Making clean energy happen. That is our primary target. Only substantial investments in renewable energy projects will help the planet facing the challenges ahead. The starting point of MPC Energy Solutions' journey to a carbon-free planet is Latin America. From Mexico to Colombia, from El Salvador to Puerto Rico, our renewable energy projects connect us with different countries and communities. A great chance to prove that social and environmental responsibility and profitability are not a contradiction. Our goal is a world where everyone has access to clean and affordable energy. A world where growing energy needs can be fulfilled while preserving resources for future generations at the same time. Latin America has a strong desire to become more independent from fossil fuels through renewable energy. The excellent geographic conditions help to make these goals a reality.
With our offices in Panama and Bogota, we are located directly at the center of our markets. The local experience of our team ensures high quality and competitiveness of the solutions we provide. Engaging with the communities where we operate is a key element of building trust. We are embedded in local ecosystems and networks, and by retaining project stakeholders as long as possible, we always strive to ensure project sustainability. For our projects, we cover the whole value chain, from project development via financing to construction and operation. This is a decisive strength of MPC Energy Solutions. Last but not least, we run a scalable business model with strong cash generation potential and long-term revenue growth. Join MPC Energy Solutions on its journey to a carbon-free future because our planet can never have too many allies. MPC Energy Solutions. Making clean energy happen.
Again, dear guests here in Oslo and also online, very warm welcome to our first capital market day. We are very excited to engage with all of you today. It's about two years ago since we were listing our company here at the Oslo Euronext Growth segment. Since then, really, a lot has happened. We have matured our projects from development to construction. Now, as you saw with the recent news, more and more of our projects going into operations. With that, we really feel that it's a good moment and time to provide the capital markets and our shareholders and other stakeholders with a comprehensive update on our roadmap and where we see the company strategically moving towards our goals in the next five years.
Today, we will focus on our business model for these upcoming years in Latin America and the Caribbean. We will go into operational details of our markets. We will describe our holistic approach to our environmental, social, and governance matters, but also give you further guidance on financial performance, demand of capital, and deployment of capital into our projects. As a company, we are very ambitious. We are on a very high growth path. This year we are targeting for the first time, an EBITDA of $10 million, and we want to grow further to deploy our capital into an operating base of 1,000 MW by 2027. As our team is our most valuable asset, I'm very happy to have some of my colleagues here with me today.
Later today, we have Fernando Zúñiga, our Managing Director, in our Panama office, who is covering the Latin American and Caribbean region for us, talking more about our insights on core markets and business development. I have my colleague, Maite Pizarro here from our Hamburg office, who is our Sustainability Manager, who will share more insights around our sustainability framework. Stefan H.A. Meichsner, CFO of the company, who will complete the session today with a detailed financial guidance. One moment about housekeeping.
You can raise questions. We will host a Q&A session at the end of the capital market day. Everyone who is joining us online, you can type in your questions via the webcast. We will record those and address the questions then at the end of the session. Before we go into the operational topics, I'm really happy to give over to our Chairman, Ulf Holländer, who will address the audience next. Thank you.
Yes. Thank you, Martin. I would like to welcome all of you, both here in the room as well as online. My name is Ulf Holländer, I welcome you in two roles, actually. One is being a chairman of the supervisory board, the second one is being a representative of one of two- 20%+ shareholders in the company. If you are a 20% + shareholder in the company, I guess it's very true to say that we are also a stakeholder in this company. Stakeholding means that this is very long-term. Now, being a chairman and being a shareholder, obviously in a situation like we are in, comes with mixed feelings.
You look at a stock price and you're not entirely happy, you also look at the situation and you look at the ambition and the continued ambition of the company, of the management team. That hasn't changed. We have encountered challenges. The ambition to become one of the leading IPPs in the region, independent power producers, that has not changed. We listed MPCES on the Oslo Stock Exchange, which is maybe a bit of an odd place, coming from Germany with a very established stock exchange. We did that for a reason, or for a number of reasons, I should say.
We did that because as MPC Capital, and I'm a CEO of MPC Capital, we went through the experience with a company by the name of MPC Container Ships in 2017. Time to market on the Oslo Stock Exchange is extremely competitive and leading in terms of all European stock exchanges. This is what we are about. This is what we are about as to MPC Capital in shipping as well as in renewables. You have to be quick. You have to be on your toes all the time to deliver to shareholders and stakeholders what you promised and you have to be able to eat your words. Now, a lot of where we are with MPC Energy Solutions is actually quite comparable to how we started with MPC Container Ships, where we are also an almost 20% stakeholder actually.
We raised capital, we ran into enormous challenges. We had trade war. Luckily, it was only a trade war. We ran into COVID, over a longer period of time than anticipated, it really paid off for the shareholders. That's not much different to MPCES. What's also not different to MPCES is that we are there as a very, very long-term shareholder and cornerstone. We are not looking for an exit. We are looking for propelling the growth in the company, we are looking for a continued support by other important shareholders to get the company to where it is. After two years of listing, I can honestly say that management has managed the challenges, some of them were surprising, very, very well. We ran into COVID.
COVID was all actually already around when we started. We ran into COVID with a lot of logistical challenges when it comes to supplies, material and things like this. Yes, it was a lucky punch for those of you who were involved in shipping, including ourselves. It was certainly not a lucky punch for the management of MPCES. In fact, it was quite a pushback. On top of that, almost in parallel, we had rising material prices. You had rising return expectations, certainly in the last six to 12 months, driven by the capital markets. Management has to deal with it. If you look at the situation today, and management will explain that in much more detail and I'm sure in a much more compelling vision.
If you look at it today, projects are slightly delayed, but they deliver the returns that were anticipated and planned despite those parameters in the market environment. If you ask yourself, "Why does the stock price not represent the true and fair value of the assets?" It doesn't do that by any means. There are two major reasons for this from our point of view. Reason number one is there's not enough trading volume in the stock. Actually, there's very little trading volume in the stock. That's because the large shareholders control a significant proportion of the stock, and they are not selling. Of course, and we don't have retail investors.
The second reason is, till today, we still have a limited asset base, but the overhead of the company is geared towards growth and ambitious targets as Martin was alluding to. There are two truly separate problems. Low trading volume and a small asset base or not big enough asset base, again, relatively speaking, compared to the overhead. Those two separate problems have one joint fix, and that's the road to the future for us as shareholders and for the management of the company, which is: Grow the equity base, grow the asset portfolio, and you fix both problems over time. It will take a little more time than we are all hoping for, but it will fix the problem.
You can rest assured that we as MPC Capital, as, if you will, the founding sponsor, as well as the other big shareholders, are completely aligned in supporting this path into the future. There should be no doubt that we as MPC Capital will make the money available with the, with upcoming equity raises, contribute our proportion at the very least towards the next steps in the future. It may take a little more time than we were hoping for, but we will get there's no doubt in our mind, in the very near future, with the goal to have a stock price and a market cap that does reflect, at least have a much better reflection to the evaluation of the underlying assets. I'm sure management is a much better party to deliver that compelling story, and that's why I hand back to Martin. Thank you.
All right. Dive into the presentation. We start with a brief introduction of the company for everyone who is not familiar with MPC Energy Solutions yet and who is not following our journey in the past two years. MPC Energy Solutions is a true provider of sustainable energy solutions for the markets in Latin America and the Caribbean. What does that mean for us? That means for us, we have a very clear view on where we want to be. We have a clear view on what do our clients need from a provider of sustainable energy solutions. We also understand and know how to convert this into financially attractive assets for the company. We participate along the full value chain and project cycle.
That means we have the capacity and the team in-house to develop really projects from greenfield, bring them through our own construction management to a successful completion, and operate these assets on the long- term in order to capture the full value along the value chain. That means also for us, what are the potential for regearing, what are the potentials for cost optimization and innovation during the operational phase, as well as, later on in the life cycle, potential repowering of these assets. What does it also mean? We are local energy markets. This is also why Fernando Zúñiga, our Managing Director, is today here to tell you a bit more about the markets and for you to understand that with our approach, we are really establishing the company in the region with our main operating hubs in Panama and in Colombia.
It is critical to if you want to be successful, to have your own people on the ground in these developing markets that we are active in. This is why we are building out our capacities locally, also in the future. What is another material differentiator for us is we focus on our clients. We are a technology-agnostic company. That means at the end, there is a problem that local corporates, private corporates or utilities have a demand for renewable energy, for sustainable energy solutions. It is not up to us to tell them, "You have to deploy solar. You have to deploy wind." We need to find a balance about what is affordable to them, what brings reliability to them, and what has the lowest carbon footprint.
Therefore, when we look at the spectrum of our assets, we really look at the full scope of proven and mature technologies, solar PV, wind, but also, batteries in order to do the energy shifting and making the energy firmer and more flexible, all the way up to combined heat and power projects that also may include other products like steam and cooling for the industrial clients that we are serving. Overall, we have ambitious return expectations also for our projects, on average above 12% that you are also seeing on this slide. What is the world that we are in currently? Ulf pointed that out. When we developed actually the business plan in 2020, it was a different world compared to where we are now. COVID was just about to start.
There was no war in the Ukraine yet, there was certainly no major disruption in the energy markets that is currently happening in all means. As an independent power producer, for us, that means we are active in a highly dynamic environment, and we need to adapt and to be agile in order to reflect these opportunities and these challenges in our approach, and in our business model. Most of these external factors have actually created opportunities, some of those, obviously, challenges. Ulf pointed already out the change in interest environment, the change in the inflationary environment where a lot of capital expenditures are currently growing. We have adopted our business plans to mitigate those impacts, along the different steps in the projects.
What it also means for our region, Latin America and the Caribbean, has really an excellent outlook on growth in the energy transition and renewable energy assets. Why is that? Here are two points that I would like to highlight. First of all, you saw the crisis on energy dependency that is currently ongoing. If you are smaller nations in Central America or the Caribbean, or even the larger ones like Mexico and Colombia, you are part of this global energy market, and you see major disruptions. You saw disruptions in the sense that LNG streams move away or are much more expensive because strategic partners between the European Union and America are preferred partners as well. When you're a local government, you really look at this and see that only renewable energy makes actually truly energy independent in the long- term.
The governments and the policymakers are really accelerating also the change of local regulatory environment in order to ease the way for us to deploy the technology in the country. The other part is really the region is, has a broad base of industrial consumers. A lot of international corporates and domestic corporates are producing for the big consumer markets in the U.S. You see that with the projects that we have recently signed in Guatemala, but also in Puerto Rico, that are at the end, international corporates that are producing in these markets, in order to export their products, to the U.S.
They all have green procurement strategies. They all are subject to weak local grids that are very expensive, that are carbon intensive, and that are unreliable. For them, especially in an inflationary environment, they look at cost reductions. When we implement our projects, we can usually offer 30%-40% of cost reductions on their energy bills. Most of these companies are high energy intensive companies. For them, the energy expenditures are really one of the major, operating expenses they have. Going from the macro picture more into the renewable space and the outlook, of the industry.
I mean, you're all familiar with these charts. Whether you take Bloomberg numbers or you take the International Energy Agency or IRENA, I think one projection is very, very clear, the growth of renewable energy is tremendous. It is tremendous in the sense that the industry, as much as it has grown in the last decade, is really still in its very, very early stage if you compare it to other established industries, and the growth is significant. The growth is so significant, in particular, also in the developing markets. At the end, climate change is not stopping at national borders. You see on the right-hand side, the regional discrepancies on the carbon footprint. While everyone is talking about how much more renewable energies we also need to deploy in Europe or the Americas, you talk about a multiple of 2x to 3x.
When you talk about the growth aspirations and ambitions that needs to be deployed in the developing markets, you are talking about a multiple of 7x when it comes to deployment of installed capacity for renewable energies. One thing is very, very clear. There is no net zero emission future without a massive shift in investments towards emerging markets and developing markets, the markets where we, as MPC Energy Solutions, are already active in. 80% of the world's population are actually living in countries that are net energy importers, and 90% of these countries are developing markets. You see here also the impact of excluding China, as most of the people always point out that, you know, emerging markets are highly driven by the demand of China only.
Even if you exclude China, it doesn't really change the picture at all. Going into our region, and we have a crystal clear focus currently on Latin America and the Caribbean. Why? Again, because we believe you have to be local energy experts in order to be a successful independent power producer. Our efforts are clearly with our two operating offices in Panama and in Colombia on the markets that we are currently serving. In the past two years, and with the IPO start, we had three markets covered, El Salvador, Jamaica, and in Colombia. You can see that in the past years, we grew our assets and development activities to nine Markets in the region.
Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and the Eastern Caribbean, shows already that we are successful in deploying our business model across the region and that we are successful in also finding new partners and new off-takers, as we have just shared two major news on our latest PPAs in Guatemala and in Puerto Rico with international corporates. The reason why we also like the region so much is obviously it is very rich in natural resources, wind and sun, but it also primarily a U.S. Dollarized region. Later on, when Stefan will talk about our financial performance, you will see that 90% of our contracted revenues are in U.S. dollars. As a market, this region has around 30,000 MW of demand to be installed by 2030.
That's actually not that far out anymore. It means seven years to go for 30,000 MW of additional capacity that this nine markets that we are currently in needs to grow that offers a tremendous opportunity for us as MPC Energy Solutions. My colleague Fernando will later also speak more about the local market dynamics and what is actually the demand of the private corporates that we are usually selling our power or energy services to. Going into the operational field and being in a region that first of all doesn't provide any feed-in tariffs like here in Europe, it doesn't provide for the opportunity to develop and have a fixed tariff when it comes to every megawatt of installed capacity. In our region, energy is a true commercial product.
With a true commercial product, also the requirements of our clients are highly sophisticated by now. What does it mean? It really means we need to focus on maximizing the value for each kilowatt hour that we are producing. That means for us, in the beginning, we have to de-risk our development phase. A lot of our IPPs are developing thousands of megawatts, but have eventually no secured commercialization of this energy that is being produced, which at the end leads to a lot of what we call bragawatts, and which basically are sunk investments. In our view and what we are driving, is our business development is really ahead of our project development.
We are securing first the contracts before we initiate the project development like we do now in Guatemala or as we do in Puerto Rico. This means we have a firm view on the commercial aspects of the project. How long are we selling the energy to this client? What is the price? What will be our market exposure thereafter? Obviously, it enables us to reduce the costs of failed projects and lost megawatts. We also focus on develop, build, and operate model. Again, that goes back to the point that we want to capture value along the full value cycle of a project. It drives us that we have in-house development team, we have in-house construction management team, and we are in the position to operate these assets in the long- term.
As you will see on the next slide, from us as an evolution and with a growing asset base, we are also now insourcing our operations and maintenance services from third-party contractors to MPC Energy Solutions. Most importantly, again, the aspect of being technology agnostic and to provide the clients with solutions that are increasing the value of each kilowatt hour. What does it mean? Historically, the sector is coming from feed-in tariffs. It comes from pay-as-produced tariff structures, also in power purchase agreements. Now the clients, which are, for us, primarily private corporates, but also energy traders, they really want a product that is meeting their demand, and their demand is their load curve.
When do they consume energy has a material impact on their spendings, and it doesn't really help them if you produce power from 6:00 A.M. to 9:00 P.M. if their peak demand is during the evening hours, right? How do you create that value? You have to deploy and hybridize your asset base. You have to add different technologies like CHP, like batteries, in order to do the energy shifting, and at the end, provide a more valuable good. The more valuable good has, for us, the opportunity to capture also better prices compared to our peers who are still on the path of producing kilowatt hours only.
My colleague Fernando, again, will also talk a bit later about PPA structures that we do have in our projects that shows that we are trying to stack up different revenue streams, in order to improve our income basis from these projects. Talking about an inflationary environment, obviously, cost reduction and performance optimization is key for us as a company in order to capture the returns that we have anticipated when making the investments decisions. Driving costs down is a key point, and Ulf mentioned it already. With a growing asset base, you have more opportunities to do that. You grow economies of scale, you grow the ability to insource further services, and you have more negotiation power with external contractors.
For us and our strategy going forward, which is consistent with our hands-on approach, we really want to focus on insourcing the O&M. The operations and maintenance, especially for solar, is the largest single operating expense that the company has on asset level. We see in the region, compared to prices that, for instance, would be applicable in Europe or America, a good saving potential of 20%- 40% in insourcing these services. Insourcing these services means not just that we can reduce the costs per kilowatt hour produced, it also means that we have more control on the quality of services that we are receiving.
Again, looking back at the quality and the value of each kilowatt hour produced, the more kilowatt hours we are producing at a fixed cost basis is obviously a direct improve of our bottom line. Right. It also creates a new income model for the company in the sense that when we look at our operating base and we want to increase our investment capacity, and we look at asset rotation and monetizing some of the value created through farm-downs and partial exits, obviously we will serve the entire asset continuously through our own O&M, so that with that, we also really have a third-party service available for us.
Stefan will guide you later through what does that mean on the financial side of insourcing the O&M on being on very strict on the capital expenditures during construction, which for us primarily means, for instance, also the direct procurement of the most valuable equipment, which is usually the solar panels and the batteries and the inverters. What does that mean actually for our operating returns. From the operating side and maximizing the value of each kilowatt hour and reducing the costs, it is really of us expanding our development backlog in the region that we are in. As Ulf mentioned, we want to grow. We want to be the leading independent power producer in the region. We are on a very good way there.
There are not many of our peers and competitors who currently have a portfolio of assets across the region in nine countries. We are further developing and allocating around $12 million-$15 million in the coming three years into different and development initiatives. We have divided the region into four subcategories. You have the two large volume markets, which is Mexico and Colombia, and you have the two, let's say, clustered niche regions, which is Central America, which is for us, primarily Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala. You have also the Caribbean Islands, which for us is primarily the larger markets, Jamaica and Dominican Republic. Going about our approach of trying to secure first our contracts, we are then subsequently deploying the capital into the project development phase.
In each of these markets, we want to create scale. We want to create at least an asset base of 100 MW per country, so that also for us, it is an attractive model to insource again, the operations and maintenance services, but also to have a scalable portfolio in each of the countries that we're actively in. Talking about value creation, if you look of investing $12 million-$15 million from 2023 to 2025 in the development of this backlog, you create at the end a value that is a multiple of that, right? If we look in the region of what is being paid for ready-to-build projects, you are on the ranges of $50,000-$150,000+.
If we just take the midpoint of that, around $75,000, the backlog will have an inherent value of more than $60 million. We believe the company does very well in investing in our development backlog in order to grow our long-term asset base, which we are currently defining for the next five years horizon of 1,000 MW. 1,000 MW in operations, what does that mean? For us, we want to focus on solar technology, considering that it is a very scalable technology, but also the local resources are really in favor of solar technology. It makes it the technology of choice for most of our clients. It has, in most of the countries, the lowest LCOE as well. Again, you cannot continue with just deploying solar.
You will need to hybridize. You will need to add other technologies in order to derive at a higher value per kilowatt hour. That, for us in the region, is really based on two technologies, and that is CHP as well as batteries. Batteries primarily for the shifting of energy and to make the energy firmer and more dispatchable to our clients. Those clients obviously also include utilities and energy traders that do have the need for energy supply not just during the sun hours. Our battery applications usually have a three hours time horizon to cover after sunset. What does that really mean in capital demand based on the latest developments in equipment costs, which of course were inflationary, to build 1 GW subse quently until 2027? It is really a $1 billion of investments that needs to go into this portfolio.
As you are familiar with, the usual leverage for assets in the renewable energy space, which is happening on project financing level, either non-recourse or limited recourse, is usually 70%-75%. At the end, on a 100% ownership basis, we really look at a $250 million of capital demand in equity that this company will have in the 2023-2026 horizon. Does this all have to come from equity raises? No, clearly not. We anticipate that we have farm-downs. We anticipate that we have joint ventures. We anticipate that we have other co-investment partners. Always depending on what will be our ultimate ownership in each of these projects, will also increase our investment capacity.
We wanted to give you the full picture, so on a full 100% ownership basis, the capital demand would be indeed $250 million. How does this translate into the financial performance of the company? Once these projects are cash-generating, we'll see an annual EBITDA of around $125 million-$150 million. In 2023, just as a comparison, we look at an EBITDA of $10 million. You see, we do have ambitious growth ahead of us, and this EBITDA will also fully dilute basically our current overhead costs that we have and also the overhead costs that will grow with the portfolio. With that, we are basically approaching the two problems that Ulf have mentioned.
First of all, we are growing the equity base of the company step by step over the next years, and we're also growing the asset base of the company, so that at the end, the difference between project IRR and shareholder return will be equal. We have a vision of becoming really the new and true powerhouse in the region. The last two years have shown that we are on a good track to do that. With 1,000 MW of operations, we will clearly be one of the top three leading IPPs in Latin America and the Caribbean if you look at our core markets. As a regional leader, we also understand our responsibility. Our responsibility in the communities, our responsibilities to our local stakeholders.
In whatever we doing, we strive for really excellence in ESG, because we believe that good corporate governance and good local practice really goes hand in hand with a successful business model and is the foundation to create long-term shareholder value in the region. With that, I'm happy to hand over to my colleague, Fernando, who will now give you a deep dive into the regional markets. Thank you.
Good afternoon. I'm Fernando Zúñiga. I'm the Managing Director for MPC Energy Solutions for Latin America and the Caribbean. I'm actually based in the Panama office, taking care of the business development activities, origination, investment opportunities, and basically the local person in the region. My background, I've been in the industry for about 14 years and working in the Latin American region for the last 10 years, more or less. As Martin already mentioned, I just want to start to show why are we in this region and what is the potential and what is the current landscape. First of all, I want to highlight that the region, not many years ago, and we're talking about maybe 10-12 years ago, the existence of renewable energy was limited to non-existence.
It is quite impressive to see in this short period of time how the region has developed, to right now to an installed capacity of around 20 GW. I'm speaking just between Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and Colombia, without taking into consideration Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and other developed markets in the region. With this, it is very important to have this in mind because it gives us excellent opportunity for MPC Energy Solutions to become an active player in the energy transition of this region. As Martin already mentioned as well, the potential for the next seven, eight years is the region wants to target 50 GW.
MPC is already active there. It's not we are starting. We've been already two years in the most active markets and with either with local presence or with operations in Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Puerto Rico. I think it's this something that we need to keep in mind as the potential is there, and there are few players with a vision of MPC Energy Solutions to gather this potential for the next years. How are these governments or how are they targeting for the next years on a specific opportunities? I want to just mention also what are we working at and what are we focusing on the shorter -term. These markets or countries have announced publicly already energy tenders, and this is just talking about the public tenders without mentioning all the private or bilateral opportunities that MPC Energy Solutions is also looking actively.
In Guatemala, we're expecting this year already the next tender for 250 MW and another tender next year for 1,300 MW as well. Costa Rica, that has been also a market where the state utility companies have been taking care of the market. They have recently announced just over the weekend a new tender for 150 MW. In this country, we'll mainly see wind projects in comparison to the other markets where solar has been the most active technology. Panama as well, Panama has also announced for this year another energy tender targeted for renewable energy for around 200 MW-250 MW.
The Dominican Republic, a core market for MPC, also has announced very, very ambitious plans for over the next five years. They want to target each year between 500 MW- 900 MW of renewables each year. They have also already announced that they want to include batteries, energy storage into their tenders in order so that the grid so that we can give some grid stability. Jamaica, a market that MPC Group has historically been very familiar to, and a market that we already have development activities, has also announced for this year another tender. Also they are looking into the integration of batteries into their tender programs.
Puerto Rico as well, they have been pursuing also ambitious targets for the next years, with a potential for the short- term of 500 MW of solar wind and about 250 MW for energy storage. Colombia, a market also where MPC has been well established for a long time with different type of energy tenders, not only energy-related, but also capacity reliability charge also related. To give you a little bit of an overview, what are the typical prices that we are seeing in this region? This is, of course, very different from what we can see in developed markets such in Europe, in terms of the pricing.
However, the prices are becoming also on the lower end in order to be competitive with the alternatives solution on conventional sources of energy. Especially Mexico and Colombia, you'll see the on the lower end the tariff because those markets are more sophisticated. The market has become very, very active. Also sponsors, international sponsors and local sponsors are targeting the market, and you'll see normally prices around $0.04-$0.0 6 per kilowatt hour. Whereas in Central America and the Caribbean, and especially because those regions are highly dependent of fossil fuels, you tend to see higher electricity prices, something between $0.06 up to $0.18 per megawatt hour.
The difference normally it becomes either if it's a public tender where more competition exists or by bilateral negotiations between the potential offtaker and the generator. In this case, MPC Energy Solutions trying to focus more on the private PPAs as we see greater advantage, and we can also now offer not only technically but commercially those PPA range. How is MPC becoming the player or the active player for the region? What we have seen is that especially industries or corporates, they have the challenge that the current environment where they are located, they have issues with the grid. Normally, the instability or the weak grid infrastructure that exists becomes an issue for them, especially with blackouts, outages.
Also, on top of that, the increasing pressure of reaching sustainability goals, that makes us, for us, the perfect opportunity to offer them a steady, a reliable source of energy, and by that we need to offer firm energy. Now as Martin was mentioning, we want to be the player that offers a tailor-made solution, 24/7, source of electricity. That's by combining the tools that we are available, that we have knowledge about, either by hybridizing with energy storage or hybridizing with the combined heat and power or using the market that it's available, such the spot market merchant prices, in order to offer these tailor-made solutions to the offtakers. This has become more popular and popular in the region.
Industries are looking at independent power producers as MPC, as an alternative source of energy in order not to rely completely on their grid, but rather in their on-site generation. Also giving you an overview of the different sources of commercialization of energy. The region has also started in the earlier years, 10 years ago, with the typical feed-in tariff systems that we saw also in developed economies. A typical feed-in tariff that it was basically first come, first served. Projects under in the Dominican Republic, for example. Honduras were the first market offering this to the utility companies or to the independent power producers.
We see some advancements in order and including energy auctions in order to, yeah, to offer more competitive processes and compete directly with the current sources of electricity. We also see in some other sophisticated markets, as in Mexico, Colombia, Panama, the availability of a spot market. It's always a solution in case there's no specific PPAs in place or a specific offtaker. You always can have as a backup, the spot market. You can see direct negotiations with distribution companies is that's our case in our project in El Salvador, where we have a direct agreement with AES, which is a distribution company, and do sign a bilateral PPA without relying on the spot market.
Lately, and this is a trend that is happening also in the region, in Central America, is having agreements directly with energy trading companies as they intermediate the area between the offtaker and the IPP, such is the case in Colombia with one of our projects. We sell the electricity to the energy trader, they have the availability to put that or place that energy into the market or to specific offtakers. Last, the corporate private PPAs, which is one of the main focus of MPC especially through our local presence, our network that we have built over the last years, offering this type of tailor-made solutions to our offtakers give us the opportunity to become very competitive in the market.
Again, it has been seen that the corporates, not only because they need or they have sustainability goals, but also because they do not want to rely on the grid, on the islands that normally they are located, and also they want to look for a more economic solution. This tends to be the new trend in the region with the corporate buyers. That's what MPC's team has been focusing over the last months. Our first project negotiated directly was in Guatemala, where we were able to give our offtaker an alternative solution, cheaper solution as well, and now also they can meet their sustainability goals. This specific project was important because it gave us a lot of visibility in the region of MPC.
After that, we've been contacted by other similar companies that they want to do the same. S ometimes they even didn't know that there was an option to be an alternative source of energy. This innovation has helped us a lot to further develop, and we're really looking forward to apply this to other type of projects. With that, I want to explain a little bit on the how our PPA origination process works. Most importantly is the local presence. In this region, it is important to be there and understand the different, yeah, the activities that are going normally. We identify the potential offtakers, especially we're looking for investment-grade companies that we know that they have sustainability targets, international companies.
Also, large consumers of electricity that normally we understand that they have or they've been already working with PPA concepts but with conventional sources, and that we know that they have a term that is going to expire. That's our first process to identify the potential clients. After that, we present a technical solution, and specifically understand what are their typical load curves, demands of energy based on historical information that they need to provide to us. With that, we create a technical solution, either selecting the suitable technology, either solar, wind, CHP, or even with batteries. We integrate the risk profile, the commercial expectations in terms of PPA pricing, after that we start a negotiation with a PPA.
That's with the idea to have everything to be a one-stop shop for the offtaker, and they don't need to go outside and look for different sources of energy to cover their needs. We want to be the one-stop shop player for them in the region. Who are our typical partners that we've been working on and we're starting to work? From private corporates, such as Johnson & Johnson, Neolpharma, pharmaceuticals in Puerto Rico. Also university system in Mexico, LEONI, a private cable company, a sugarcane company in Guatemala. Also we have our private utilities and energy traders, Celsia, well-known Colombian utility company. AES from the U.S. with a presence in El Salvador is one of our clients. Spectrum, for example, in Colombia, who are an energy trader.
Also for state-owned utility companies, such as the case of SKELEC in St. Kitts, where we see also normally, in the public auctions, there's normally the energy being built, being bought by the local state-owned utilities. Yeah. How this works in a more technical way, how are we able to offer them a solution that works not only from 6:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M., but for the whole block? Normally, first of all, we need to understand what is the typical demand on electricity. We know how solar works in what time of the day.
In this case, in this type of market, such in Colombia, where we have the spot market available in order to compensate for the time of the day where the solar plant is not able to generate. We in the early hours of the morning, for example, we buy electricity from the spot market in order to meet the targets or the requirement from our offtaker. Normally, that shouldn't be more than 10%, 20%. During the peak hours, we're able to even sell electricity to a spot market, and normally during those days is when the spot prices are higher, so we are even able to make a return out of the spot market sales.
After, in the afternoon hours, we still need to go back to the market acquire that electricity in order to trade that one. With this combination, our exposure to spot markets is very limited, and even we can have some returns on top because of the time of the day where we're able to sell electricity that is a surplus for us. We can compensate that during the hours where we need to compensate with our curve. This is from a commercial perspective. In other places where there's maybe not a spot market in place, but there's an island typically, the usage of energy storage is becoming eminent and needed, especially because they have the same needs in terms of the steady supply of energy throughout the day.
Typically how it works, in this case, we're talking about energy storage for three to four hours supply of electricity after the sun hours. In this case, you normally oversize your solar plant in comparison to the need of electricity from the off-taker, so that when you are in peak hours, sun peak hours, you're able to charge your batteries, so that when on the afternoon hours, you're able to discharge all this electricity that you have stored during the peak hours. This is not only interesting from the technical point of view in order to provide a tailor-made solution, but also from the revenue perspective, because you're not only able to provide electricity in kilowatt hour, but also firm capacity, which is normally paid on top.
From the typical solar and/or wind, the extra advantage that battery goes, it comes along with extra payment on your revenue source. By putting this into the equation and offering, yeah, the hybridization with the spot market and energy storage, you're able yeah, to offer, and this is something that the target is looking in this moment. With all of this, I think MPC is not only able to find opportunities in the region with our local presence, but also to create those opportunities.
Normally, that's our value added to all our customers, not just find them, participate, but to create and present the opportunities that sometimes are not just seen in the market. There's a journey to a longer journey that we still can participate for the next years in order to meet our targets. I want now to introduce to my colleague Maite Pizarro, to talk about our ESG activities. Thank you.
Well, first of all, I'm gonna leave you with a small video to start.
The sun shines its energy, and we transform it. With the energy that we transform from the sun, we don't just light cities, industries, shops, streets, and homes. We also illuminate and transform lives through our corporate social responsibility projects that we implement in the areas where MPC Energy Solutions operates. We have begun the development of a major project in El Salvador for the benefit of society and their communities. As a result, the local school, Juana Rosa Galán Quintanilla, in Quesaltepeque, is no longer the same. Thanks to the investment and refurbishing of the preschool classroom, where young children shape their future, the illusion of the communities for educated children who will transform the country.
[Foreign language].
MPC Energy Solutions, making clean energy happen.
Well, first of all, as you see, responsible investment is the core of our company investment. During 2021 and 2022, our company were working the development of our sustainability framework. This aims to also to build a guideline that allows us to invest responsible, and this also reaffirm our commitment with environmental and social responsible actions. Our sustainable value strategy, ESV, will also help us to create and to protect our business benefits by handling our business in a responsible way, and also to be able to respond to the changing and the requirement of all of our different stakeholders. At MPCS, we pay attention to the environment, to the social, and to the government issues, especially to environment.
We aim the reduction of the greenhouse emissions and also to the reduce climate change effects. We are responsible to the environment by reducing the environmental impact of our, of our projects' operation. We also invest in Latin American and the Caribbean as our main important region to invest. Here, in this region, 13th of this country are one of the most vulnerable to the climate change effects. That mean that these countries need to also to increase their effort to be able to get to mitigation and adaptation measure as soon as possible. This region also have an enormous energy transition potential, but also as well, they have an enormous social and economic challenge. We as MPCS, we wanted to also to help them to face this challenge by our investment in the region.
Of course, as we invest also in solar, wind, and energy efficiency projects, with our project, we help them to directly to climate change effects by the avoided emission of our project. Regarding to our social aspect, we positive contribute to SDG goal and also to the community and individual wellbeing. We are looking also for positive contribution in the societies and making possible social environmental links with the communities and the place where the project allocated. This is how we do that, possible local impacts, through the high local context of economy activities and investment of the supporting community project and ease of job creation. That is very important for us, job creation activities in all of our project.
We operate with a strong commitment community engagement plan is all our project also in the areas of we invest. Regarding to governance, this is also we look for mutually beneficial relationship with the stakeholder, guiding by ethical and sound practice. In this, we are responsible for the company by maintenance the development of first-class governance, compliance, and risk management standard. Also in terms of corporate governance, we operate according the best international practices, including the Human Rights Acts, the Equator Principles, and also IFC standards. Here as our company, we are commitment with the Sustainable Development Goals of United Nations. Here, we're mainly commitment with all the goals, but mostly we are focuses in six that are gender equality, affordable clean energy, decent work and economy growth, also industry, innovation and infrastructure, sustainable city and climate change.
During our SDG align assessment, we identified some priority areas where we can create values and contribute to also to this goal. Mainly, first, to develop employee skills training in renewable energy and energy efficiency project by prioritizing and also to develop plans to promote the technical skill and professional skill in our employees. Also, by reducing the negative environmental impact of our project to avoid the biodiversity loss and also by the avoided emission that our projects can process. We encourage the managing supply chain fairly. This is a very important point. We encourage our business partners to be able to act in a fairly, transparent, and responsible way. We also investing in education, training, and capacity. We also prioritize as well the promoting and security work, health, and safety.
Here, with our policies, we develop zero accident policy, and we also establishes in our company to act with different international standards like IFC and also to, and also with EHS, IFC for World Bank as well. As well, we look for positively improving the living condition of employee and community engagement, community member. That's how. At first, we invest socially in the communities around our project, and also we promote and also we encourage the local job creation and also the women's, the include of women in these workers. In 2022, ESG highlights for this year, we are also proud to announce the publication of our second annual ESG report.
This was vast development across the E-GRR standard, it show our results for the last year. For this year, us as a company, we reaffirm us our commitment to meet our business to ensure our sustainable strategy. In this case, this year's was the finalization and release of the sustainable value strategy and the environmental social management system. This will allowed us as a company to be able to manage our business in a responsible way to be able to continue to generating value to our stakeholders.
This is a very important viewpoint, sorry, because environmental social management systems is the tool that we have as a company to ensure us to our project and our actions to be in compliance with the environmental and social requirement. Also in regarding to our materiality topics for 2022 regarding to environmental and climate, we have reported for first time avoided emission in our projects. This is 'cause of the operation of one of our projects in Mexico, especially Los Santos. We are reporting for the last year now 1,206 tons of CO2 equivalent avoided emissions. We also last year extended our emission accounting of Scope 3.
Specifically, we extend our accounting in two categories of the Scope 3, waste management and upstreams and downstream transportation and distribution. We also in biodiversity, we are applying to our project. We conducted environmental and social due diligence and also environmental and social impact assessment to be able to reduce the impact in biodiversity of the areas that our projects are located. Regarding to our corporate governance as well for the next year, our company have established a code of conduct in which it was signed for all our employees for 2022 and during the year, no incident on corruption were reported.
As well, our company put great emphasis in cooperating with our business partner to be able to promote a high standard of good business practice performance for them and we established a business partner guideline that was signed also for our business partner. Regarding to work in environmental, as a company, we are committed to provide equal opportunities for all this employee. For the last year, we are reporting that 33 of our employees were females and representing nine different nationality. In terms also of community impact, we take to maintain an active dialogue with our company stakeholder, and we seek also to establish long-term relationship and positive links in the areas so that we are working for.
During 2022, we were able to report 687 job created. This is because of the projects that we have in this moment in construction, in operation in Colombia, El Salvador, and Mexico. Also we give investment in the community with different kind of like infrastructure project, also cultural activities, and refrigeration activities. This also all this advance that we have for this year could just happen with the commitment of our board and also with we investing as a company in a dedicated ESG team for this year and for the others. Regarding to all community engagement with the community is a key element to build trust in the areas our projects operate.
We believe that good relationship will impact in a positive way to all of our stakeholders. Our aim as a company also is to operate with strong and solid social engagement plans in all of the area of operation of our project. These are very, very important, especially in the phase of development and the construction to be able to us to create value in the communities. Some of the activities that we do mostly in these engagement plans are local recruitment. We try and prioritize to get locals to work in our projects. This by development job fairs to be able to hire the main participants of the people from this area. We also realize and we also help the community with the different local initiative and cultures that they have.
We also invest in the communities, for example, as you can see in the videos, in renovation of a school classroom. We also invest in to improve water access for the community, and several, like, activities like tree plantations, among others. About our ambition for 2023. Based in our result for 2022, and also as our company is increasing their operation and also is getting bigger and bigger, we are, like, focuses mainly in what is environment and climate. One of our challenge is to refine and extend our disclosure in the Scope 3 category. We wanted to look for a very good, in a very good way where our emission are impacting.
Also in biodiversity, we are getting with new projects and also we are getting with new people, so we need to keep and continue training to our people and improve our procedures in regarding all environmental tools that we had for it to reduce the impact of our project in biodiversity. Regarding to corporate governance, one of our main challenge, we wanted to become a sustainable leader in our field, so it's vital for us to have a full overview of how we can impact in all our supply chain. For the next year, one of our main challenge is the development of a responsible supply chain. Regarding to working environment, we will increase of our workforce to keep impact directly in gender equity.
We are going also to implement an gender equality action plans to be able to raise the numbers of women that we have in our projects in operation. Regarding to community impact, we will keep our efforts to ensure and to require and ensure that the local job and the creation to all of our contacts will also be able in the areas of our project. That is mainly the how we are approaching ESG in our company, I will leave you with my colleague, Stefan Meichsner, to give the presentation.
Thank you. Thank you, Maite, and everyone else. For those who do not know me yet, my name is Stefan. I'm the CFO of MPC Energy Solutions, and together with Martin, one of the two members of the supervisory board. Today, we've heard a lot about the growth that we anticipate and the ambitions that we have. I would like to take a more short-term view and tell you what you as shareholders and interested parties can expect from the investments that we've already done and the investments that we can continue to do from the resources available to us. We just closed our financial year 2022, and we ended it for the first time in our company's history with revenues and operating returns from our projects. Revenues were $3.6 million last year, and project EBITDA was $2.1 million.
If you've been following the news, you saw that in the first quarter alone, we connected three more assets to the grid, projects in Colombia, Puerto Rico, and El Salvador. We expect one more project in Colombia to be connected later this year. This alone will see our revenues and operating profits from projects go up significantly to $10 million in revenues and $7 million in EBITDA. I'm talking about our economic share in these numbers. Not all of these projects do we own 100%. Naturally, we want to show you here how much you can expect from MPC Energy Solutions. This is not all that we can do. We still have funding available. As Martin mentioned, we can farm-down certain assets. We have several assets that currently have no project debt on them and are all equity-financed.
We do have an execution roadmap that sees not only the projects that I just mentioned go into operation this year, but that also funds construction of other projects, namely in Saint Kitts and in Puerto Rico, and that will allow us to develop and build pipelines in Guatemala and other countries as well. I think it is important to note that in our business, construction, of course, follows development, but you cannot build a power plant within a month or two. When we invest money, it takes nine to 18 months for this project to become operational. Between the time that we make an investment and the time that we see cash flows coming back to us, we usually do calculate with a year to one and a half year.
I think this is also very important for investors to note that this is not a quick return on investment business. It just takes time to build power plants and to return these cash flows based on the investments that we have made. What would that translate into? Again, I'm speaking about the investments that we've already made today and that we can still make from the resources we have available. We will see installed capacity grow from the 66 MW that we expect at the end of this year to nearly 180 MW by 2025. Still clearly very much solar-dominated because this is the core business that we're currently in the region. Of course, energy output will grow accordingly to over 400 GWh by 2025.
Based on the capacity and the output that we have, we will also see revenues, project related EBITDA, and ultimately also the free cash flows that we can take out of these projects grow significantly by 2025. Martin and Ulf has also alluded to this, said that we built the organization that we have today to support this growth and the growth beyond this. What you can already see is even based on what we have been investing today, latest in 2025, the free cash flows to equity from these projects will cover our overhead expenses. It's quite natural that this takes some time because in the beginning of projects, you pay down interest, you pay down project debt quite significantly. Free cash flow to equity always follows free cash flows to the bank, if you will.
This is purely based on the project cash flows that we see. We still have options to farm down some of these assets, which are currently included in this projection, to free up additional cash which we can then recycle further. I think it's very important to note that based on what we've done, the scalability that Ulf mentioned is already visible today. In the first quarter of 2023, it will become more visible towards the end of the year. In 2024 and 2025, we will actually see the numbers to be at the level where we want them to be based on the investments that we have made. How can I be so sure about this? Well, the answer is actually quite simple. We have power purchase agreements in place. Long-term offtake agreements with, well, companies buying the energy that we produce.
Based on the contracts we have signed today, wet inked, we have an average lifetime of these contracts of 16 years. As Martin mentioned, they are mostly U.S. dollar denominated, not exposing us to any risk of, let's say, local currencies. The total value in revenue of these project contracts is $430 million, which, unless our plans fail, we will generate from these contracts. $430 million in revenues over the lifetime of these contracts also means between $300 million-$320 million in operating profits or operating cash flows from these assets. When we look at our predictions, they are all based on the contracts that we actually have, and this is what we have today.
That's why I can be sure what will happen over the next two to three years, even without the additional growth that Martin outlined that we will be working on by enhancing and building our development backlog and ultimately growing to the 1 GW installed capacity that Martin outlined in the next five years. I want to speak a little bit about debt financing, another very important instrument that we have available, not only to recycle cash, but also to boost returns. When I joined the company as CFO, it was May 2021, a few months after the IPO, and interest rates were basically at 0%, including the SOFR rate that governs the variable rates for our project loans because LIBOR has now been phased out.
Following COVID, inflation, the war in Ukraine, we saw interest rates, and everybody knows this, go up in the significantly to almost 5%. Of course, that was an environment where Martin and I did not feel very comfortable to put a lot of debt on our projects. We selected to fund some of them through all equity because locking in high interest rates might sound like a good idea, but we truly believe that the turn downward trend would continue at one point. Luckily, we are now in a position where our projects are starting operations, and we are expecting the downward trend of the variable rates. That should put us in a comfortable position that we can benefit from this downward trend. Why benefit?
Compared to the peer companies that we have in our industry, we are still significantly under-levered, meaning that the debt ratio in our projects and on a corporate level is significantly below where we think it should be. At the end of 2022, proportionate debt was 50% of the investments that we made. It should be 75%-80% like what our peers do. Now with the downward trend expected in interest rates, with the potential that we have to put additional debt on these projects, we can maintain selective, we can remain conservative in the choices that we make, but we want to harvest this downward trend, and we want to use it to recycle the cash that we currently deployed into projects to put them, let's say, on a normal leverage level, as you can expect in the renewable industry.
Why is this so important? For two things. First, recycling the cash by putting on additional leverage, it kickstarts a cycle of recycling cash, which then can be redeployed into projects with high returns. This allows us to scale up more quickly. This diversifies our portfolio more quickly, that in turn de-risks the overall company more quickly, which then leads to better debt terms from the banks. That's number one. It's purely helpful for our future investment roadmap. The second thing is that leverage is by far the most important factor to bring return levels to where we want them to be. A standard IPP IRR unlevered in the region that we operate in is between 8% and 9%.
The moment you take that project from 0% project debt to 75%, you add 400 basis points on returns for us. With the O&M insourcing that Martin mentioned, once the asset base is large enough that we start saving costs operating these assets, and with the direct purchasing to bring down our CapEx, because we have the capabilities to buy large equipment ourselves, and we don't need to rely on third -parties who claim a margin to do this, we can boost the returns from the 12.5% on a levered basis that we believe are necessary today to 14% and higher, depending on which company, country we invest in.
Of course, ultimately, this is the goal that we have, and these are the options that we have to further increase the return on equity and thereby the shareholder value from our investments. Just adding leverage is not the only thing that we want to do on the debt side. It is also about the question, where do we load on that debt? At the moment, it's very clear-cut. Usually, you go project by project, you enter debt on a project level, and then you just see the project operate in repaying that debt. The downside here is that it is, compared to other possibilities, more expensive, meaning that the margins that lenders put on project debt are higher than if we were to do it on a holding level or a Topco level, where several projects can collateralize the same loans.
What we want to do over time is walk away from SPV-level project finance to creating loan facilities for a larger group of projects, and we can very nicely do this if we have a good installed asset base in one country or in one small region, or let's say, across a region like the Caribbean, where it is possible to put five, six projects under one loan facility and thereby gaining efficiency and also getting a better pricing. Ultimately, of course, on our listed company level, we have been contemplating the idea of issuing green bonds in the future, and of course, pricing is then determined by market participants. We also truly believe, and we are willing to put, let's say, our money where our mouth is.
We are more than happy to tie the pricing of a loan or a bond to ESG related KPIs and covenants, because this is at the heart of what we do, and if it allows us to secure better pricing, a greenium, as some people call it, then we are more than willing to do this. Because this is what our company is about, and if it helps us to finance our project on a Topco level and securing the best rates possible, then we will certainly try to do so. Last but not least, I would like to leave you with a number. As I said, we just concluded the year 2022, which also means we had a very intensive phase where we underwent an audit.
Since we account following the principles of IFRS, everything on our balance sheet is at fair value, conservative fair value. Just looking at this, and we will publish our report on Friday, and everybody can then check the details for him or herself. Just based on this fair value, the net asset value of our company, of what we've done to date, is NOK 35 per share, and certainly not NOK 12 or NOK 13, where the stock is trading today. Ulf mentioned it in his introduction that we believe the company to be severely undervalued, that the market is not correctly pricing the stock, and there are reasons for this.
I also truly believe that the small team that we have, if we continue to work very hard, and we stay lean, and we stay focused, and we continue to execute well like we have, then the projections shared here today and the value that we see in our company will become actual results over the next few months and years. With that, I would like to hand over to my colleague, Heike, who will lead the Q&A session. For those of you who are joining us virtually, please stay tuned, and for those here present today, give us a few moments to set up for this, and then we're more than happy to take your questions. Thank you very much.
Encourage everyone to ask questions here in person, live in the audience, and of course, for those of you who are attending this session virtually via the webcast, please feel free to type in your questions into the chat function in your webcast and we will answer your questions on the go. Are there any questions from the audience here? I'd like to start with these. Okay.
Yeah. Thomas Here from SpareBank 1 Markets. Will you consider selling any of the projects soon to kind of show that you have created value?
Yeah. I think we have clearly outlined the possibility of capturing value that we have created through development and construction of assets. At the end, if value is being created and increase and improves our shareholder return and the investment capacity, we'll certainly consider these options. I think asset rotation strategies and the way to recycle capital for new developments are the usual way in our industry, which is so CapEx capital intensive. Yes, we do consider those options.
Already by this year.
Excuse me.
Already this year ?
We'll see.
Okay.
I also have a technical question, but I'm not sure if you should answer or maybe you should answer. It's related to the pay-as-contracted dynamic with the customers, where you now are saying that you have actually can gain a profit mid days because you get a higher realized electricity prices. I guess that's due to low renewable penetration in the region, so that you kind of have a marginal price setting, which isn't solar PV. If you go into, like, 10, 20-year contracts, how do you avoid that being kind of a loss in the future?
Yes. We hope that by then, the energy storage batteries will be well developed. At the moment, we're just levering our demand. Well, actually the supply of electricity in the spot market. In any case, the exposure is very low, and at this moment, it is an advantage. In the longer- term, it is right. As such, in Chile, I guess, the spot prices went down when the renewable energy penetration came strong. By then, yeah, we will have other technical solutions to compensate for this. The idea is to offer a firm capacity without relying on spot market. This is just like a specific situation tailor-made for what is available in the market.
Just to add to that, because that was a specific case for Colombia, where we are registered agent at the Derivix, which is something similar to the EX in Germany. It's the commodity markets where also electricity packages and futures are being traded. When you look at those risks, we assess the market very carefully. Compared to Chile, for instance, which is a very small market that does have this exceptional solar resources, the market in Colombia is very different. It's largely hydro-driven. There actually these tendencies play in our favor because climate change is causing longer and more extensive drought periods. Usually, if you look at the Colombian market, you will rather see a power a power price upward trend.
For a economy with 50 million people, the, let's say, cannibalization effect of solar PV and the potential for that is at a very different scale than what you would see in some of these markets where it happened in Latin America, actually. We, we are very aware of these trends, and during our projections, with also a lot of external consultants and market advisors that do run various scenarios on deployment of different mixes of technologies, we look very carefully, also at which hours we do have these exposures in the market.
Thank you.
Maybe we'll take one of the questions that came through online. The first question that came in is targeted at the M&A markets. How efficient would you say the M&A market is in the regions where you operate? It was mentioned earlier that your share price currently is not reflective of your underlying assets. Would you say that private market transactions, either comprising producing assets or development portfolios, typically are agreed at what you find to be a fair value or DCF pricing?
Yes. First of all, there's a lot of competition for operating assets in the region. Also why we prefer the route of developing our projects in-house or together with joint venture partners that we do, for instance, with Les Frangins, with Soventix, or with Enel in the different markets that we are active in. Buying operational projects or buying at the end ready-to-build projects means also that another third party has captured a big part of the value that we believe it is more suitable for us to create it. The M&A opportunities are clearly there. As Fernando elaborated, there is more than 20,000 MW of installed capacity of financial investors, of institutional investors, strategic investors.
As previously mentioned, there is a usual life cycle rotation of different investors that have different risk appetites. We see a lot of M&A and obviously DCF is the way to go on valuing these assets. We have to say that there is a big difference, I think, in perceived risks and applying of discount factors. There is a lot of institutional investors in the region itself that clearly applies a different risk pricing grid to these projects that, for instance, a Dutch pension fund would do if they look at a Mexican solar portfolio. I think this is the biggest challenge in M&A markets, is to match your risks with the most realistic scenario, not potential biases that you bring on as a non-local investor.
One of the questions that came in, was directed to the expected equity raise. At what point will the company expect to raise further equity?
I think we have outlined very clearly our roadmap. There is a capital demand of up to $250 million in order to reach our business plan that foresees an operating portfolio of 1 GW` by 2027. We have mentioned this to be $250 million over the period of 2023 to 2026. When the right time is there and our supervisory board and the management board decides it's the way to market, we will certainly approach our shareholders.
Okay. Thank you.
We should maybe also highlight again that it's not a necessity per se to fund our growth because there's different options available for finance. I'm speaking about co-investors that Martin has also mentioned, going with joint ventures, farming down some of the assets, levering some of the unlevered assets. There is still resources are still available to deploy cash and to grow the portfolio without necessarily having to ask shareholders or new investors, for additional funding.
Sure. We have actually two questions on the Saint Kitts project, and I think they both address more or less the same points. Can you comment on the S aint Kitts hybrid project and the current expected timeline for this project? Another question, didn't you plan the commissioning of the project in 2023? Perhaps you could provide a short update on that project.
The project in Saint Kitts is undergoing the early works agreement at the moment. There is indeed some delays in the project considering supply chain and local input for the project needed. I think Stefan has shared in his outlook the timeline that we see, which is considering now a completion of the project by, I think, mid-2024.
Okay. Becoming a little bit more operational, could you provide some more detail into the insourcing of the O&M activities? How will this be structured? Will this increase the overhead on the corporate level? Also, will you see an increased cost base during the start-up phase of this business segment?
What we see on the O&M side and we had that in mind for a long time. When we have built our projects, you will see already that we did the direct procurement. That has the benefit that when we purchase the equipment directly, also the warranty and guarantee obligations are with the SPV, which is usually a structural problem when you do a full EPC contract, that usually this warranties and guarantees are with that contractor. We have structured generally, short-term contracts with our current O&M providers so that we can slowly transition into taking these projects into our own organization. The first step of this will be a hybrid organization where we take on, the planning and the warehousing of spare parts, et cetera, internally.
By basically applying a hybrid model where the field services, are subcontracted to local, you know, electrical firms or, you know, supplier of services that are needed in order to the assets until we are fully insourcing, these services as well, which you could expect by the growing portfolio to happen from now to 2026, maybe. It's a step-up plan in order to prepare and implement, this organizational, change. Usually, how you would structure that is that the O&M staff, is contracted locally, by the SPV, as we do, this already with other of our, hard assets.
I would say that the impact on, let's say, short-term corporate overhead to achieve this transition that Martin mentions is fairly minimal. The overall idea is to reduce costs on a group level significantly. Considering from a return on investment perspective, you perhaps hire one expert resource now, but then you achieve 20%-40% cost reductions in the projects in three or four years' time. This is how we look at it.
Sure. Makes sense. Maybe moving on to a somewhat more general question. What countries do you specifically focus on when you're seeking an expansion of your development backlog?
This year, we will enter Panama with a new 200 MW project development initiative, considering that Panama is one of the countries that does have a very well-established international headquarter base and base for corporate off-takers. Again, looking at the way of business development to drive project development. Clearly, Guatemala, where we made just the market entry, is a market where we want to grow to scale, which we have defined previously in the presentation to at least 100 MW of installed capacity per country. Also there, we are in further business development discussions with corporate off-takers. Obviously, we have already the operational assets in Mexico, and we see that Mexico made great progress, also growth on nearshoring opportunities towards the U.S.
There are big investors growing their activities on the industrial and corporate side. You'd see that Tesla is coming in to bring in a new Gigafactory. We believe the case is still there for us to grow towards corporate off-takers. Our current facility is supplying the energy to LEONI and the La Salle University network, which is in fact 22 different PPAs to the different locations of these universities. I would say we will clearly see in Panama, in Guatemala, and in Mexico, new initiatives coming in this year.
To continue along the development plans, you set a target of $10 million-$15 million in development cost in 2023 to 2025. Do you expect this to be fairly linear, or will it be tilted more towards a specific period or year? A follow-on question, what do you think is a realistic view on how many projects or megawatts you can generate with this expected development budget?
Yeah. Usually we see that per megawatt, that somewhere between $5,000-$15,000 of development costs. That always depends on the market, on the project. Let's say now in a project in Guatemala, for instance, that is a fast-track project in the sense that we build these 65 MW on the premises of the off-taker with an existing grid connection. Your permitting path is limited, really focusing on the environmental social impact assessment. When it comes to grid permitting, et c., that all falls away. You have a very lean structure also on the cost side. When it comes to other markets, you need to have other considerations. Usually, development is not linear in its spendings. You start with early feasibility, grid assessments, other red flag scenarios that you are testing in order to make sure that when you deploy the higher cost studies like geotechnical studies, soil assessments, pull out studies, that at that moment you're really sure that your project comes through.
I would say if you look at the allocation of our development expenditures, we have allocated $3 million for this year. I think you can clearly see a ramp up, you know, just taking some numbers now, maybe $3 million this year, $5 million-$6 million next year, and then the bulk in 2025. The more you come to ready to build, the more you really need to invest heavily into these project developments.
Understood. Okay, we received a question. How do you see the hybridization with a portfolio of solar, wind, and hydro in order to provide close to 100% of renewable energy to the customers?
The hybridization, we have to consider two things. In the developed world, you have a very centralized good grid infrastructure. Most of the markets that we are in have already decentralized grids. That means there's no necessarily interconnection among balance cycles, so to say. The grids are weak, and when you want to introduce intermittent renewable energy, you really need to make sure that there is enough storage facility in order to do the energy shifting, so that when there are load differences and differences that are coming in from clients consuming or not consuming, energy is really a key matter, right? It's not a question of when or how it is coming, it is really a matter of how quickly can private investors and utilities invest into storage in order to allow a higher percentage and higher penetration of renewable energy in the region. It will come in the region even faster and stronger than it will come in the developed markets. Because regulators are already considering the integration of storage.
At the end, the profile how renewable energy assets work in Germany, for instance, like in most other European markets, is the grid connection and the grid is the problem of the grid operator. In developed markets where the grid operators are often state-owned utilities, they push that problem basically to the producer. In order to get grid connection, the costs of that grid connection are socialized by the generator of the power, and they are not socialized by the community or by the country, because they simply can't afford that. For us, it is key to quickly ramp up our battery storage capacities in the projects in order to secure our contracts.
Understood. There was a similar question towards the storage concept. Do additional storage projects result from your partnership with Leclanché in the next years? Is that your expectation?
We see Leclanché as a strong partner in the battery segment for the very simple reason that they are true battery technology experts. Leclanché is a company who is heavily investing in R&D, who understand, you know, the functionality of batteries very well. We feel very comfortable with them as a partner in our projects. The more projects coming out of this partnership, the better for both parties. They as a system integrator. I would like to clarify that Leclanché actually is more on the system integration side, because we are not using their batteries. Their batteries are not suitable for application and stationary storage. For instance, going back to the Saint Kitts project, there we are using batteries from CATL, Chinese leading battery manufacturer, as well as from SDL, a Korean company. We're not using their technology, which is not suitable necessarily for the applications that we are using there for the spinning reserve balancing, and the energy shifting.
Okay. There's a question that's maybe more targeted towards the supervisory board. When the NAV is far above the stock price, why isn't MPC Capital reinvesting in MPC Energy Solutions?
Yeah. I think I made very clear that we will add to our investment. There will be additional equity raises. MPC Capital as one of the strong shareholders is certainly equipped from a balance sheet point of view to, and from a cash point of view, to support growth, not only for the next phase, but for the phases to come. As we understand, the same is true for the other major shareholders. To speculate on the major shareholders not necessarily supporting the next growth steps would be a wrong speculation. There is very strong support, and there is unanimous consent between those bigger shareholders towards prospering and supporting the next growth steps to get to the target line.
Thank you. Maybe I think, Stefan, a question addressed to your topic. Is there any difference between the risk assessment of lenders in the region compared to Europe or the U.S.?
No, I would not say that there is a difference in the risk assessment, but we certainly have different players involved. If we look at our region at the moment, you will see very few commercial banks who are already experienced with project finance in the region or are necessarily exposed to renewable energies today, and this is slowly developing. What we see is strong support in these countries from the multinational development banks, FMO, DEG, the IFC also partnering up with local banks.
The risk assessment, therefore, is very much determined by how the development banks are assessing risk because they're sort of educating local lenders. Local lenders then very, very quickly, let's say, are able to not only gain the experience, but also then they're more competitive in terms of loan pricing in some instances. I think as energy transition and renewables develop in these regions, so will the lending perspectives locally. The risk management tools or assessment tools are basically the same.
I think finally, last question that came in in our webcast, how much competitive pressure do you face in the different stages, for example, in the development or when acquiring projects?
There's a lot of competition. There are obviously some of the known European IPPs that are very, very active in the region, from Scandinavia, continental Europe. There are a lot of local developers that, in the same way as it developed here in Europe, come primarily from the real estate and property development side because there are a lot of similar features on the project development side when it comes to permitting and land securement that you see in the region. I think everyone understands that we are in a industry that sees tremendous growth ahead.
It is only natural that you will see a broad variety of local, domestic, regional, international players coming in at each of the different steps in the life cycle of a project. There is, let's say, less crowded place in the market when you really look at who can provide the full cycle. As Fernando said, you know, the one-stop shop for corporates that can deliver a project from the technical planning side, structuring the PPAs, securing the debt and equity financing, and being a long-term partner. If you look at those, we feel that we have a very strong market position because we are one of the few who understand the business in its entirety.
Excellent. Okay, I think we've covered the questions from the webcast. Are there any further questions from the audience here? If not, I believe this closes the Q&A session. Thank you very much, everyone.
Wonderful. Thank you, everybody, also joining virtually.