realization. We are satisfied that an on-balance sheet construction with early commercial operation delivers the required financial hurdle, effectively manages risks, and enables an opportunity for us to recycle capital in future to support further pipeline investments. Each investment is then assessed against the full portfolio to identify the group's incremental value uplift that we can realize due to the integrated nature of our business. This incremental value, coupled with the ability to further de-risk our portfolio as necessary, ensures competitive returns that are strategically aligned. For example, our Edgecumbe investment brings a meaningful solar asset into our generation portfolio for our own demand position while delivering the targeted value capture and returns.
In addition, this investment in a significant renewables opportunity releases thermal capacity from Huntly for further monetization and an incremental uplift in returns. Investing in Edgecumbe also enables the further optimization of our hydro portfolio, improving our GWAP/TWAP ratio. Edgecumbe also supports our transition to a lower carbon generation footprint. The overall group return of the opportunity is assessed to ensure that this is the right and best use of the funds for the expected returns against the alternatives. Bringing this back to how decision quality comes together and is activated across Genesis, Tracey and her team are managing the significant pipeline of individual investment opportunities. Stephen and his team are ensuring commercial value is maximized and realized across the full portfolio, while my team and I ensure the returns are competitive against expectations and counterfactuals.
With that in mind, let's move to the funding toolkit and how we ensure balance sheet strength through the options we have. A critical enabler for a strong capital management framework is ensuring a diverse and flexible funding toolkit that allows tailored capital solutions within the group's overall financial settings. Of course, it's important that this toolkit is credible. This is what we have, and I've summarized on the slide. We have made excellent progress to secure credible funding pathways, significantly broadening our options to fund growth without compromising balance sheet strength or shareholder returns. Decisions regarding funding consider a range of factors, including targeted leverage, value capture, capability and synergies, risk management, and strategic versus tactical positioning. Funding decisions also require consideration of the implication for financing the full pipeline of opportunities and not just the individual investments.
Our funding toolkit comprises five core financing options with key considerations. Contractual offtakes are a commitment where the funding is effectively in the form of an indirect partnership as our counterparty makes the investment that we enable through a fixed-term commercial contract. Formalized partnership structures such as joint ventures are a valuable funding option for us, which shares the risks and the opportunities with the potential for some equity investment alongside project financing. Direct investment reflects on-balance sheet considerations where it is to our advantage to capture the full value and closely manage the risks and the opportunities. The funding options available take the form of either third-party debt or a hybrid of such, shareholder equity or asset recycling if there is a higher value use case, or of course a combination of the three.
Before I close it out, I want to emphasize that we take our responsibility as custodians of shareholder capital seriously. We are applying structure to capital management and ensuring decision quality with a focus on maximizing the integrated portfolio value, and we are ensuring the appropriate funding option for our opportunities that considers our strategic positioning, the business cycle, and importantly, implications for the financial strength of the group. In summary, we are a compelling investment case. Horizon Two is delivering on an accelerated pathway of earnings growth with a robust foundation for our future state. Our strong portfolio is being managed by a high-caliber team. We have a significant pipeline of high-quality opportunities and a financially resilient balance sheet that is enabled by credible funding options. This will sustain the business through Horizon Three and beyond.
On that note, it is a great time to hand you over to Malcolm, our Chief Executive, to talk you through Horizon Three, the value drivers, and our future state. Namahe Nui, thank you for listening so intently, and I think we have a video to lead you in, Malcolm. Thank you.
Thank you, Julie. Kierakoto, everybody. It's always good when you stand up to speak, to watch who leaves the room and has to go to the bathroom. Thankfully, there was only one. We should all hide while he's out and then wait for him to come back. This is an awesome team of people, and it's delivering some really cool stuff.
I'm super proud of what we've delivered over the past two years as the team has, waiting for the auto queue, thank you, as the team has outlined, we will keep delivering, and I'm optimistic about Genesis 2.0, life beyond FY28. Energy equals prosperity, and as a country, that means our national mission over the next 25 years must be to electrify New Zealand. Simply focusing on greening the electricity system would be an own goal. It's already amongst the greenest on the planet and will only get greener as we invest in new renewables over the years to come. New Zealand must reach 60% electrification by 2050, and electricity must be available 100% of the time, no matter the weather. These are the core challenges that unlock New Zealand's energy-abundant future.
Gen35 is focused on electrifying New Zealand, one customer at a time, driving Genesis to more than 95% renewable generation and delivering value from our natural advantage in energy security. We have a large customer book in place, around 500,000 electricity customers, or ICPs, representing about 20% ICP share and 15% demand share. Many of our customers also buy adjacent products, and this gives our future revenues a helpful turbo boost. As Stephen has outlined, over the past two years, we have maintained market share in a competitive retail market throughout one of the largest change processes in Genesis' history. In addition to maintaining share, we have lifted our net promoter scores, customer satisfaction, and staff engagement levels. This, coupled with delivering value over volume, has driven enduring margin quality uplift and a more resilient and reliable earnings profile.
As Tracey demonstrated, over the last two years, we have delivered a credible and growing new asset development pipeline of around 2.5 gigawatts. We now have the team and supplier relationships to build and contract around 1.3 gigawatts of new generation by FY2035 to better monetize our large demand position and deliver 95% renewable generation at P50 Hydro. Our delivery times are currently three times faster than market average, and as illustrated by the NZD 135 million capex achieved on the Huntly BESS, we are not only delivering fast, we are delivering with market-leading capital efficiency. I note that none of our competitors compared our NZD 135 million BESS to theirs in recent market comparisons. In the past two years, we have put in place a clear strategy to leverage our largest competitive advantage.
We have the assets, fuels, and teams to firm our existing and future renewables generation across every time scale, from minutes to months, no matter the weather. Overall, market demand growth forecasts range from 1%-4% per annum out to 2035. As Stephen has outlined, we are in a growth market, and with a large established customer book, we absolutely intend to grow the business over the next decade. We estimate that our customer demand will grow around 2% on average out to FY35, while our market shares remain sustainable, stable. While we are confident demand will grow, it may not grow in a linear way, and we see lower growth in the first five years than we see in the second five years. This is why flexibility in our portfolio and optionality in our pipeline will be so valuable over this time.
We expect to see a more dynamic electricity policy environment over the next decade, with regular changes between market-based and incentive-based energy transition policies. Gen35 is set up to navigate and prosper in this dynamic. Flexibility and adaptability are going to be valuable attributes over the next decade, and these are part of Genesis' core DNA. Moving on to our demand position. On the supply side, we will deliver generation growth to support our demand growth and leverage our flexibility strengths. As Tracey has outlined, intermittent generation will play a leading role in our supply-side growth. Our large customer book and long firming position uniquely de-risks Genesis' intermittent generation growth.
As we have outlined previously, we will be delivering new generation assets through three core structures: direct investment from our own balance sheet and leveraging third-party capital alongside Genesis Capital through special purpose vehicles and potentially a renewables development fund, and leveraging third-party capital without Genesis Capital through power purchase agreements or PPAs. On balance sheet, we will prioritize investment in hydro, long-term dispatchable generation, and energy storage assets where the GWAP/TWAP outcomes are the most beneficial. These will be strategic assets that support long-term margin and cash flow uplift. Special purpose vehicles or a renewables development fund will be used to leverage third-party capital alongside Genesis Capital and assets we want to have an equity position in to support medium to long-term margin and cash flow uplift, while also strongly managing our capital.
We have already indicated we intend to move to hold our own pipeline and continue to develop it. We intend to develop these ourselves to maximize development cash flows before recycling capital post-development at a time of our choosing and need. PPAs will be used more tactically to support short and medium-term margin while we build our pipeline and strongly manage our capital. We now have a clear plan for Huntly over the next decade and directionally beyond that decade. Flexibility remains a core part of this plan, and we will always pursue the best commercial options at each decision point. Huntly is a valuable site today and will be well into the future for a number of reasons. It is a consented site located in the center of New Zealand's economic growth triangle of Auckland, Hamilton, and Tauranga.
It has a large grid connection and a skilled resident workforce not replicated anywhere else in New Zealand. It is better to view Huntly's future through the lens of individual fuel and asset transitions on one site rather than simply as one site itself. Rankines are now valuable assets. They have a clear role and commercial pathway out to at least FY2035. They will likely reach practical end of life around that time, and we cannot say with certainty today what an extension of life beyond this point might be. Operating hours over the next decade, plus market conditions in the mid-2030s, will be influential to any options to extend lives beyond FY2030. We have begun building up to 800 megawatt-hours of BESS at Huntly. Stage one, a 200 megawatt-hour BESS, is now fully underway, and the first batteries were installed successfully this week.
Given how capital-competitive BESS at Huntly are, we can see stage two BESS following soon after. We currently see around 500-600 megawatts of two-hour BESS as the likely market capacity over the next five to seven years, meaning stages three and four are more likely to be after that rather than before. Unit five will progressively transition away from baseline duties out to 2030, as we have previously indicated. With gas managed more flexibly, as we have demonstrated across both FY25 and 26, operations will become more seasonal and aligned with winter. The unit will be fully depreciated in FY32. However, its operational life can be extended out towards 2040 or beyond, subject to fuel, market demand, and capital availability. We have indicated that we are reviewing options around a potential unit seven.
We already have a site, a grid connection, and consents for a unit seven, and we see a range of possible options: mobile reciprocating engines in modules of between 10 and 30 MW, quick start, and fuel switching between gas, diesel, and possibly LNG. The smaller of these units offer flexible modular options, and their mobility offers potential for adjacent contracted revenue as transported major disaster emergency generation. Traditional stationary turbines, similar to unit six, also offer quick start options with fuel switching. Reciprocating engines offer more flexible modules and lower capital entry points over stationary turbines. However, stationary turbines have lower ongoing operating costs. Huntly Power Station can now store around 1 million liters of diesel on site under our current consents. This is currently sufficient; however, it can be lifted in the future if needed.
Unit six uses up to 11,000 liters an hour at full capacity, offering genuine fast start, shorter duration peaking close to major population centers if gas is not available. Future options for unit five and a potential unit seven will be influenced by market demand, fuel availability, and capital availability. We expect these decisions to be around FY2028-2032; however, we will review these regularly. If we look out to FY2035 and beyond, we expect our renewables build program will have displaced baseload thermal and offered us more flexibility and value from our hydro schemes. We see up to 200 megawatts of two-hour BESS built by FY2032, with options for up to another 200 megawatts by FY2035. Beyond FY2035, we see the need for around 150-240 megawatts of seasonal firming generation based on P50 Hydro.
We expect there to be a need for a similar level of generation available as reserve generation for Genesis and NZ Inc purposes. Directionally beyond FY35, there are two base cases for thermal generation at Huntly: unit six and seven on future fuels, plus one Rankin on biomass extended out towards the 2040s, or unit five and six on gas, diesel, and LNG extended out towards the 2040s. Rankins still offer the best long-duration generation of last resort for New Zealand, and their fuel flexibility makes them unmatched in that space. Installing a new Rankin at Huntly is possible. However, building a commercial standalone business case in today's market settings would prove very challenging. Huntly is the Swiss army knife of energy security, firming across minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months for both Genesis and the wider New Zealand market.
It would be a brave New Zealand that chose an energy-abundant future without Huntly in place as generation of last resort. Somebody has to fund that, and we were clear at Investor Day in 2023 that Genesis would not do that on its own, and we are equally clear today. We have a clear monetization strategy for Huntly out to FY35, and we have fuel and asset transition options well out towards 2040. Valuing Huntly purely through the wholesale electricity market lens on a P50 Hydro basis is a flawed valuation methodology for Huntly. This brings us to what we have learned over the last two years. Energy security is a non-negotiable socially, economically, and politically. Winter 2024 taught us that it is a flawed risk management strategy to manage energy security purely at your own company level.
For the whole sector, failing on energy security under any scenario by any company carries high risk of regulatory intervention for all of us. As Tracey has already covered, our independent modeling shows growing value pools in firming out to FY 2035, growing by as much as two to three times today's values. We expect firming over shorter timeframes to grow the most and be solved commercially within existing market settings. Longer-duration firming value pools are likely to grow less and be difficult to solve commercially within existing market settings. The government's review of long-duration firming requirements is likely to be important to supporting genuine energy security for NZ Inc across all hydro scenarios, and we welcome this work. For New Zealand overall, it is important to understand that the primary competition every infrastructure sector is in is a competition for capital.
Like all infrastructure investment, investing in long-dated assets benefits from long-dated reliable rules. If we materially change the road code every couple of years, we would not be surprised if the road accident rates increased. Infrastructure and utilities are no different. When looking at long-term policy and regulatory frameworks for New Zealand's energy transition, two first principles are helpful to keep in mind. New Zealand is primarily in a competition for capital, and a stable, understandable, and reliable long-term road code for the market is essential to avoiding increased future accident rates. Under Gen35, Genesis has put in place three competitive advantages: a large established customer book, which is expected to grow by around 2% per annum. This supports rational future deployment of capital into new generation growth to support our customers and further opportunities to partner with our customers to monetize distributed energy.
Genesis is the largest retailer for distributed energy in New Zealand, with around 30,000 customers. We have a growing pipeline of new renewable generation anchored by our three well-placed hydro schemes. We will deliver around 1.3 gigawatts of additional renewable generation through own builds and PPAs over the next decade. We have a portfolio long on firming from assets and fuels that confirm our large demand position and intermittent generation across every timescale, from minutes to months in every weather scenario. Coupled with the 10-year HFOs we have put in place, we now have no currently modelled scenarios where Huntly Power Station will be cash negative out to FY2035.
For investors in Genesis, under Gen35, we are in a growth market, and the competitive advantages we have put in place over the past two years mean our core investor proposition is clear, strong, and growing: a resilient portfolio balanced across customers, renewables, and flexible generation, delivering growing and reliable shareholder returns by focusing on continuous improvements in our margin quality, our cost discipline, and our strong capital management. Two years into Gen35, and we are delivering Genesis 2.0, a company where energy never stops. Thank you for your support. We look forward to updating you on our further delivery at Investor Day 2028 and on our future cash flows at our half-year results in February next year. [Foreign language] Ngā mihi nui, I'll pass you back to Matt now. Matt.
Thank you, Malcolm. That was a pretty decent stretch. I think now is probably a good time to pause and draw a bit of breath. We've covered quite a lot of ground and talked about Horizons One, Two, and Three, and had a conversation about capital management. No doubt a lot of you have had some questions to ask based on what you've heard. We're going to allocate some time now, 45 minutes to an hour or so, for Q&A. I'd like to ask the executive team to move back onto the stage for that session. This is your opportunity to put questions to the executive team on what you've heard. BYOC, Matt. Yeah, bring your own chair. Yep, that's correct. Yep, I forgot mine. I'll get it.
We're going to start with some questions in the room, and there'll also be the opportunity for those who are online to ask questions as well. We'll pick up those as they come through.
Right. I'm sure there'll be no questions for me, so I'll just... David's going to roam the floor, and he's got a microphone. I think he'll pass that around as we go. Thankfully, we shrunk the size of the executive team. If we hadn't, we'd need a bit of...
Okay, we'll open the floor. Anyone's got any questions, feel free to raise your hand, and we'll pick them up.
Okay, afternoon tea.
I'll come back with more later, but I just went with Malcolm. There's a lot of color on your post 28, and there's a lot of options and possibilities for Huntly.
It's hard, as an analyst, to put that into your model without getting some color on it. You had promised in the past to split the EBITDA into the different components. Can you give some sort of color on what? Because retail, hydro, and the other renewable stuff is quite predictable on what's going to happen, but it's the Huntly that we don't understand, or I don't. For FY2028, can you give some sort of idea of what that NZD 575 million, what comes from Huntly, and how you expect that mix to change by 2035?
This is an ongoing conversation that we've had with yourself and with others. A critical element of the Powered Finance upgrade is our ability to give greater clarity and color on the different parts of the business.
Ultimately, at the moment, we segment report effectively on customer and generation, and we do not break that down further between renewables and flexible generation. Once Powered Finance is in, we have greater capacity to be able to break that out. At the moment, it is a reasonably ad hoc process to break that out. One of the reasons that we are pushing those future cash flows into next year in terms of sharing them with you is because we need that technology deployed and to be active for us to be able to accurately do that in a way that we can report against for you. I hear your message really loud in terms of the difficulty of modeling that.
If I could just say stand by for another six months or so, three to six months, and we'll be able to give you the level of detail that you're looking for.
Can you at least give some sort of idea on whether that percentage is going to increase over time or whether the HFO really just covers costs and that's what you're hoping to have over the next seven years?
No, we see an increase in contribution from Huntly, but optimising it into the market is going to be critical. Huntly plays a dual role at the moment. It provides us with baseload, and it provides us with flexible generation. Naturally, it has a fixed cost component to it to have it there, and you have to cover those fixed costs.
In the past, Genesis has relied on dry year sequences to be able to effectively backfill the fixed cost component of Huntly. The result of that has been earnings that have bounced around with hydro cycles. What you can expect going forward is much flatter and more predictable earnings because we've effectively now put in place a floor for Huntly's earnings between our own customer book and the HFOs that we have in the market. Cash flow from Huntly can now go no lower than that floor, but we've left the ceiling open for dry years, limited by the capacity we have left to monetize into the market during dry periods to ensure that we don't put a false ceiling in place. It's not a cap and collar; it's a floor-type approach to it.
As I said in my speech, there are now no currently modeled hydro or wind scenarios that we can see over the next decade where Huntly will not make a positive cash contribution to our EBITDA outcomes. You should see a more resilient EBITDA profile, and you should see the bouncing that has been there should disappear from about FY2027 onwards.
Thank you. Just one more before I pass on, and it is always for Julie. Dividends. You talked about Horizon Three moving towards the growth in EBITDA. Is that the step change in EBITDA or growth in EBITDA?
The growth in EBITDA is existing and the incremental EBITDA that will come on the back of the opportunities that we have in there. We expect our distributions to follow that.
What I'm talking about is your cash conversion was pretty poor last year in ex-coupon EBITDA conversion was around about 42%. That should improve to close to 50% as maintenance CapEx remains as is and debts remains where it is. Where it was about 15 cents, that's going to jump to 25 plus. Is that the sort of 10-cent increment in cash flow that we should be thinking about how you'll be basing your dividend off?
I can't put a number on that. Sorry, Grant. That depends on how the distributions, the settings change in Horizon Three, and that hasn't been decided yet. At this stage, we can't put a number on that.
In essence, from an earnings perspective, yes. From a distribution perspective, Barbara made clear this morning that the dividend setting out to FY2028 is the board's preferred setting, and that's being reviewed annually. We do not have a position beyond that at this point in time.
Thank you.
A couple of questions, I guess, at this point as well. One thing I am quite interested in, I guess, is around gas storage and how critical is that for you, I guess, post circa FY2028 or thereabouts? Are you able to give us any color in terms of what the cost of actually getting that gas storage up and running is at this point in time?
I am going to leave the second one to tonight because Angela will talk far more about gas storage and some of the options and what we are seeing around costs.
I think just in terms of the value of gas storage, heap of uncertainty going forward, whether depending on what gas availability looks like and depending on the role that LNG plays, I think gas storage for us feels like it's got real value in both those scenarios. The less natural gas you have, the more important it is that you can store it and use it when it's of most value. For us to see LNG having any potential to provide that dry year security support to New Zealand, gas storage will be really important. We'll get much more into the flavor of that this evening.
Second question, I guess, is probably one that a lot of people had coming into today just around, and you've talked about it upfront, which is great, around the possibility for capital raises.
I think I'm right if I looked at the slide. It looked like around about a $500,000,000 funding kind of, I'll use the word gap, but I guess you've got options in terms of how you might bridge that. If I think about the government's talked about, I guess, supporting firming in particular. In that end, I guess you've got Unit Five, Unit Seven, which you've talked about, and you've got batteries. Have you had conversations with the government around being able to sort of explore sort of other options beyond that, I guess?
We have conversations with our shareholders all the time. The GWAP/TWAP slide was pretty clear that building new renewables gives us a lot of flexibility in our hydro schemes as well. The scheme that we'll go and visit tomorrow, the Tongariro Power Scheme, was originally built as a hydro peaking system.
It became baseload by default over time, but it works exceptionally well as a hydro peaker. It can provide very large amounts of energy into the system for morning and evening peaks. The philosophy is very much to invest in the renewables pipeline to release particularly that scheme from its middle of the day duties so that we can move it much more into that peaking. We have the future of Unit Five. We have BESS, and we have potential Unit Seven. Plus, we have the hydros in that mix. As Tracey said, like everybody, we are actively investigating options around future value of hydro schemes. We will not be saying anything until our ducks are in a row. You can expect in all of those areas for us to have more to say as the years roll forward.
It's looking like an early, oh no, Vignesh has got a question. Either our slide deck was really good, or it's just been a long two days. I'm going to take the first one.
Thanks, team. Just a quick one on batteries. Fair bit of discussion over the last week on who's building what. Feels like a bit of a rat race at the moment. You guys are sort of part of that as well. Keen to hear a bit of color on what you think sort of maybe payback periods look like for a battery investment, what the sort of size of the market looks like as well, and if there's any first mover advantage that you think exists.
Maybe I'll start, and you can jump in. Yeah, I mean, interesting, there's a variation in thoughts on how much battery New Zealand will need or can create value from in the next few years. We certainly see the opportunity for more batteries. I guess the value pools for us are around arbitrage, around ancillary products, but also around portfolio value. We're certainly seeing the potential for that from our existing, the battery that's under construction now. Given that we're able to build the next battery, we think cheaper than anyone else can, we'll move to that pretty quickly, but only when it makes commercial sense to do so. We have optionality around batteries beyond that, as Malcolm's talked about, both at Huntly and other sites, which we're pursuing. We're putting ourselves in a position where we will be ready to invest when it makes sense to do so.
Also looking at those market settings and actively involved in making sure those market settings incentivize batteries as appropriate to provide the key role that we need them to for New Zealand.
I think on current modeling in the market generally, something around the five-year mark for payback seems to be what everyone's working to. If you have a cheaper battery, you would expect a quicker payback. Just following up on that, on that chart, you had a GWAP, TWAP for, I think, thermal, you're really increasing. What's the sort of view on the rest of the market in terms of your peaking capacity there? Do you have, I don't know, call it 900 MW of batteries in FY2031 or 2032 under that assumption?
I think it's really important to break that down into minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, etc., because batteries are not generation.
When New Zealand inevitably shifts into a cycle of an energy short, batteries become relatively useless because they're only good when you're trading volatility. When you're in a capacity short, batteries are incredibly valuable. If we don't have to spend lots of money starting a Rankin or starting other thermal units, batteries provide a secondary benefit to our earnings just through a cost saving. We see both energy and capacity short scenarios going forward. Thermal fits into the energy short scenarios, and batteries fit into the capacity short scenarios at the shorter end of the time scale.
I'll take your mic. Are there any questions? I've got some. [audio distortion]
No. [audio distortion] Your long-run expectation of 125-135, what is that based on? What is setting the long-run measure for you?
We have long held a view that system LCOE is more important than generation LCOE, and probably because we have been more exposed to the firming costs that sit at the longer end of the tail. We have been really clear that we are not carrying those firming costs on behalf of New Zealand anymore. The 10-year HFOs are a really good step in that direction, as are the 2-year HFOs. We have other shorter duration products that are in gestation at the moment. We genuinely think, if you run a scenario where, let's hypothetically say that contingent hydro storage is unlocked, that does not mean the system can afford to shut Huntly, and somebody has to pay for that. Otherwise, Huntly does shut. What happens is you are just shuffling the generation of last resort.
You're bringing hydro forward and pushing thermal back, but it still has to be paid for. Now, if you don't have to pay for the hydro storage, it would make a lot more sense to leave thermal in where it is in the stack at the moment than to shuffle it around. We're part of a competitive market, and everyone's entitled to do their own thing, etc. I said it would be a brave New Zealand that decided an energy-abundant future didn't need some form of generation of last resort, whether that's contingent hydro storage, whether that's thermal backed up by large amounts of fuel stored. Our view is that the cost of that at the moment is somewhere between NZD 20 and NZD 30 a megawatt real today across the whole system.
We saw the costs into the economy when that is not properly priced and paid for by the system as a whole with the carnage that happened in winter 2024. If the system as a whole allows that to happen again in the future, we should expect no mercy from the regulators and the policymakers in terms of that. I think our view remains that system LCOE is the figure that should be used. Whether the energy-only market dispatches thermal or not, the question for valuing it has to be, will New Zealand still need to have it in reserve? If it is, somebody has to pay for that.
Thanks. Just to follow up on that, you saw Mercury's investor day. They have set a target after 2030 odd with a whole lot of projects they have put in place.
Contact yesterday put a whole lot of projects to their 2031. You have aspirations to build a few things. Also yesterday, Contact got resource consent for another 400 megawatts of batteries. Are we moving into a back end of this decade massive oversupply by all these aspirations?
I think Contact touched on this yesterday from what I heard, and I concur with this, is that there's still a market not prone to a rational deployment of capital. The difference between bragawatts and megawatts, I think, is really important to understand. As Tracey touched on, we've scoured enormous amounts of potential development opportunities over the last two years. A good majority of them will struggle to become investable. New Zealand is in a competition for capital. We have to use all the domestic capital plus import more on top of that.
If you start to see a rational deployment of capital, the cost of capital will go up, and that will ultimately flow through to electricity prices. The benefit of the market as it's structured now is that everybody's building up lots of optionality, but I still don't see a world in the future where there will be widespread irrational deployment of capital. We are going to see lead lag phases over the next decade in particular, in our opinion, where build will be ahead of demand and then behind demand. We think the level of flexibility in our portfolio insulates us against that and gives us a more stable and credible earnings profile through what will be a game of snakes and ladders over the next decade. I struggle to see the rationale for an overbuild scenario.
I can see an over-optionality scenario, but I can't see an overbuild scenario.
Thanks.
Can I ask my questions of you now?
All right. Is this working? It's working. Question just to follow on from what Andrew was asking about gas storage. Perhaps asking a similar question a different way. What's plan B if Tareiki can't work out? How dependent is your gas flexibility strategy just on that option?
I think our plan B would revolve around the future of unit five and unit seven. Unit five's a 400 megawatt behemoth of a machine. There is an international market for those units. Potentially you reach a point where the cost of summer gas and the loss you make on that creates too much drag on the winter upside. Therefore, moving to a smaller unit may make a lot of sense. That would be our plan B.
Would that leave the country short on megawatts for firming?
Just to go back to my point that we're here to run Genesis. If the country needs extra servicing, we're available to sell that to them. If nobody buys it, we'll have to make decisions accordingly.
One option sort of still floating on desktops is the idea that the industrial conversion of boilers, electrification, leaves those boilers, a lot of them coal-fired, as potential demand response options in the future. Obviously, you guys are experts in handling coal. How seriously do you think we should take those options? How big could the size be? As that is effectively an alternative to building new coal stations.
One of the reasons that we're really leaning into learning distributed energy and how we can make it work in our portfolio is we see a growing role for that, not only across homes and the like, but also into the industrial sector as well. I think that there are a range of options that will come into play in terms of how we manage that. I do worry about over-reliance on demand flex because everybody's got to be able to run their businesses as well. If we're asking them every six weeks to stop, turn down, etc., then that becomes problematic from their own business perspective.
In the cases that you've indicated, there are those plus some other potential options in the system at the moment that would mean that there are more efficient ways of delivering that solution than just continuing to build thermal reserve, for example. I think you can expect us to continue to lean really heavily into exploring all of those options and to be very open-minded about how we continue to evolve our portfolio, but very firm on the level of flexibility we think we need to navigate a bumpy transition.
Great. Thanks. A small change of tech. The indications around net back rise, I guess built into that is some view of clearly retail price, but underlying it, there's a view of wholesale price movement implicit. Can you give us some outlines of what you assume about wholesale prices underlying that view?
Fortunately for us, the ASX covers the period in the forecast, so we could probably rely on that as being a reasonable proxy for the wholesale market.
Us analysts, if we see that curve change, there's an implicit change also in our view of that forward net back.
Yeah. I mean, the wholesale price generally moves a lot faster than the retail book does overall. Yeah, you can probably reliably reset that, I would think. I just want to build a comment on your previous point about demand response because I think that's quite interesting. We estimate probably similar to Contact, 500-600 megawatts of sort of demand response in New Zealand market at the moment. Most of that's industrial. To Malcolm's point, the challenge with industrial demand response is it's typically binary. It's sort of like shut down, come on, shut down, come on.
It's not particularly reliable. The benefit of distributed energy resources in the mass market is it's non-binary. You can always cycle demand in the mass market in a way that has less impact on the end consumer, whether it's through heat pumps or hot water cylinders or EV batteries or whatever it might be. There's a lot more granularity and control in the mass market than the commercial market. I think as the mass market becomes more mature from an orchestration point of view, I think there's plenty of opportunity in the medium to long term to create value there too.
Although just to be clear, there's a question in my mind yesterday as well. That's relatively short duration capacity, isn't it? Those industrial conversions with coal boilers, that's long duration sort of flex.
Yep. It's definitely an all-of-system challenge, right?
Yeah. Do you have any customers?
I mean, you're discussing those sort of options with at the moment?
Yeah, we do. We've been running a pilot for a couple of years now around the mass market side of things. We have a hot water cylinder pilot, which we've spoken about previously. We've actually got to the point where we can cycle customers up to seven times in a 24-hour period without any noticeable impact to the end consumer. That's pretty good. In the C&I space, those are ongoing discussions with lots of customers, particularly where customers are facing a gas challenge and looking at electrification. In the C&I space, the ability to add demand response into the solution becomes a really key economic factor for them. It is not just about the megawatts, so to speak. It is also about the economics of the transition.
We do have a number of C&I customers who have scheduled outages every year for major plant works, just like we do with our generation. Post-winter 2024, we've had a number come forward to offer to align those with our winter peak months, which is incredibly helpful because that's not us asking them to shut down. That's just a really simple, can you align with when we need those electrons the most? There is, as Stephen said, a whole of system opportunity here. ECHA have some work showing the inefficiency of the current system as being between 8-12%. That's an enormous CapEx saving if you can unlock that. Data-driven systems are really critical. The system's not smart beyond each node at the moment.
The critical aspect of that going forward is the work that Stephen's doing around granular demand forecasting because that plays really heavily into whether we switch thermal units on or not. As your distributed energy and storage beyond the node becomes greater, you'll start to see a delta arise between forecast and actual demand at each node. Understanding that at a granular level is really critical to how we optimize our flexibility.
All right. I'll link us to the forum in a moment, but just one last question sneaking there. Yesterday, Mike Fuge said he disagreed with a lot of, or some at least, of what was in the BCG report. Obviously, you guys are familiar with this content as well. What's your opinion on it?
My first thing is I love listening to Mike. It's brilliant.
Look, like all reports that are independent, we have aspects that align really well with our views of the world and aspects that don't. The beauty of a free market and the market as it exists at the moment is that everybody is in competition to win the race that Grant was talking about, which is ultimately your build program determines your real estate in the future. I think there are many aspects of BCG's report that illustrate that. There are also aspects around fuel storage and a strategic gas reserve and things like that that we just struggle to see how practically you might be able to deliver. The purpose of those reports, like the Frontier report, is to force your thinking beyond this current swim lanes that you're swimming in.
We tend to look at those reports through what is it challenge in terms of our existing strategy and what are our minds closed to at the moment that we should be more open to. Like everybody, I'm sure if you spoke to Meridian and Mercury, there'd be aspects of the BCG report that they don't agree with that we do and vice versa. I thought it was a relatively good report from that perspective that it challenged everybody.
Thanks for the presentations. One question I had. You're obviously thinking long-term developing to cover a pending short position as Huntly enters retirement. What is the risk of current PPAs not renewing and potentially exacerbating the need to find cover through development? We're just making a decision on who's going to cover that one, Josh.
Yeah. Look, I mean, I guess the key things with anything is every time an opportunity comes up, whether it's a renewal process or it's a new PPA or it's a new build, we always look at it from a financial benefit and a cost perspective and a risk point of view. I think the first, I guess the starting point for the answer to that question would be complacency is not an option. You've got to stay on top of all of those relationships, all those partnerships, and look at what the optionality is in your portfolio. What you would have seen with us today is a lot has happened in two years. I can imagine by the time that some of those PPAs come around five, seven, ten years in the future, a lot would have also changed by then.
I think from a portfolio strategy point of view, it's really a case of keeping your finger on the pulse and continuing to maintain those key relationships to ensure that you're not left in a position where you're exposed.
We're also building structural risk management into that pipeline. Part of the move to hold our own pipeline and develop it ourselves and recycle off the back end is that when we do that, we take a right of first refusal beyond the current PPA that we sign to give us optionality to either build something new or renew that PPA, but not be locked into that one journey. Lauriston's similar to that. Equally, we don't want to get caught with a whole lot of expensive PPAs in our supply side.
If Methanex closed tomorrow and the gas market was flooded and the wholesale curve collapsed, you do not want to be caught with that. Sitting next to you is Emma, who heads our portfolio plan. At the moment out to FY2035, we do not have PPAs at more than about 25% of supply in our long-term plan. At the moment, that looks like the right sort of risk management approach coupled with the ROFAs and the approach we are taking to developing wind and solar. If our risk calculations change, we might change that weighting. For FY2035, we see something around 75% owned and 25% through those other structures at this point in time.
Thanks. Just because I cannot help myself, I will ask about your tech platform.
Have you made a choice as to how you would like your combined Genesis and EcoTricity C&I box to be served through a single billing system?
We're in the process of finalizing that decision at the moment, so that's not something that we're prepared to announce now. I think it's fair to say that when we first envisaged the retail transformation, it didn't factor in EcoTricity coming into the fold. EcoTricity now coming into the fold gives us a whole bunch of C&I functionality that we didn't have before and also some optionality around technology platforms. We're glad of those options, and we're working through the detail of that.
Yep. Makes sense. Thanks very much.
John Kidd, have you got a question?
Good. Yes, I did. I'll be disappointed if he didn't have one.
Not sure who this goes to, but Kupe, there's very little coverage of Kupe in the presentations. I'm just wondering what the house view is towards longevity. It's still a material contributor to earnings. It's, I think, the only long-term gas contract you hold. What's the view towards longevity and capital calls along the way?
There are two things that I'd say. First of all, our publicly stated position is that we need the gas but don't need to hold the asset, but that there are no current discussions underway in terms of the future of that asset. We have been clear at Investor Day 2023 and since that we don't have in our capital plans to invest anything further in Kupe. Kupe Joint Venture has sufficient CapEx in place for its current plan.
We see our capital priority as being in electricity generation, particularly in the renewable space versus gas exploration. I don't think either of those, well, I know none of those positions have changed. As a portfolio, we are fuel long. We are gas short at the moment, but we are patient to see the gas market shake out. We don't feel a need to rush in and over contract at an expensive rate for years to come because we have fuel optionality. In terms of the asset itself, Angela's going to speak to that tonight. It's a very stable asset, particularly in the context of other gas fields in New Zealand. We do have a high level of confidence in our current view of what the production looks like. Beyond that, Julie, did you want to say something?
The only other thing I would add to that is because it's a late-life asset, we are working closely with the operator to manage it to that stage, so maximizing the value from it, but keeping the cost to where it needs to be. Angela will speak to more about that tonight as well.
If I could just lean on that a little bit. The end date for Kupe is probably a Horizon 3 type thing. Do you have a view as to when exactly it might be? Are we talking 2022, sorry, 2032, 2033?
It's currently around 2035, I think. 2032 to 2035 is the trajectory. It's tracking exactly where we expect it to be tracking.
Might just go one more. The summer-winter issue with gas, I mean, I hear what you're saying, Malcolm, about on average through the year, if you like.
You seem to be sort of long gas during summer and very short gas during winter. The last two or three years, you've had Balance and Methanex during summer to be able to help you handle that. It does look like there are at least scenarios where neither of those two options might be around for much longer. How do you intend to manage that during summer when they are not?
Yeah. Plan A is Tahariki and gas storage. If that does not come off, then we will be looking at plan B, which is likely the configuration of our gas turbines and the role that gas plays in the portfolio. We are taking a gas-minimal approach to our portfolio planning at the moment. That is one of the reasons why we're not rushing out and contracting gas above Kupe. We're contracting short at the moment.
Angela will speak to this tonight. We see a number of different scenarios potentially playing out in the gas sector. We are fuel long. As we build renewables, our fuel length will get longer. Gas length over summer will become problematic without gas storage. We will deal with that either through gas storage or some form of asset transition. No pressure, Angela. I have seen the presentation. It is fine.
One for Malcolm. You mentioned before this is a market still prone to irrational deployment of capital. Can you give some examples of what you have seen on that front?
Just to be clear, I said this was a market not prone to irrational capital deployment, with one exception, rooftop solar. That is an area where we do see irrational deployment of capital at times. We are seeing a particular cohort in that space.
That is going to continue. Those are largely retirees who have reasonable capital capacity and are very attracted to the concept of continuing to pay EDB fees and Transpower fees, but not Genesis fees. That is one of the reasons why we're leaning into distributed energy, because we do see the potential for irrational deployment of capital in that part of the market. We do not see it at a grid scale.
Thanks.
Just a couple of follow-up questions. Just looking at the wind development, which I guess the Yinson looks quite interesting in terms of what you were doing there, and also the Castle Hill. Are you able to give us any indication of when you might be looking to get something towards FID? I know it is very, very early days, but my read would be sort of three, four years at the earliest.
I should answer this before Tracey.
There might be a year or two difference. [crosstalk] I'll let you know if she gets it right. Look, on Castle Hill, we're working really hard to unlock that transmission constraint that we've had in the past. We're increasingly confident that we can over the next few years. I think we are hoping to be in a position by about FY2029 to move into a construction phase. That is dependent on that transmission issue. On Yinson, yeah, we're really excited about that partnership. That gives us exclusive optionality both around PPA and co-investment opportunities for their pipeline, which is around 1,000 megawatts of reasonably early, but in our view, quality projects across New Zealand.
As those projects advance, our relationship with them will allow us to assess whether or not we want to jump in and at what level of equity and at what point. From a wind pipeline perspective, put Castle Hill in there and build on that 1,000 megawatts worth of optionality, then it is a bit of a game changer for us.
Yeah. You can sort of think solar build followed by wind build. Tracey almost got it right. She was out by a year, but I will not tell you whether it was under or over.
The other question I just had was, I guess we have seen different views in the market around LRMC as well as, I guess, potential battery.
In the other one, which I thought was quite interesting, Samruddin had their chart in terms of GWAP, TWAPs, and looking at wind and solar discount factors. They view solar coming down quite a lot more than wind, whereas you have it around about the same. Are you able to sort of talk about, I'm assuming it's around about a 20% discount factor you've got there because you did not have the x-axis showing, which I'm assuming was deliberate. If you could just talk about some of the assumptions behind that and why you think it will not get worse than wind. There is a potential for that to occur.
One thing I would note is I did see those GWAP, TWAP graphs from Meridian, but they're also announcing they're continuing to build solar because solar, batteries, and hydro are the holy trinity of flexibility if you don't have thermal. Your discount factors are about right. The reason that we're saying up to 500 MW of solar is if we see those discount factors start to accelerate or believe that they will accelerate, we're not going to irrationally deploy our capital. If someone else announces a 500 MW solar farm, we're more likely to try and get a PPA off it than to continue to build our own. We'll just hold them as options for the future.
All done? Everyone happy? Any more questions? All right. That's the end of the Q&A session. We're going to cut the live streaming.
That's the end of the day for those people who've joined us online. Thank you very much for your attention. We hope you've heard some useful information that you can take away in terms of the GEN35 strategy and what lies ahead for the business over the next period of time. If you have any additional questions that come to mind through the afternoon or the rest of the day, feel free to drop them to David Porter on the investor relations email address, and we'll look to answer those for you. I'll say goodbye to the people.