Good morning, and welcome to TC Energy's 2020 Virtual Investor Day. I'm David Maneta, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. Under normal circumstances, we would be hosting this event in person, but these are not normal times. That said, we've endeavored to keep this event as similar as possible to the in room experience with members of our executive leadership team and a few employees in the room, socially distanced and wearing masks to create a live audio experience for both the presenters and you, our guests.
Throughout the morning, we intend to provide you with an update on the many initiatives underway at TC Energy that will help as well as other things that will help shape the energy industry on a go forward basis. You can find a copy of the presentation on our website. Russ Girling, our Chief Executive Officer and Francois Poirier, our Chief Operating Officer, will start today with some comments on the progress we've made over the last 20 years and our positive outlook for the future. After their remarks, the Head of each of our businesses will provide an update on the respective areas, followed by Q and A sessions, where registered guests who would normally be in the room will be able to submit questions electronically. Don Marchand, our Chief Financial Officer, will then provide a finance update and Russ and Francois will close out the morning with a final Q and A session.
Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge that part of the land on which TC Energy operates contains the histories, cultures and rich traditions of indigenous groups across North America. We thank the original keepers of these lands, generations past, present and future for sharing their homelands with us. Also, I'll remind you that certain statements made during this meeting will include forward looking statements that are subject to important risks and uncertainties. For more information on these risks and uncertainties, please see the reports filed with Canadian Securities Regulators and with the U. S.
Securities and Exchange Commission. We will also make reference to certain non GAAP measures this morning. They are used to provide you with information on our operating performance, liquidity and our ability to fund our capital program. However, they do not have any standardized meaning under U. S.
GAAP and are therefore considered to be non GAAP measures. With that, I'll turn things over to Russ Girling, our President and Chief Executive Officer.
Well, thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. And thank you very much for participating in our very first and hopefully last virtual Investor Day. We very much appreciate your ongoing interest and support of TC Energy. Clearly, the past 8 months have been difficult for the families and businesses around the world, with COVID-nineteen having a profound effect on all of our daily lives. In the face of that adversity, I'm proud that our more than 7,500 employees who continue to deliver the energy that millions of people rely upon every day are doing well.
When COVID was declared a global pandemic in March, we were deemed an essential service in Canada, the United States and Mexico, given the vital role our infrastructure plays across this continent. That essential designation related not only to our operations, but to our construction projects as well. With COVID, it's been an especially busy year since our last Investor Day. But looking back over the last 12 months, I'm very pleased with the progress we continue to make on several fronts. Despite the challenges brought about by the pandemic, our operations have been largely unimpacted.
With few exceptions, flows and utilization levels remain in line with historic norms underscoring the importance of our assets to the well-being of individuals and the functioning of the North American economy. At the same time, at the request of our customers, we continue to advance our industry leading secured capital program, highlighting the strong long term fundamentals associated with each of our projects. Looking forward, strong industry fundamentals combined with our unparalleled asset footprint, deep organizational capabilities, and financial discipline positions us for continued long term success as energy demand continues to grow and the world transitions to a less carbon intensive energy future. Over the next three and a half hours or so, my colleagues and I look forward to sharing the significant advances we have made over the past year and the promising outlook for the future of your company. This slide captures the key themes of the day as well as the tenets or beliefs that have guided our business decisions for the past 20 years.
Firstly, we believe a consistent approach to capital allocation with an emphasis on financial strength and flexibility maximizes shareholder value over the long term. We've consistently allocated our internally generated cash flow in a manner that strikes the right balance between maintaining a strong balance sheet, funding our growth and paying a sustainable and growing dividend. Our approach has been driven by the belief that a self funding model along with strong credit ratings will maximize shareholder value. Secondly, we continually assess long term industry fundamentals as part of our investment decision making process and allocate capital accordingly. We believe that global energy demand will continue to grow and there will be significant opportunities in North America to build new infrastructure to connect abundant low cost supply to premium markets.
Evidence of that can be seen in our historically high utilization rates of our current assets as well as ongoing requests for expansions of our existing infrastructure. 3rd, we believe our proven low risk business model will produce stable and predictable results during all phases of the economic cycle. Today, more than 95% of our EBITDA comes from regulated assets or long term contracted assets, largely insulating us from variability associated with commodity and volumetric risk. Fourthly, we believe our broad network of critical high quality assets provides us with a strong competitive advantage. Today, we are advancing $37,000,000,000 of secured projects that are largely in corridor expansions of existing assets, and we have an extensive portfolio of projects currently under development.
Finally, our people have the commercial skills and technical expertise to navigate the constantly changing world in which we operate. Whether it's our ability to construct across challenging terrain and severe weather or to manage changes in market dynamics and technology, we have consistently adapted to the world around us, turning perceived threats into significant opportunities for our shareholders. In summary, our strategy is simple. It's to grow earnings, cash flow and dividends per share, investing in high quality, low risk energy infrastructure assets that will deliver energy people need for decades yet to come. With that, as an overview, I'll dive a little bit deeper into each of those themes.
This slide illustrates our approach to capital allocation. It's straightforward and has served us extremely well for the last 20 years. It starts with our portfolio of critical energy infrastructure assets, which generates stable long term cash flow streams. We reinvest approximately 60% of that cash flow into complementary low risk assets to drive further growth in earnings and cash flow. The remaining 40% is returned to our shareholders in the form of a sustainable and growing dividend.
While others have continuously altered their approach to capital allocation, we have maintained this philosophy and has served our shareholders well for over 2 decades now. Over the past 20 years, we have reinvested approximately $110,000,000,000 in pipeline and power assets. Through that investment, we've transformed ourselves from a Canadian regulated natural gas pipeline company into a leading North American energy infrastructure company. Today, we have the expertise in natural gas and liquids pipelines and storage, as well as power generation using a diverse range of fuels. The growth came through the expansions of our legacy assets along with our opportunistic acquisitions at the right time in the business cycle.
Those acquisitions included an interest in Bruce Power, the Gas Transmission Northwest, ANR and the Keystone Systems and the Columbia Transportation acquisition in 2016. Each was a transformational acquisition and it expanded our North American footprint, providing us with new platforms for growth. As a result, today, we have 5 platforms for growth compared to just one back in 2000. They include Canadian, U. S.
And Mexico Natural Gas Pipelines, Liquids Pipelines and Power and Storage. The investments we made also created significant shareholder value. Evidence of that can be seen in the growth in earnings and cash flow per share over the same period. As you can see on this chart, earnings have increased from approximately $1 per share in 2,000 to more than $4 today, while cash flow has increased from $2.50 per share in 2,000 to approximately $7.50 today. That equates to an average annual growth rate of approximately 7% 5% respectively.
Just as important, we have produced those results through all phases of the economic cycle, whether it's the global financial crisis in 2008, 2009, various industry shocks that we've experienced, such as the downfall of the IPP markets, the collapse of the MLP market, the shale revolution and the oil price collapse, or even the current global pandemic. Our low risk approach has generated steady growth in earnings and cash flow in all cycles. Our success is largely tied to our investment in regulated or long term contracted assets that link low cost, long life natural gas and crude oil reserves to premium markets in North America. And funding those investments through internally generate cash flow or long term capital raise to compelling rates due to our strong credit ratings. As a result, we have largely insulated ourselves from commodity and volumetric risk, allowing us to produce steady and predictable results in almost any environment.
That steady growth in earnings and cash flow has allowed us to increase our common share dividend in each of the last 20 years from approximately $0.80 in 2000 to the current level of $3.24 per share. That represents a compound average annual growth rate of 7% and equates to the payment of approximately $23,000,000,000 in dividends over that period of time. We've also maintained strong dividend coverage ratios. Our current dividend represents a payout of approximately 80% of comparable earnings and 40% of cash flow, leaving us with the financial flexibility to continue to invest in our core businesses. Our strong financial performance and growing dividend has in turn resulted in a significant increase in our share price from $10 a share in $2,000 to approximately $55 today.
As a result, we have delivered a 12% average annual total shareholder return since 2000 despite the recent weakness in our share price largely due to the volatility in current financial markets. That compares very favorably with the performance of the broader markets over the past 20 years. As we highlight on this slide, our 12% average annual return equates to a total of more than 900% over that period of time. In comparison, the TSX and S and P 500 generated returns of just over 200%. From my perspective, obviously a very good outcome for shareholders, especially when you consider the low risk utility like nature of our business.
Today, we have an enterprise value of approximately $105,000,000,000 and we have our own interests in 93,000 kilometers or 58,000 miles of natural gas pipe that move about 25 percent of America's demand from the continent's 2 largest most cost competitive natural gas production basins to premium markets. We're also North America's largest provider of natural gas storage with 6.53 Bcf of cubic feet a day or cubic feet of capacity. In liquids, the Keystone pipeline delivers approximately 600,000 barrels a day or about 20% of Western Canadian crude oil exports to key refining markets in the U. S. Midwest and the Gulf Coast.
In power and storage, we own or have interest in 7 power plants capable of producing 4,200 megawatts of electricity, with 75% of our capacity being comprised of missionless nuclear power in Ontario. As I mentioned earlier, despite the challenges brought about by COVID, our operations and financial performance have largely been unimpacted. We continue to deliver the energy that millions of people use in a safe and reliable manner, employing thousands of people, fulfilling our obligations to our customers and supporting the communities in which we operate. At the same time, we continue to produce strong financial results. For the 1st 9 months ended September 30th, comparable earnings $3.05 per share, while comparable funds generated from operations were $5,300,000,000 Both of those are similar to the near record results that we were able to produce 19.
We also made significant progress on many other fronts. We continue to advance $37,000,000,000 of commercially secured projects. Our portfolio includes nearly $13,000,000,000 of projects that have been added to our backlog since the beginning of the year, including Keystone XL. We also placed $3,000,000,000 of NGTL and Canadian mainline expansions into service this year. Turning to our funding program, we took significant steps to finance our capital program earlier this year, despite the challenging capital markets we were experiencing.
Looking forward, we expect our strong operating and financial performance to continue. Therefore, despite the pandemic, our outlook has remained the same since the beginning of the year with comparable earnings and cash flow per share anticipated to be similar to the record results that we produced in 2019. While we're proud of our history of delivering significant returns for our shareholders, we know our long term success depends on our ability to balance profitability with safety, environmental and social responsibility. At TC Energy, our philosophy on sustainability isn't anything new, but we continue to listen, learn and build upon our proud 65 year history grounded in our values of safety, responsibility, collaboration and integrity and simply doing what is right. Some of our progress across the environmental, social and governance spectrum are highlighted on this slide, but I wanted to talk a few minutes about a few things.
Safety is our number one goal. From a safety perspective, our goal remains 0 incidents and we continue to invest over $1,000,000,000 annually into asset integrity programs and we remain steadfast in our commitment to safety and quality. We're also undertaking the due diligence necessary to identify potential paths to net 0 GHG emissions by 2,050, while ensuring our duty to protect shareholder value is not compromised. We are confident that we can continue to do both. We know from experience that to successfully operate a business of this magnitude, building and maintaining strong relationships with our stakeholders and our neighbors is vital.
We are committed to doing just that with local communities, indigenous groups and landowners and our employees. You can read more about our commitments to performance and our approach in our recently released report on sustainability and our ESG data sheet. Finally, we believe that maintaining the highest standards in corporate governance is what ultimately determines our success. We think our track record of financial discipline, commitment to our values and market performance exemplifies top tier governance over the long term and we're grateful for our Board's rigorous and ongoing oversight. Before I close, I'd like to offer a few comments on the TC Energy team.
Well, obviously, I'm biased and you've heard me say it before, I believe we've assembled the best talent in the industry starting with our executive leadership team. As you know, I've decided to retire at the end of this year. Our Chief Operating Officer, Francois Poirier will succeed me as President and Chief Executive Officer and join the Board of Directors on January 1 next year. Francois has been part of our ELT for 5 years and has been a significant contributor to our thinking, our strategy and the execution of our plans. I'm confident that he along with the entire TC Energy executive team pictured here on this slide will continue to capture a disproportionate share of the many growth opportunities that lie ahead, while meeting the challenges that will inevitably arise in our environment.
Many of you are familiar with the faces on this slide, Francois, Tracy, Stan, Bevin, Corey and Don are all here today to provide you with an update on their respective areas of responsibility. And they are supported by more than 7,500 talented employees across North America, who are expert in their fields and work tirelessly to safely build and operate our blue chip portfolio of energy assets. It is their efforts and dedication that will continue to drive our success in the future. With that, I'll turn the podium over to Francois to provide you with an overview of our strategy to navigate the ever changing North American energy landscape, to capture long term low risk opportunities and to continue to grow shareholder value for many years to come. Francois?
Thanks Russ and good morning everybody and thank you again for joining us. Some of you might be wondering whether TC Energy's strategy will change going forward. And my response is that our time tested approach will continue. From my perspective, there are 2 very important constants that you can expect from TC Energy as you have in the past. The first is our capital allocation discipline and conservative risk preferences.
The second is our ability to generate capital investment opportunities at all points in the business cycle, benefiting from 5 businesses in 3 jurisdictions. Over the past 20 years, it's been each has had its turn in delivering growth opportunities, while the others have provided the cash flow to be reinvested. This diverse business mix will be a competitive advantage in the future as it has been for us over the last 20 years. As Russ mentioned at the outset, we're living in unprecedented times and the past 8 months have been difficult for families and businesses around the world. TC Energy, in my view, has risen to the challenge.
With so much going on around us, it's easy to forget that the world continues to consume large quantities of natural gas and oil and the demand for our services remains as strong as ever. Looking forward, reliable, abundant, low cost energy will be critical as people around the globe seek to enhance their standard of living. The real challenge will be to meet that need while prudently managing the associated environmental impacts, including climate change. 3rd party experts project that energy demand will continue to grow with natural gas and oil remaining an important part of the global fuel mix for decades to come. Now that said, the energy mix will evolve, with renewables, for example, making up a larger component of overall supply.
So to ensure we are prepared for a variety of possible outcomes, we continually assess the resilience of our business across multiple energy scenarios, and we can tell you that our business holds up very well. We have many tools at our disposal to manage changing patterns. For example, under both CER and FERC regulation, we can accelerate depreciation in order to earn both a return on and of capital, thereby addressing potential impacts to our terminal value. Looking forward, advances in technology will be required as many of today's alternatives to natural gas and oil don't consistently offer the same energy density, scale, reliability and affordability. These emerging technologies will take time and require cooperation among all stakeholders.
And they'll also require 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars of capital investment. So at TC Energy, we see this as an opportunity. Our extensive asset footprint, deep organizational capabilities, strong stakeholder relationships and significant financial capacity mean we're well positioned to build on our past success as the energy landscape evolves. Over the next 10 years, our current suite of assets is expected to generate approximately $75,000,000,000 to $80,000,000,000 of cash flow. And under our disciplined approach to capital allocation, as Russ mentioned, we pay out approximately 40% of that cash flow in dividends, leaving us $45,000,000,000 to $50,000,000,000 of cash flow plus additional debt capacity that's created to direct towards growth.
As we have done in the past, we'll look to invest in regulated or long term contracted assets that are underpinned by strong industry fundamentals. Looking forward, we'll continue to focus on 7 key priorities to ensure we remain successful. These are the same priorities that have guided us for nearly 2 decades. The first is to ensure our assets continue to operate safely and reliably every day. 2nd, we'll continuously seek to improve the profitability of our existing assets by maximizing revenues and reducing costs in each of our businesses.
3rd, we will focus on executing our $37,000,000,000 industry leading secured capital program on time, on budget and on quality. 4th, we will continue to develop and advance a portfolio of new low risk opportunities in a careful and cost effective manner. We will also continue to cultivate strong working relationships with all of our stakeholders. We have a long history of collaborating with people in the communities where we work. As we look to develop new projects, our philosophy is the same, understanding stakeholder issues and engaging with local officials, landowners and indigenous groups to identify how we best address their concerns as they will be critical to our success.
And finally, we will respond quickly and prudently to changing market dynamics to ensure our business remains sustainable and resilient in an ever evolving energy landscape. Ultimately, our purpose is to deliver the energy people need today and in the future safely, responsibly, collaboratively and with integrity as per our values. At the same time, we'll continue to deliver superior long term returns to our shareholders. With that in mind, I'll spend a few minutes outlining what lies ahead for TC Energy as the world's demand for all forms of energy continues to transition and grow. This is a chart based on the International Energy Agency's 2020 World Energy Outlook.
It highlights the expected growth in worldwide demand from all sources of energy between 2019 and 2,040 under their stated policies scenario. The IEA is considered one of the most credible agencies doing this type of work and is one of the many we use for planning purposes. Looking forward, renewables such as solar and wind power are expected to grow significantly and become a larger part of the overall mix through 2,040. However, even with enacted and announced policies to address climate change, the IEA also anticipates that demand for natural gas and oil will grow as well. As a result, they will remain important sources of energy for decades to come as billions of people in developing countries strive to achieve a higher standard of living.
More specifically in North America, natural gas demand is expected to grow to more than 140 Bcf per day by 2,040. Much of that will be driven by industrial demand, natural gas fire generation facilities and LNG exports. In Liquids, North American crude oil supply is also expected to grow between now and 2,040. That includes heavy oil production in Western Canada and the need for new transportation capacity to move that growing production in the world's to the world's largest heavy oil refining market in the U. S.
Gulf Coast. Finally, on the power front, new generation capacity will be needed to meet growing demand and facilitate a shift in the energy mix away from older technologies like coal fired generation. Renewables will play an important role. However, given the abundant supply of competitively priced natural gas, it's likely that gas fired generation will also play a key role in meeting demand and backstopping the intermittency of renewable energy sources. So in summary, the growth in demand, combined with the need to replace and upgrade existing infrastructure as society transitions to a lower carbon future, will require 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars of investment in energy infrastructure.
This will create significant opportunities for companies like TC Energy with the means, the expertise and the capabilities to participate. Looking forward, we expect our network of critical energy infrastructure assets will be used for decades to come as they connect abundant low cost reserves to premium markets. Our asset footprint will also generate significant in corridor growth associated with growing demand and increased market share. Given the high utilization rates across our system, modernization programs and ongoing maintenance capital related to our regulated pipeline network will also provide opportunities to invest capital. Like growth projects, this investment forms part of our regulated rate base and entitles us to a full return on and off capital over time.
At the same time, as the world transitions to a lower carbon future, new prospects will emerge. With a deep understanding of energy markets and expertise across a broad range of fuels, including natural gas, crude oil, nuclear, hydro, wind and solar and various emerging technologies, TC Energy is well positioned to capture new opportunities as the energy mix evolves. We're in the business of developing energy infrastructure that people need. And as and when energy systems evolve, we will evolve with them. As I mentioned, our key competitive advantage is our existing footprint, which provides multiple platforms for in corridor growth.
Our NGTL system moves 12 Bcf a day or 75% of the WCSB natural gas production to market through its extensive cost competitive network. The Canadian Mainline provides a critical link between prolific WCSB gas reserves and key markets in Eastern Canada and the Midwestern and Northeastern United States. Columbia Gas is a best in class footprint on top of the Appalachian Basin, the continent's largest source of natural gas. Our broader U. S.
Gas pipeline network also includes Columbia Gulf, ANR, Great Lakes, Northern Border, GTN, Portland and Iroquois. Deliveries on our U. S. System are averaging 25 Bcf per day this year, which equates to 27% of U. S.
Natural gas demand. In Mexico, our assets are forming the backbone of the country's natural gas infrastructure. They will play a critical role in delivering low cost U. S. Natural gas to help power its economy and transition to lower carbon fuel sources.
In our liquids business, Keystone moves approximately 600,000 barrels per day or 20% of Canadian oil exports to the U. S. The U. S. Gulf Coast is the largest and most attractive market for WCSB heavy oil production, and Keystone XL is the most efficient and environmentally sound way to move that production to market.
Finally, in our power and storage business, Bruce Power is one of the world's largest nuclear power facilities, generating 6,400 megawatts of emissionless power or 30% of Ontario's daily needs. Looking forward, new generation capacity will be needed to meet growing demand, replace aging infrastructure and facilitate a shift in the energy mix. We have the expertise to participate in various forms of new generation, including natural gas, wind and solar as well as nuclear refurbishments at Bruce Power. We've developed and operated assets along this entire span of fuel types. Each of these platforms provides us with significant opportunities for in corridor growth, an enviable position to have in a world where demand continues to grow and it's difficult to build new greenfield infrastructure.
So today, these platforms provide us with line of sight to 1,000,000,000 of dollars of organic growth opportunities. They include $37,000,000,000 of commercially secured projects that will expand and extend our network across North America. That includes $22,000,000,000 of natural gas pipeline projects in Canada, the U. S. And Mexico $13,000,000,000 of liquids pipeline expansions, including Keystone XL, which continues to be a very important project for both Canada and the U.
S. And $2,000,000,000 in our power and storage business, primarily associated with our ongoing work under the Bruce Power Life Extension program in Ontario. You'll hear more about this program throughout the morning. And notably, each project is underpinned by strong industry fundamentals as well as long term contracts or cost of service regulation, which is what provides us with good visibility to growth in earnings and cash flow as they enter service between now and 2023. This slide highlights the significant growth in EBITDA that is expected as we advance our secured capital program.
As you can see on the chart, comparable EBITDA is expected to grow from 5,900,000,000 in 2015 to more than 12,000,000,000 in 2024, effectively doubling EBITDA over that 10 year span. That equates to a compound annual growth rate of approximately 8%. Just as important as the magnitude of growth is the quality of the growth, with more than 95% of that EBITDA coming from regulated assets and long term contracts. Now based on our capital allocation model, my view is our job as a management is to thoughtfully invest $5,000,000,000 or more annually in order to deliver our growth. To the extent we are successful in securing consolidated portfolio of low risk projects that generate after tax returns on total capital in the 7% to 9% range, we can expect to continue to grow earnings, cash flow and dividends by 5% to 7% annually over the long term.
As you can see on this chart, our starting point is our industry leading $37,000,000,000 secured capital program. Beyond that program though, why are we confident in our ability to deploy $5,000,000,000 plus of capital annually under various energy mix scenarios? We have $1,500,000,000 of maintenance capital to be invested annually, of which 90% is recoverable. We have a suite of projects under development, including the major component replacement program for an additional 5 reactor units at Bruce. And as you'll hear from our business unit leaders and our CFO throughout the morning, we see significant opportunities for continued ability to deploy capital along our existing corridors.
We also see opportunities in renewables and the firming resources such as pump storage needed to manage their intermittency, also electrifying our fleet as well as opportunities to invest in emerging technologies. I believe we will be opportunity rich. And in fact, our challenge will be to allocate capital thoughtfully, making sure that we have the organizational depth and capability that aligns with those opportunities and keeping a close eye on the signposts that will indicate where best to allocate capital. So based on the confidence we have in our business plans, we expect to grow our common share dividend at an average annual rate of 8% to 10% in 2021 and 5% to 7% thereafter. This is consistent with our historical average annual growth rate of 7% over the last 20 years.
Our outlook is supported by growth in earnings and cash flow per share and some of the strongest coverage ratios in our industry. This will leave us with the capacity to prudently fund our capital programs and maintain the financial strength and flexibility required to act at all points of the economic cycle. So in closing, as Russ mentioned, we're very pleased with our progress over the last 12 months, and I remain confident in our ability to prudently grow shareholder value over the next decade in much the same way as we have over the past 2 decades. Each of our business unit presidents are here to provide more granularity on how we're going to do that, starting with Tracy Robinson and Stan Chapman. They'll provide you with an update on our North American natural gas pipeline businesses, and Russ and I will be available later this morning to answer any further questions you may have.
With that, I'll turn it over to Tracy to provide an update on the Canadian Natural Gas Pipelines business.
Thank you, Francois, and good morning, everyone. Now normally, I get to look out and see at least some of you, but this year we're all adapting. Thank you for sticking with us through this new format. Now I know that many of you are curious about our growth program in this COVID impacted world and the risk that we face in our Canadian business and the growth that we see as we look forward, particularly through the lens of this increasingly complex stakeholder environment. So today, I want to confirm that our expansion plans are progressing and we'll provide the growth that we've promised, that we have derisked our business commercially and that we are positioning this basin and our system to effectively compete for the growth in demand on this continent and globally.
We have brought more than $3,100,000,000 of new capacity into service this year. We've signed long term agreements that secure our return on equity. And we've continued to increase our flows and our share despite all the challenges in the marketplace. So over the next 15 minutes, I want to do 3 things. I'll highlight the strength of our position in infrastructure in the North American gas network, emphasizing why our network is best positioned to deliver the growth that we plan.
I'll outline our success in delivering to our plans this year and our commitment to the execution of our program to drive nearly 40% growth in the market egress we offer the WCSB. And finally, I'll explain why I'm confident in our line of sight to further growth in our basin and our position in a manner that respects the growing need to reduce emissions and work in partnership with our key stakeholders. So let's begin with our system. Our assets sit on top of the 2 most prolific low cost basins in North America, the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin in Western Canada and the Appalachian Basin in the Northeast U. S, giving our company a meaningful pipe in the ground advantage and the ability to deliver gas to key markets in North America and to LNG facilities serving global markets.
Now we delivered 25% of the gas that North America relies on every day to power their lives, fuel their industry. And globally, the demand for natural gas is forecasted to grow 30% by 2,040. This continent's gas is being used to meet the global demand for clean burning, reliable sources of energy. This year, North America provided 12% of the world's demand for LNG. And by 2,035, this continent is expected to become the world's largest LNG supplier, holding about 25% of global market share.
And gas produced in the WCSB in the Appalachian Basins is well positioned to meet these needs, and our infrastructure will get it to market. Our business will continue to play an important role in the integrated energy system for decades. The basins that we serve have the most significant resource bases in North America and the most cost effective gas. Now this is low cost gas. In the Marcellus and Utica due to extremely high well productivity rates and in the WCSB due to its high NGL and particularly the condensate content.
And natural gas, of course, isn't only advantaged by its low cost. It also represents an opportunity to bridge towards a more sustainable future. Now analysts expect that North America's electric grid to continue to shift away from coal and towards gas. Electric generators will demand 12% more gas in 2,035 than they did this year. International markets have also noticed the competitiveness of North American gas.
And over the next 15 years, as global LNG markets grow and North America takes that 25% of the global market share, we'll see demand for North American feed gas triple. And our gas is our assets rather are strategically positioned to take advantage of these growing market demands. So let me turn to the Canadian system. In Canada, we have 40,000 kilometers of pipe dedicated to moving the low cost WCSB gas to key continental demand centers, and we're moving more of it every year. Our NGTL system connects to more than 3 quarters of the 16 Bcf that the WCSB produces every day.
And we deliver it to multiple markets across Canada and the U. S. Through our Canadian mainline and through the U. S. Network that Stan will discuss in just a few minutes.
Now about half of its volume go to markets within Alberta to that industrial centers that fuel our economy, our homes, our businesses. Alberta demand has grown by 43% over the last 10 years, and our infrastructure has grown to accommodate it. So despite the impacts of COVID, the demand for our capacity has remained strong. Throughput on NGTL right now is about 300,000,000 cubic feet higher than last year, demonstrating both the resiliency and the criticality of our system. And we're building a $10,500,000,000 portfolio of secured growth projects on NGTL in the mainline over the next 3 years to move more of this gas to market.
Now together, those projects will add 4.1 Bcf a day of incremental delivery capacity to North American markets by 2024. And beyond North America, our Coastal GasLink pipeline will provide the 1st direct connection for WCSB Gas to global markets. And we're looking forward to helping our customers step into that market as well. And importantly, we're doing this in a manner that has created partners of many of our stakeholders and positioned us to be a proponent of the efforts in our industry to reduce emissions. So next, I'll turn to why I am so confident that we'll get there.
Now in 2020, an unprecedented year by any standard, we delivered against our commitments in an extraordinary fashion. This year, we've brought $3,100,000,000 in capital expansion capacity into service and we'll reach $3,300,000,000 by the end of this year, adding a Bcf a day of capacity on the NGTL system. Now this is the largest capital program we've ever completed in a single year since the NGTL system was built. And most of it was executed in the spring during the first wave of COVID and the launch of our corporate crisis response. But despite this, our team put this capacity in service on time and on budget.
This year, we also derisked our business commercially through long term agreements on both the NGTL system and the Mainline that secure our return on equity and provide mechanisms to drive further benefits for both us and our customers. Now these benefits are being realized and they're making the basin more competitive. The mainline settlement allowed us to reduce tolls by 35% between Empress and Emerson. And contracting on this system has now increased to 4 PJs a day. These are levels we haven't seen since 2007.
And our NGTL system or settlement aligns our interest with our customers during a time of uncertainty in capital markets. And this 5 year term of this agreement is something we have not achieved with our customers on the NGTL system since the 90s. And looking west, Coastal GasLink's construction continues to advance. We have now completed just over 30% of the project's engineering, procurement and construction activities. And this we have done with the full participation of our indigenous partners.
We've awarded 184 contracts to 84 indigenous businesses. And throughout this fall, we've employed about 850 indigenous workers. This, we believe, is part of executing well. Our relationships with our indigenous partners are among our most important. On Coastal GasLink, we work together each day with our partners in the 21st Nations through employment, through contracting opportunities and through other benefit streams to advance not only the project, but also the economies of many of the communities in the North.
And we're now adopting elements of this approach into our work on the Nangi TL system as well. Across all of our projects, we've identified over $1,000,000,000 in opportunities for indigenous businesses and awarded about $870,000,000 of those so far. I'm proud of this team. They've demonstrated the capability to innovate and to deliver in some of the most difficult circumstances that we've encountered. And these capabilities are going to be critically important as we look to our growth forward.
I want to emphasize the need for that growth in our system. Now through NGTL and our Canadian mainline, we moved gas to parts of Canada and the U. S. That need it the most. And as you can see, Canadian gas is in demand, both domestically and abroad.
We believe that the demand for the WCSB gas will grow by just over 4% a year through 2,030, driving the base into production levels of 23 Bcf a day. Now here in Alberta, that growth will come primarily from the increase in gas fired power generation and consumption in the industrial and oil sand sectors. In North America, we'll continue to participate in the growth of continental demand. And internationally, our gas we know is competitive in Asia and perhaps beyond, fueling growth in LNG experts. What makes WCSB Gas so attractive is the economics.
We have over 50 years of supply at less than $1 a GJ breakeven costs at current production rates. And our job is to deliver that gas competitively. We're positioning ourselves to do that. This map shows our growth plans in more detail. These expansions are commercially contracted and will help our customers capture the growth in markets across the continent.
NGTL's capital growth program will add 3 0.5 Bcf a day of delivery capacity to markets within and outside of Alberta. Now that's an almost 30% increase in NGTL throughput. Coastal GasLink will add another 2.1 Bcf a day into markets off the West Coast. This creates a total of 5.6 Bcf a day of new capacity to market, an increase of nearly 40% over the current production of the entire basin. And we know it's important to perform this expansion within fugitive emissions and gas loss during operations.
In Canada, we have about 10% of our compression fleet at electric, allows us to operate at lower emissions levels. And in the next few years, you will see us increase the amount of electric compression on our system. Where we can't currently reduce emissions directly, we're working through cap and trade markets to permanently retire emissions from the atmosphere. In 2020, we offset 10% of our total emissions and we continue to seek other innovative ways to reduce our footprint. And of course, through our base business, we already play a part in emissions reductions.
By delivering gas to Alberta's power sector, we've supported that coal to gas conversions that have helped to reduce emissions by 30% since 2015. And we know that the gas that will move to Asia through our Coastal GasLink system will drive the same types of emissions reductions in communities there. We're proud of the role that we put our plan to support emissions reductions. We believe it is about us playing our part and investing in our future. It will provide both benefits to the global emissions reductions efforts and represent investment opportunities for our network as well.
And of course, this investment is driving growth for our bottom line. You'll see that my colleagues today will discuss their financial performance in terms of EBITDA. In the Canadian rate regulated business, the items that you need to adjust in order to get to EBITDA flow mostly through the tolls. And as a result, the appropriate financial metric for this business is net income. And as we deliver on our programs to facilitate the increased volume, our system is continuing to expand.
Under this program, our investment base will increase to approximately $23,000,000,000 by 2024. Now that's an 8% CAGR since 2015. Net income will grow at the same pace from about $500,000,000 in 2015 to almost $1,000,000,000 by 20 24. So this program is producing results for our basin, for our customers and for our stakeholders. And I'm confident as I look forward that we'll continue to do so.
In the near term, we're streamlining our operations to lower our costs and minimize tolls. Now this brings the WCSB closer to market and helps attract more volumes to our system, particularly from the Montney region where supply is increasing. The WCSB drills about 1,000 new wells every year just to maintain production. Keeping up with that supply migration attracts more than $500,000,000 in capital investment a year on NGTL. And we are ensuring that, that production can move effectively into the marketplace.
This means executing our current program and expanding on that as the market opportunities grow. It also means developing new services that facilitate flow to these markets, like LNG tolling solutions that help the NGTL gas access export markets through Coastal GasLink. In Alberta, we're enabling the power sector shift towards a clean burning natural gas and away from coal. By 2025, NGTL will supply power plants with enough natural gas to displace 15 megatons of carbon dioxide a year. And we will ensure that the growth in the oil sands production is supported with gas supply.
Now these types of investments are incremental to the capital required to ensure that our systems continue to operate safely. We invest about $600,000,000 right now of maintenance capital into our systems each year. And this will increase as our system grows. Now this capital attracts the same return as our expansion capital. LNG Canada's potential Phase 2 expansion would increase capacity of that facility from 2.1 to 5 Bcf a day.
And that's going to require a corresponding expansion of Coastal GasLink through the addition of compression to the system. In the longer term, beyond this more organic growth, we believe the continuing evolution of new energy sources presents a meaningful opportunity for both our existing system and for additions to our system. We're working to establish exactly the nature of this opportunity on our and on our system in Canada. The policy and the regulations need to align and to do so in a way that protects or enhances the competitiveness of the basin. So we do see more capital investment opportunities that will lower our overall greenhouse gas emissions.
We have about 3,800 megawatts of existing compression that in the right circumstances can be converted to electric power. And we have a vast network of pipes that it can accommodate or can be made to accommodate hydrogen, biomethane and other forms of renewable or carbon neutral natural gas. We're closely monitoring the global developments in this space to understand how we may participate in a manner that supports our customers, reflects our risk profile and drives value. So it's an exciting future. What can you expect from us going forward?
Well, you can expect us to continue to operate safely and responsibly and reduce our emissions while we support a transitioning energy mix to a broader economy. We will continue to use our resources efficiently and maximize the value of our existing assets as we find innovative ways to meet our customers' needs by investing to serve their long term interests. And we'll complete the build of Coastal GasLink, execute our expansion program in the NGTL system, while we build our stakeholder partnerships, particularly with indigenous groups, so that we can all share in the economic benefits that flow from Canada's energy industry. You can expect us to adapt to the changing energy landscape. We have a strong team that's done a tremendous job in leveraging both our Canadian and U.
S. Networks to drive benefits to our basin, to our shippers and to our bottom line. Now I'm confident that the WCSB will continue to benefit from this team's creativity and resourcefulness, and I look forward to the success that they will drive in years to come. Now with that, I'll pass the podium over to Stan Chapman, who will discuss our U. S.
And Mexico business units. Stan?
Thank you, Tracy, and good morning, everybody. Due to the COVID travel restrictions, I wasn't able to join my colleagues in Calgary today. So I'm coming to you from just outside our offices in Houston, Texas instead. I'm excited to share with you my thoughts around our U. S.
And Mexico natural gas pipeline business. And by the end of our time together, I think you'll find that 2020 was another successful year and that we're poised for future growth, both over the short and long term. So let's get started with our U. S. Natural Gas Pipeline business.
Many of you are familiar with our assets, which I believe are best in class. We own and or operate in some cases with TC pipelines, our master limited partnership, natural gas pipelines that span about 32,000 miles across 40 states and transport 27% of the natural gas consumed in the U. S. As you'll see shortly, our assets performed really well despite the pandemic, proving that existing pipe in the ground is and will continue to be extremely valuable for many years to come. The locational advantage of our pipeline network combined with really strong market fundamentals, continues to provide a solid foundation for both conventional and transitional growth and our model of long term take or pay contracts predominantly with investment grade quality counterparties offers little risk.
So speaking of resiliency, I think we passed our first test this summer during the pandemic. As the world literally went into lockdown, demand destruction materialized, driving down LNG exports from their pre COVID levels of about 9 Bcf a day to just over 3 Bcf. Since then, as economies have reopened, LNG exports have recovered to an all time high of 10 Bcf a day and U. S. Natural gas demand overall has largely returned to its pre COVID levels.
On the supply side, production across the lower 48 states still remains about 7 Bcf a day below its historical highs from November 2019. This decline is due to several factors, including lower associated gas production arising from declining oil prices this past winter and to producers throttling back production over the summer in anticipation of higher prices materializing this winter and next year. And in fact, higher prices are exactly what we've seen as NYMEX prices for next year have been up as much as $0.80 from February levels, with the 2021 natural gas strip trading as high as $3.10 in recent weeks. Most importantly, through it all, we saw throughput across our 13 pipeline network increase 1.5% year over year, proving our assets are well positioned and resilient. Given that more than half of our pipes are essentially fully contracted and that 93% of our revenues come from take or pay contracts, we expect this level of performance to continue well into the future.
Now the successes that we've had over the summer was just a small part of a larger successful year overall. Despite losing about $90,000,000 in EBITDA due to the sale of our midstream business last year, we're positioned to deliver our 4th year of consecutive record earnings. We're on track to complete our Mod II and Buckeye Express projects on time and on budget. Our environmental and operational focus has reduced our methane emissions by about 14% year over year on an intensity basis. And we filed Columbia Gas' 1st rate case in over 20 years, including a proposal to extend our industry leading modernization program for 7 more years.
Now, I mentioned earlier that our business is supported by strong long term fundamentals. So I thought I'd take a minute or 2 to do a quick review. As you can see from the circles on the left, U. S. Natural gas demand continues to grow over the next 2 decades.
This forecast, which is from IHS, supports growth driven predominantly by Power Gen, which is growing by about 4 Bcf a day between now and 2,040 and exports, both LNG and exports to Mexico, which combined grow by about 17 Bcf a day over the same timeframe. On the supply side, while forecasts vary, they all coalesce around the same total production come 2,040 and all show growth amongst the Appalachian Basin, which along with the WCSB that Tracy mentioned are the 2 premium basins in North America. You'll see that as represented by the dash line, the IHS forecast, which is the middle bar, was recently revised to reduce its 2,040 Appalachian forecast down from 50 Bcf to about 38 Bcf. Now this reduction has nothing to do with the economics of the basin, but instead was based on the assumption that production would continue to be constrained by takeaway capacity and that no new greenfield pipelines would be constructed due to various regulatory and judicial headwinds. The EIA forecast on the far right bar has more of an unconstrained view and forecasts Appalachian production to reach over 47 Bcf a day by 2,040.
In either case, we're well positioned. Should the IHS view prevail, projects like our Buckeye Express, which goes into service at year's end, can subsequently be further compressed to economically deliver incremental volumes without triggering the same level of opposition as a greenfield build. In addition to being a major player in the Appalachian Basin, I should also note that today our U. S. Pipelines transport about 1 third of the WCSB production and a little over 80% of the natural gas production out of the Bakken.
So hopefully, you're starting to get the sense by now that our attractive assets, our proven ability to execute and strong fundamentals are driving growth, both in the short and the long term. The last year when I showed you a similar chart, we had about $2,000,000,000 of growth projects underway. And consistent with what I previously said that given the size and the breadth of our footprint, each year we should originate between 500,000,000 dollars to $1,000,000,000 of new growth projects. We are now managing about $2,800,000,000 of projects in various stages, including some that are pending FID or CPs as referenced in the footnote below. I should note that earlier this morning Sempra announced FID for its Costa Azul project, so that project is now live.
All of these projects are backed by long term take or pay contracts with some like our GTN Express project, which serves markets in the Pacific Northwest having contract terms of over 30 years. Our modernization program, which will be closing out second phase this year and recoverable maintenance capital are incremental to this organic growth. So combined, since the Columbia acquisition in 2016, we have advanced just under $14,000,000,000 of growth capital with $8,500,000,000 of that already placed in service. Now speaking of maintenance capital, as I mentioned during our earnings call a few weeks back, that was a big driver behind the filing of our rate case on the Columbia Gas system earlier this summer. Over the past several years, our maintenance capital spend has outpaced depreciation expense, thereby increasing rate base by about $1,000,000,000 This was the single biggest driver behind our rate filing with other rolled in projects, increased operating costs and higher property taxes also contributing to a higher overall cost of service.
A key element of our filing is the proposal of our 3rd modernization program, which is designed to recover $3,000,000,000 of facility upgrades over a 7 year period. The modernization 3 proposal will allow us to provide critical upgrades to our system and like our previous programs includes a mechanism under which we would recover a return on and of our capital investment with minimal delay and without the need for filing future rate cases. So our desire is to reach a comprehensive rate case settlement with our customers, FERC staff and other parties sometime next spring or summer. But in the unfortunate event that settlement discussions do not prove fruitful, the administrative law judge has established a procedural schedule that calls for an initial decision in November of 2021. And as a reminder, the rates associated with the rate case will take effect on February 1, 2021 and will be collected subject to refund such that if the final rates are less than what was proposed, refunds to customers will be due back to that date.
So longer term, our assets and the underlying market fundamentals position us well for future growth, both conventional and transitional. Now as shown on the previous slide, we'll continue to leverage the regulatory process and file rate cases as needed and to implement modernization programs on our other pipes where it makes sense to do so. With the combination of the Columbia rate case and the upcoming rate cases on GTN in 2021 and in ANR in January of 2022, about 70% of our revenues will be updated to reflect current capital investments, expenses and throughput. As we have in the past, we'll continue to pursue conventional growth projects. Given that our various Express projects have increased supply into our systems to the tune of about 8 Bcf a day, we will continue to primarily focus on adding new demand in the form of additional connectivity to LNG exports, to natural gas fired power generation and to LDC and other end use markets.
At the same time, we'll continue to originate compressor reliability and expansion projects as we have recently done with our Elwood and Wisconsin Access projects along with other constructible in corridor opportunities. Now projects such as these are unique in that they increase reliability and or capacity while driving down emissions. For example, our Wisconsin Access project will reduce CO2 equivalent emissions by about 1,600,000 tons over the project's life. So as we do these, we'll work closely with Corey and his power team to identify opportunities to electrify our system by strategically replacing gas fired compression with electric compression where economically and logistically feasible. It may be a little known fact, but about 5% of our existing compression fleet is electric driven with vintages ranging as far back as 1970 and which avoid about 500,000 tons of CO2 equivalent annually depending upon operating conditions.
Longer term, there likely will be new opportunities around carbon capture use in storage and hydrogen. So if you step back and you ask yourself, what do you need to be successful to implement carbon capture? Well, you need pipelines, you need storage and an extensive footprint, which is just what we offer. With respect to the opportunity set, the 25,000,000 tons of captured CO2 annually in the U. S.
Represents only about 1% of the nation's overall CO2 emissions from stationary sources. Hydrogen may be another growth opportunity longer term should demand materialize. Now putting cost and operational issues aside, given that on a volumetric basis, hydrogen is less energy dense than an equivalent amount of natural gas, it takes more or bigger hydrogen pipelines to deliver the same amount of energy as that contained in an equal volume of natural gas. So for example, spiking 10% of the natural gas stream with hydrogen will require about 20% more or bigger pipelines to deliver the same amount of energy. So seeing as how we are a company that thrives on building, owning and operating pipelines, we look at this as a potential opportunity that is complementary to our skill set.
So as these opportunities materialize, we'll be ready to move quickly as a significant portion of our existing compressor fleet can accept between a 4% to 10% hydrogen mix with no or little retrofits today and the new solar compressors that we're installing as part of our projects can easily be retrofitted for up to a 20% hydrogen mix. So to supplement the $500,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 of growth to create key strategic partnerships and we'll further invest in these technologies when they can be deployed safely and generate a return that successfully competes for the capital against other growth opportunities that we have. So when you put all this together, the aggregation of strong fundamentals, a a solid strategic vision and consistent execution, it all yields an impressive track record of historical results with promises of more to come. The more than 3 times increase in EBITDA from 2015 to 2024 equates to a CAGR of about 16%, one that's hard to match given our size and scale. So going forward, expect more of the same, maybe a little bit of something new yet complementary to our existing business.
We will continue the safe, reliable delivery of Essential Energy. We'll continue to have a strong execution focus and consistent EBITDA growth. We'll leverage the strengths of our diverse pipeline and storage portfolio, while taking advantage of new technology to drive down costs and increase margins. And lastly, we'll continue to mine for both conventional and transitional growth opportunities as we continue on our journey towards a cleaner, more secure and more prosperous energy future. So in the few minutes that I have left, I'd like to shift our focus to TC Energia, our Mexico Natural Gas Pipeline business.
Since its establishment back in 1995, our Mexico business has continued to grow as our 5 operating pipelines now transport about 25% of the natural gas consumed in the country. The build out of our pipeline infrastructure provides a critical link to the U. S. Enabling Mexico's energy transformation to thrive as the country shifts from fuel oil to natural gas. Now in support of this, for example, our Serdejas pipeline now transports about 20% of U.
S. Natural gas imports into Mexico. Our business is further reinforced by strong fundamentals, which has seen natural gas demand increase by 65% since 2000. And the combination of this historical demand and future growth strongly support the need for our Via de Reyes and Tula projects, which we are advancing in partnership with the CFE. Now, similar to our other businesses, under our low risk model, 99% of our revenues are underpinned with long term take or pay contracts that are paid in U.
S. Dollars. During 2020, we continue to enhance our pipeline network by completing the Tula East segment and the Guadalajara pipeline flow reversal. Despite the pandemic, we've continued to progress construction on the Via de Reyes project and we advanced our contractual negotiations with CFE on both the Via de Reyes and Tula projects. Lastly, we've demonstrated yet again our operating excellence with a 100% score in reliability and a perfect safety record.
So shifting over to the longer term natural gas fundamentals, the Mexico natural gas market is growing at a rate of 2.3% per year through 2,040. By comparison, the U. S. Natural gas market, which is more mature and much larger, is growing at a rate of about 1%. Most of this demand is driven by natural gas fired power generation, which is expected to grow by 50 gigawatts over the next 2 decades.
So in addition to satisfying new growth, such as bringing electricity to the 1,800,000 Mexican households that currently do not have it, this new natural gas fired power generation will displace high carbon fuels the country has historically relied on, thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants. So as shown on the right hand side of the slide, much of this demand will be sourced from the U. S, predominantly out of the Permian Basin, as U. S. Exports to Mexico increased from 5 Bcf to 8 Bcf a day or by about 60%.
So as you can see, favorable fundamentals strongly support our existing and planned growth projects. With respect to our existing projects, we've completed construction on the Guadalajara Reversal, which effective December 1, will allow Mexico's 3rd largest metropolitan area to be served with low cost Permian supply as opposed to much more expensive LNG imports. Our Villadores project is now 94% complete. And earlier this year, the pandemic closed the court systems across Mexico, and which in turn drove delays in resolving several local injunctions related to right of way acquisition for the project. But once these injunctions are resolved, we have about 6 weeks of construction to do along those segments and believe we can have the project in service by the middle of 2021.
Although the East and Western segments of our Tula project are complete, the Central or Mountain segment remains suspended due to government mandated indigenous discussions. With the Eastern segment complete and the system fully loaded, we're optimistic that we'll reach agreement with the CFE to begin making deliveries to markets off of that segment by year end. For the Central segment, we will continue to work with the government and CFE on a resolution, including the potential for a reroute to avoid indigenous concerns. A full in service of the Tula project is expected somewhere around 2 years after either the consultation or reroute discussions are concluded. So given our complementary relationship with CFE and their need to increase utilization of existing capacity they hold on upstream pipes in the U.
S, our prospects for additional growth continue to be promising. We continue to have productive discussions with CFE on cross border projects, which could lead to new in corridor expansion opportunities. And given the locational advantage of Western Mexico ports, the viability of LNG exports has increased as evidenced by the Costa Azul project, which again announced FID today and which will be supplied by our North Baja pipeline in the U. S. It's a great example of leveraging relationships and synergies between the two business units.
So longer term, there are several other LNG export projects targeting similar locations with in service states that are largely planned for the second half of the decade. As demand across our backbone systems in the heart of Mexico continues to emerge, future in corridor expansions will be driven by CFE's need to install additional gas fired power generation and to address reliability concerns from bottlenecks from existing third party pipelines. And lastly, don't discount the potential for new market connections as about 30% of the industrial and commercial sectors that are highlighted in the yellow areas of this map do not have access to natural gas and instead rely on less efficient and more carbon intensive energy supplies. So to summarize, we see more than ample long term growth opportunities that will advance social and economic development and promote environmental quality while providing attractive returns for shareholders. Similar to what we've seen in our U.
S. Business, EBITDA growth in Mexico has been quite impressive, more than tripling in value and generating a compounded average growth rate of about 14%. I should point out that the 2020 EBITDA depicted on this graph includes a one time bonus payment of about $55,000,000 associated with the successful completion of the Sur de Tejas pipeline. In the near term, we'll close out our Via de Reyes and Tula projects And in the long term, we'll look to capitalize on robust market fundamentals, a strategically placed system and our history of strong execution to ensure we compete for and most importantly win our share of additional growth going forward. So to conclude, I'll leave you with the notion that we have a strategically located backbone system in place and are continuing to grow it through a complementary relationship with CFE.
The fundamentals are strong, our execution is strong, the country risks are manageable and we're well positioned to be Mexico's energy infrastructure company of choice for many, many years to come. So now I'll turn the podium back over to David as we head into Q and A.
That's great. Thanks, Dan. As I mentioned at the outset, we are receiving questions electronically from our registered guests in the investment community. They are being fed to me. And so we'll start here with a first question that's come in for Tracy.
Tracy, in your presentation, you forecast demand for Canadian natural gas will grow to about 23 Bcf a day by 2,030. What implications might this have for future expansions on the NGTL, Coastal GasLink and Canadian Mainline Systems?
Thanks, David. The WCSB, of course, is prolific and it's got some of the lowest cost gas in North America. So we do expect the basin to grow by 7 or 8 Bcf a day over that time period. And what that means for us is the opportunity to extend our system to capture that growth in supply into the Montney region. And gas that comes under the NGTL system, of course, has a wealth of markets.
It can deliver into storage in the local Alberta market, can trade at net or get access to markets across Canada, the Northeast U. S, Mid Con, Western the Western market as well as soon off the West Coast into the global marketplace. So we see opportunities as this happens to extend our system, to increase supply in the Montney area, to build out the intra Alberta market to deliver the growing amount of gas demand there, to unleash kind of the next capacity in the mainline to deliver more of the basin's gas into Eastern Canada and ultimately off the West Coast with LNG Canada Phase 1 and what we'll I hope to see Phase 2 as well. So lots of opportunity.
That's great. Thanks, Tracy. Stan, the next question is for you. In your remarks, you indicated U. S.
Pipelines EBITDA is expected to grow to something north of $3,000,000,000 a year in 20 24. Could you provide a breakdown of the increase over the 2020 forecast, including assumptions for the Columbia rate case and the contribution from your growth projects?
Thanks, David. As you can imagine running a business as large and complex as the U. S. Natural gas business, there are lots of puts and takes. But if I were to distill everything down to maybe 4 main principles.
First, I would point to the Columbia rate case. I know that many of you are looking for us to give guidance with respect to exactly what that uplift could be. But again, I'm going to ask you just to bear with us. We have yet to have any settlement discussions with our customers. And until we get into the settlement process, it's just premature for us to do so.
So we'll just leave it with the phrase that we used at the earnings call a few weeks ago and to say that the revenue uplift associated with the rate case is meaningful. Another upside for us is the growth projects that I mentioned in my previous slides. You see that we now have about $2,800,000,000 of growth projects underway in various stages, 1 or 2 that are still pending FID or CPs. But you can largely think of us as building those growth projects at the upper end of a 5 to 7 times EBITDA multiple. Now partially offsetting that, we are seeing some higher operating expenses, due to a large part FEMSA's mega rule, for example.
And we're also seeing other cost creep associated with ad valorem taxes as we put additional plan in service and others. And then lastly, we're seeing a little bit of base rate declines on some of our smaller pipes that have rate case comeback provisions. So when you net all that together, EBITDA is forecasted to grow from about $2,700,000,000 in 2020 to about $3,000,000,000 in 2024, and that's how you account for the $300,000,000 or so increase.
Great. Thanks, Dan. Looks like the next question coming in is would be directed at both of you. So maybe we'll start with you, Tracey, and then turn it over to Stan. You both referred to hydrogen, renewable natural gas and carbon capture opportunities in your presentations.
What could those opportunities look like? And do you currently have any pilot projects underway?
Thanks, David. Of course, the most significant opportunity that we're all looking at is that 40 Bcf growth in per day growth in the consumption of natural gas every year. But we know that there will be opportunities for the other energy sources as well. If you look at most jurisdictions, the Canadian government, many of the provinces are developing hydrogen strategies right now. And most of them look to leverage the oil and gas sector to create a meaningful position in hydrogen going forward in carbon capture and sequestration.
And as this occurs, I would expect us to be involved in that. As well, if you look at the distribution companies, many of them have set targets for themselves on the amount of renewable natural gas that they'll handle or the green certified natural gas. And we're starting to move small amounts of the green certified natural gas in our system now. And we're working through where those opportunities where our position may evolve in those things. In general, I would say it's early days.
And it's difficult to know exactly how quickly this will come or how far it will go. We are doing the work to understand what our infrastructure is capable of and how we would position that infrastructure, including additions to the infrastructure. And in Canada here, we're also working to understand how policy will need to match the regulation to make sure that we remain competitive as we we all remain competitive as we go down this path. So in general, I'd just say energy requires infrastructure and that's who we are and what we do and I think it will be good for our business. Stan, you probably have something to add to that.
Tracy, my comments are very complementary to yours. Like you, we're going to be very thoughtful about this. I kind of view us as being at the evaluation stage or courtship stage where we're beginning to think about pilot programs and strategic partners. Just to run a few through a few opportunities, renewable natural gas, we currently take in about 10,000 dekatherms a day of receipts on our ANR and GTN system. And again, that's 10,000 dekatherms out of 25 Bcf a day of throughput.
So extremely, extremely small. The renewable natural gas that we're getting is very expensive to produce and really doesn't make sense without environmental credits. In terms of the opportunity set, the forecast that I've seen is maybe RNG gets to something like 7 Bcf of total supply by 2,040, which is maybe 8 Bcf or 9 Bcf a day. So relatively small in the big picture. Electrification is interesting and maybe something that's more of a near term opportunity for us.
As I mentioned in my remarks, we currently have 5% of our fleet is operated under electric compression. I do see us doing more of these Elwood and Wisconsin access type projects, but where feasible, we're going to look to install new electric compression rather than gas fired compression. Matter of fact, we are originating a project in Virginia right now. And I think we have a really good opportunity of putting some electric compression in there. When I look across our footprint, this may be a bit of an aspirational goal, but I could see us potentially doubling the size of our electric compression fleet from 5% to 10% sometime before the end of the decade.
And maybe that's a capital investment of around $1,000,000,000 So again, it depends upon a lot of factors such as cost, access to power, access to substations, etcetera. Carbon capture is one that's maybe on a little bit longer lease, but one that continues to intrigue us. Now there is a significant amount of supply of CO2 out there, obviously, both natural and manmade. And we're looking at our storage assets right now and looking at the geology and the Caprock integrity to see which is going to be most conducive to storing hydrogen. We're also looking at location to markets, where that demand is.
For many years, we used to scour the pipeline map looking for coal plants that were ready to retire so that we could build new power natural gas fired Power Gen. Well, now we're scouring that same map and we're looking for CO2 end users like refineries and ready mix concrete plants, for example. So we're also going to see CCUS is going to be a critical component should blue hydrogen ever take off. Blue hydrogen obviously less expensive than green hydrogen, but a whole lot more expensive than gray hydrogen, which is just taking the methane out of the ground. And I guess lastly, maybe with respect to hydrogen, I do see that as a much longer term opportunity where demand really needs to mature.
I see it as probably supplying power generation in the future, not necessarily getting into the 70% of U. S. Homes that have natural gas as a source for their hot water heaters or their stoves and the like. You hear a lot about hydrogen in Europe, but that's not a demand pull. That's mostly being a government push at this point in time.
There are some operational and safety risks associated with hydrogen. For example, it's a smaller molecule making it more prone to leaks. It has a lower combustion temperature. It burns with the near invisible flame and a lot of ultraviolet radiation that makes it really difficult to detect. And there's the potential for corrosion in the existing pipeline.
So all of these things may get worked out, but it's going to take time. And I agree 100% with Tracy. We build on and operate pipelines and to the extent that we need more hydrogen pipelines, should that be the path that we go down in the future, we're going to be right in the middle of the energy mix. Okay.
That's great, Stan. Next question that's come in is for Tracy. Tracy, maybe a 2 part question. In light of some of the delays we faced on the approval process for the NGTL 2021 program, Investors are wondering whether or not it might be more difficult in the future to acquire regulatory approvals on NGTL. And then the second part would be, have you given any thought to extending the temporary service protocol in the near term as a result of the delays on the 2021 program?
Thanks, David. The 2021 program, of course, is an important and badly needed piece of infrastructure for the basin, gets more than Bcf a day out to the mainline and into market and it supports the transition from coal to gas for power within Alberta. And we ran into a 5 month delay as we were approaching the approval of the GIC earlier this year. The final stages of consultation were occurring and collided with the onset of COVID. And so I hope that, that is a one off occurrence.
But as we know, the regulatory environment that we're in has these processes getting longer and far more complex. And we're doing everything that we can to mitigate that. We're getting to know our regulator, our new regulator well and trying to stay ahead of those concerns. We're designing our infrastructure to minimize impact. And we are working hard to ensure that we are ahead of the game when it comes to stakeholders, landowners, indigenous leaders.
And this is the difficulty in building infrastructure, I think, is something that's happening across North America. But I would say in the NGTL system, we're positioned well. This is in corridor expansion, almost all of it. It's looping pipe. It's adding compression.
So it's fairly straightforward. We work with the stakeholders that we know very well, and we have a team who knows how to do this well. So I think that the 2021 program, our experience on that hopefully will be a one off. As to the temporary service protocol, it's intended to be temporary and it was intended to ensure that there was the capability to get gas into storage over the summer period. And we did trigger it last fall, but have not had the need to trigger it over the duration of this summer.
And this summer, we put more gas into storage in this basin than we have, I think, in the last 20 years. And we didn't need the protocol. And so we don't favor the extension of the protocol largely because it's an ineffective mechanism to ensure access to storage. So it favors interruptible over firm contracts. It is only effective for certain parts of the basin, and it's only affected for certain time frames when we're in interrupting flow.
So we think there are much more effective ways to deal with the opportunity to ensure the capacity into storage and we and industry are working on that.
Thanks, Tracy. Stan, next question is for you. Given a wide range of views with respect to the outlook for production in the Appalachia, do you remain bullish on your growth prospects out of the basin? And maybe a second part to that question, do you anticipate any significant changes in the regulatory environment under a new U. S.
Administration?
Yes. Thanks, David. I tend to not pay too much attention to the headlines. I try to take emotion out of the equation and instead just do the math around the underlying fundamentals of our business. And when I do that, yes, I am still so bullish on what we do.
Energy demand in the U. S. Is going to be the same or higher on January 21, which is the day after Inauguration Day, as it was on January 19, which is the day before Inauguration Day. The election isn't going to change that. When you look at a stacking chart, the Appalachian Basin is very favorable with respect to its production economics.
Somewhere around 260,000,000,000,000 cubic feet can be produced at prices below $3 That's about 25 year supply at current production rates. Short term, there's somewhere around 5.75 DUC wells drilled but uncompleted wells. That can be turned on economically, can be turned on quickly. And when they are turned on, it's almost an instantaneous 2 to 3 Bcf a day increase in capacity. I would just go back to something that Francois mentioned in his remarks.
Our footprint really is our strength. When I look at projects like Buckeye Express that can be further compressed to economically deliver incremental volumes, along with our other in corridor expansion opportunities related to PowerGen and others. We're going to use our footprint to make sure that we can build these projects and to compete for and win our fair share of projects going forward. There's no doubt that in the regulatory climate we have today, new greenfield builds are getting to be more and more difficult. But that just means that the value of pipe in the ground is becoming more and more valuable.
As a matter of fact, despite the fact that more than half of our pipes are fully contracted, if we were to sell all the remaining capacity that we have across all of our pipes at max rates, that's an extra $300,000,000 in revenues for us. And that's what I talked about when I mentioned earlier about increasing margin. And then on top of all that, on top of all that, we still have our industry leading modernization programs that offers another form of growth. So again, take a step back when I look at the U. S.
Business, we're going to compete for and win $500,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 of growth projects a year. We're likely to have a continuation of our modernization program. That's another $300,000,000 to $400,000,000 investment and then $600,000,000 or so of maintenance capital that's recoverable. That's about $2,000,000,000 a year on average. So yes, I am bullish on the fundamentals in our future going forward.
Okay. Thanks, Dan. While we do have a couple of other questions, I apologize, but I think just in the interest of time, we are going to take a short break here, roughly 5 minutes or so, so that we can pick things up a little after 9 a. M. Mountain Time or 11 a.
M. Eastern Time. Again, there are a couple of additional questions that have come in. We will endeavor to get back to folks as soon as possible on that. So thanks again, and we will be back with you shortly.
Natural gas and the infrastructure that delivers it are deeply interwoven into our everyday lives. For the millions of small businesses that drive our economy, such as your favorite restaurants or local dry cleaners, natural gas and the pipelines and compressor stations that deliver it to the doorstep makes what they do possible. Many of the materials used to build things in modernized cities, such as glass, concrete, steel, bricks, ceramics and tile rely on natural gas in the heating, drying and melting stages of the overall manufacturing process. It may surprise you, but many of the things we use each day are produced using natural gas. That includes everything from plastics to pharmaceuticals and even fabrics.
Natural gas and the liquids derived from it serve as the building blocks in the chemistry used to create these products. The safe, reliable and efficient delivery of natural gas day in and day out creates cool, comfortable spaces when it's hot and warm habitable spaces when it's cold. In January of 2019, during an arctic blast known as a polar vortex that delivered some of the coldest and snowiest weather on record, natural gas pipelines across the United States delivered 132,000,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas in just one day. Because of that, doctors and hospitals were able to treat their patients, families kept their loved ones fed and warm, and individuals across the United States escape life threatening freezing temperatures. It's often taken for granted, but we are a major component of the power behind the plug.
Natural gas fired power generation is the cornerstone that makes everything turn on from appliances and smart devices at homes, traffic lights in cities, and even the computers that run the world. Not everyone may be aware, but in 2019, natural gas accounted for about 38% of U. S. Electricity generation, more than twice as much as from renewables. The transition from coal fired to natural gas fired electric generation is directly responsible for a 60% cumulative decline in carbon dioxide emissions in the U.
S. From 2,005 to 2018. That's pretty impressive. The increase in natural gas used for electricity generation has also led the way to a 14% decrease in overall greenhouse gas emissions in electric power generation from 2014 2018 and a 27% decrease when measured from 2,005 to 2018. That's equivalent to taking nearly half of the vehicles in the United States off the roads permanently.
Now, the economic and environmental benefits of natural gas can be realized on a global scale as innovation and advancements in technology allow for the export of abundant North American natural gas to countries around the world as close as Mexico and as far off as India and China so that millions of people can rely on the energy that natural gas and its related infrastructure delivers every minute of every hour of every day.
Good morning. I hope you enjoyed that video. It certainly outlined where we sit in the energy mix today. I want to thank you for your time, and I want to provide an update on our liquids business unit and our outlook for 2021 and beyond. Once I complete my question, David will moderate again.
I look forward to answering your questions that you may have. By the end of this presentation, I want you to take away that we believe our liquids business is strategic, it's unique, and it is growing sustainably. We connect a world class resource base to key refining markets where the demand is robust despite the market environment today. Our Keystone system moves approximately 20% of Western Canadian exports, and we provide access to approximately 6,000,000 barrels of key refining end use market. We continue to have high demand for our uncommitted capacity in our systems given its strategic positioning.
Our base Keystone system capacity is highly contracted with long term take or pay contracts with largely investment grade counterparties. Our Inter Alberta assets are similarly highly contracted and provide a stable revenue stream. Our infrastructure corridor is strategic, and we continue to see opportunities organically and inorganically to grow the business. We are executing our strategy with an acute focus on capital discipline. And most importantly, though, we operate our systems safely, reliably and competitively.
So North American oil is in the world's best interest. The commodity that we ship with our systems is unique and sustainable. A world class resource base is one that meets the highest environmental, social and governance ratings. This chart shows the aggregated ESG scores for each of these countries when considering independent data gathered by the World Bank Governance Index, the Social Progress Index and the Yale Environmental Performance Index. Canada and the U.
S. Are leaders in ESG when it comes to the energy industry. Canada also has a globally relevant resource. Canada's 2019 National Inventory Report submitted to the United Nations shows Canadian Oil Sands' greenhouse gas emissions intensity per barrel has fallen by over 30% since 1990. The Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance, COSIA, forecast further reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands by 30% over the next 5 years from progress and innovation amongst our shippers and producers.
As a source of heavy supply, Canadian supply is the most sustainable. So 2020, we had a great year, both operationally, but also a year a great year in our project execution. A top priority for our team this year was raising the bar on our system integrity, which we have done, but we will always continue to look for ways to improve. To date, we have safely delivered nearly 3,000,000,000 barrels with our systems. This year, we inspected over 3,000 kilometers of pipeline, used independent experts in a cold eyes review to assess our assets and continued to leverage technology to improve our performance.
Shifting to our project execution, we completed our Houston tank terminal project this year on time and under budget, giving us additional flexibility to optimize our system and create revenue opportunities. Keystone XL has also made great progress. Since our FID in March, we have completed nearly 200 kilometers of pipeline construction, including the international border crossing. We have also begun construction on 17 pump stations in each of the states that our project traverses as well as in Alberta. This activity has created over 3,000 jobs and with many more on the horizon as we enter a heavy construction season in 2021.
This morning, I'm happy to announce that we have completed our partnership agreement with Natural Law Energy, strengthening our commitment to working with indigenous communities. So market fundamentals were significantly impacted this year by the OPEC supply actions and the demand destruction that resulted from the COVID pandemic. Our contracted volumes continued to flow during this market downturn, highlighting the strategic nature of our infrastructure and the strength of our contracting strategies. Extremely tight differentials opportunities, though, during this downturn. Mid Continent and U.
S. Gulf Coast markets are showing signs of rebalancing post this demand shock. Refining utilization is beginning to increase. So we anticipate the next few quarters to remain challenging. Our revenues and EBITDA will likely look very similar to what you've seen in Q3.
The demand contraction caused by this excess supply in the short term will we expect that to recover. And in the long term, we see returning back to pre COVID levels after the second half of twenty twenty one. So we are well positioned to optimize our performance going forward. The demand we serve is very unique. We deliver to some of the most complex refineries in the U.
S. Gulf Coast and the Midwest that have those refineries have a sustained demand for U. S.-Canadian heavy production. Other sources of heavy supply globally are in decline, and that supports the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin being able to increase its market share going forward. Production growth out of Western Canada is expected to displace approximately 1,000,000 barrels of U.
S. Gulf Coast imports by 2,040 from countries with poorer ESG performance. We witnessed the resiliency of the heavy of the Canadian heavy demand during this dislocated market, as you can see on this chart. The heavy refinery runs in the U. S.
Gulf Coast and the Midwest continued to process our Canadian heavy feedstock during this market shock. So I want to provide a bit of an update on Keystone XL. We have taken the past year to listen to all the stakeholders and have made great progress in advancing the project. At FID, we put in place our partnership with the government of Alberta, solidifying our capital structure to accompany our highly contracted commercial structure. We announced project labor agreements with 4 U.
S. Unions, making the project 100 percent union built, creating over 12,000 high paying union jobs. We established a green energy training fund for the unions to support them through energy transition. I mentioned earlier that we finalized our partnership agreement with Natural Law Energy. TC Energy has a long history in working closely with our Indigenous nations, but we are very proud to have partnered in a historic way with Natural Law Energy, who represents 5 First Nations in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
This agreement will bring up to $1,000,000,000 of investment into KXL and related projects. We are operating on their traditional territories, and we share a set of core values about the environment and sustainable development. Outside of this investment, we expect to create $500,000,000 of incremental benefits to indigenous nations through direct jobs and using indigenous suppliers. We continue to work with other nations in Canada as well as the United States that are proximal to our pipeline to bring other partners into the project. We are taking and will continue to take progressive steps in how we develop infrastructure responsibly and sustainably.
We built a great foundation this year with this project, with our partners, and the importance of this project remains steadfast. A key part of our job is to maximize the value of our existing assets. Market fundamentals for long haul volumes continue to be strongly supported. Our infrastructure corridor is strategic. We are proximate to growing supply basins and connected to the key U.
S. Markets. We continue to advance and develop in corridor projects with our Heartland pipeline, Grand Rapids Phase 2 and our Keystone Hardisty terminal, all fully approved by the regulator. We continually look for ways to leverage our footprint. Growth opportunities continue to exist for those well positioned with access to capital, and TC Energy is one of those advantaged players.
Our team is also monitoring select inorganic opportunities that would complement our system, both pipeline assets as well as terminalling assets. Crude exports are also expected to increase substantially between 2020 and export capacity already under expansion, providing another opportunity for our business. Shifting now to our outlook in terms of our financial performance. Our Liquids business benefits from a highly contracted capacity, which supports our long term revenue outlook. The market challenges were acute this year, but long term fundamentals remain strong.
Our uncontracted volumes were lower across our business, but we see recovery on the horizon and a robust outlook due to the competitiveness of our asset base. The supply we serve is long life, low decline reserves, and the demand that we serve is the largest and most globally competitive refining market. In the short term, we expect our uncontracted volumes to recover post-twenty 21. Long term, as you can see from this chart, we are set to effectively double the size of our cash flow and earnings contributions led by Keystone XL. Looking ahead, what are our commitments of our business unit?
Well, first off, they are to continue to operate safely and reliably. There is no higher priority in our business today. We will enhance our existing asset base to maximize the value to shareholders. We will execute with excellence. Today's quality is tomorrow's safety.
And that is something that we've taken to heart this past year in all the efforts that our teams have done in executing through this COVID environment. We will invest in innovative initiatives and technologies to drive improved performance, And we will preserve and enhance our strong relationship with indigenous communities, stakeholders and all the landholders that are on our system. So thank you for your time. I look forward to any questions that you may have.
It's great. Thanks, Bevan, for your remarks. Once again, we are again taking questions electronically from registered investors, if you will. Take a little bit of time for them to come in, but Bevan, we have one here that maybe I'll start with. Could you provide a little more detail on Natural Law Energy's investment in Keystone XL?
Does it provide them with a specific ownership interest? Or might it be something similar to the province of Alberta's commercial arrangement?
Yes. Thank you, David. Yes, this morning's announcement is a great accomplishment by our team. Partnering with NLE will help us achieve our goal of strengthening our relationship with indigenous nations that are proximal to the project, as I mentioned. The commercial terms are confidential, but this investment will be a long term minority interest in the project.
And just as our shippers provided the commercial support at FID and the government of Alberta has supported our capital structure, the partnering with Natural Law Energy is part of how we will reposition the project. And while the government of Alberta will exit the structure once the asset is in service, Natural Law Energy's interest will be in for the long term.
Thanks, Bevan. Next question that we've received is, was asking about the U. S. Election results. What would be the path forward at this point for Keystone XL?
And will you continue to spend money on the project in advance of getting greater clarity on the legal, regulatory and permitting front? Great. Thanks, David.
Well, we have worked with many governments at provincial, state and federal levels, and the Keystone XL project aligns with the stated goals of these key stakeholders. The fundamentals have not changed that drive the contracting strategy for the Keystone XL project, and we have met or exceeded all the regulatory requirements for the project. We execute we have been executing this year with the highest care for the environment and the safety of our workers and the communities that we operate in. And we have put in place our partnerships and the capital and commercial structure to advance the project to protect the ability to proceed, but also to protect our shareholders. So as I mentioned earlier, our focus is on capital discipline, and we will only spend dollars that prudently move the project forward.
Thanks for that. Next question. Could you provide a breakdown of your 2024 EBITDA forecast, including the contribution from Keystone XL as well as Base Keystone and our Market LinkLiquids Marketing business.
Yes. Thanks, David. I'll start with 2020. Where our business sits today is we're approximately 80% contracted with our uncontracted volumes and our marketing affiliate being the 20% swing. Our outlook is that we'll see improvement on our uncontracted volumes and marketing revenues later next year when markets recover.
But for the 2024 forecast with Keystone XL in service, our revenues will have a much higher contracted profile. Our EBITDA forecast is based on a contracted proportion well over 90% at that time.
Okay. Next question. Will the will Natural Law Energy will they invest the $1,000,000,000 And what sorry, when they invest the $1,000,000,000 what is their anticipated rate of return on their investment?
Well, as I mentioned earlier, the terms of the agreement are confidential, but I can convey that their equity investment will yield a commercial return and will not be dilutive to our project returns to our shareholders on the Keystone XL project.
Okay. Looks like we've got another one that's just come in. What does your 2024 EBITDA outlook assume for Keystone volumes under the amended presidential permit?
Yes. Thanks, David. We held an open season in 2019 that was 19 that was concluded in July, and that was conditional on receiving an amended presidential permit. With the amendment now issued, we're able to begin ramping up capacity only though when we have completed our review of our system with our regulators. Our 2024 EBITDA forecast that we will be will are based on that we will be flowing the full amount of that open season in addition to our base volumes.
Okay. Looks like they continue to pour in. Sorry, next question. For your agreement with Natural Law Energy, you noted the agreement contemplates NLE pursuing an interest in future liquids projects. Could you please elaborate on what types of projects those might entail?
And are only new projects contemplated? Or could that include your existing assets?
Great. This is a great question. As I mentioned, it was up to $1,000,000,000 of investment. Our strategy with Natural Energy is to for this to be the start of our relationship. Keystone XL project moving forward.
Those could include our terminalling assets and Hardisty that I mentioned that we already have regulatory approval on and other direct tie in type projects into the KXL system that could further enhance our ability to drive value out of that asset base. And we'll be as we continue to monitor the our project execution going forward and the new elements of opportunities that come up, we'll work with them as partners to see if it makes sense to bring them as partners in those asset opportunities as well.
Thanks, Bhavin. Next question. Have you had any feedback from the incoming administration in the U. S. About KXL?
And is there anything else you can do to reposition the project and make it more appealing to the incoming administration?
Well, David, we've looked at the incoming Biden administration's Build Back Better plan. And the steps that we've already taken with Keystone XL, we believe have positioned it very favorably, particularly as we go as we bring jobs to the economy next year, a key platform for the U. S. Government as we recover from the COVID pandemic. We've established the strong labor agreements with those 4 U.
S. Unions, bringing U. S. High paying union jobs to bear, which is again directly aligned with the Biden administration. We have been able to set up a green training fund for training union workers to transition to those green jobs.
And as we just discussed, we've brought in our First Nations, first now in Canada, but we are close to bringing in further partnerships in both Canada and the U. S. With other tribal nations. So we believe that those steps have repositioned us very favorably. And we've you've seen the public support from the Canadian federal government even as recently as the last few weeks upon the transition of the Biden administration.
Okay. The next question that we've received is with respect to your presentation, Bevan. In it, you mentioned select inorganic growth opportunities. Could you give us some color on what type of transaction size you might be targeting? Are they asset or corporate based or both?
And what geographies do you see these opportunities unfolding in? Okay. Well, I'll
start with transaction size. We're looking at bunts and singles and doubles where they complement our strategic footprint today. Leveraging our corridor, accessing new markets, providing new delivery options for our shippers is what we're targeting today. We see the growth, particularly in the U. S.
Gulf Coast and strengthening the corridor between the Cushing and the golf course market and those export assets that we've that I mentioned earlier.
Okay. Looks like that was a lot covered in 25 minutes or so, so which may be record time. So with that, I guess I'll thank Bevan for offering his comments and to the investment community for their questions on our Liquids Pipelines business. And while we're running a little bit ahead of time, I'll now invite Corey Hessen, who is our Senior Vice President of the Power and Storage Business to join us on the stage here. Corey is going to provide you with an overview of Power and Storage.
And then Francois Poirier, who is President of the Power and Storage Business in his current capacity, will join Corey for the Q and A session. So with that, I'll ask Corey to step forward.
Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone, and appreciate the introduction. Hello. I'm pleased to be with you here today as the new Senior Vice President of the Power and Storage Business Unit. I officially joined TC Energy in September, but after being in the power industry for over 20 years and long background in this sector, I've seen a lot of change over the years and fundamentally believe that electrification and the energy transition is upon us and TC Energy is well positioned to participate.
TC Energy's power and storage portfolio consists of high quality assets that are performing well. In my presentation today, I will elaborate on our current assets and their performance. I will speak to development opportunities within our existing footprint and talk about some of the growth areas we are exploring right now. Additionally, will discuss how we are closely following emerging trends in technologies and how we can take advantage of the opportunities they present. I will start off today by giving you a lay of the land.
Today, we have ownership and interest in 7 generating stations located in Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. These stations collectively consist of approximately 4,200 Megawatts, a low cost, low emission based load generating capacity that is underpinned by long term contracts. It's one of the larger privately held portfolios in all of Canada. The largest piece of the portfolio is our 48.4 percent interest in Bruce Power, a 6,400 Megawatt Nuclear Power plant located in Ontario. In addition to our generating assets, we have 118 Bcf of non regulated natural gas storage in Alberta, which makes up approximately 1 third of the total storage capacity in the province.
Our power and storage assets provide quality earnings and are core components in the overall corporate asset base. We look at our Power business as a key part of our growth strategy in the next decade. With our existing business expertise and asset base, we are well positioned to assess growth opportunities across the entire electricity sector. 2020 was a good year for the power and storage portfolio as well. We achieved many of the objectives we set out to accomplish.
We have seen solid financial results in the business through safe and efficient operations of our assets. Our earnings are stable and predictable. Year to date EBITDA has come in at above plan levels. Bruce Power started its first major component replacement outage or MCR. And in January of this year, the performance of Bruce Power has really been exceptional in 2020 despite all the challenges associated with COVID-nineteen.
Year to date output is above planned levels and forced outage rates are below plan. Not only is Bruce Power a high functioning generating asset, it's actively growing new lines of business. It is also the world's largest supplier of Cobalt-sixty. This is an isotope used to treat brain tumors, breast cancer and to sterilize medical equipment. In addition, these medical isotopes are being used in the fight against COVID-nineteen.
The sale of our Ontario natural gas fired power plants earlier this year has allowed us to surface good value for our shareholders. Proceeds from this transaction will be used to help us fund our capital program, thereby reducing our need for access to external capital, including issuing common equity for use in our growth opportunities. Beyond our efforts at Bruce, we have also advanced several growth initiatives at TC Energy in 2020, all centered around the energy transition, and I'll detail these in further in upcoming slides. Ontario continues to be a core market for us as demonstrated by our commitment, our continued investment in Bruce Power. Bruce Power is a highly relied upon asset in Ontario, providing 30% of the total need power and electricity needs for the province.
Bruce Power's operations support 22,000 direct and indirect jobs annually, contributing $4,000,000,000 through the direct and indirect spending in operational equipment, supplies, materials and labor. As I mentioned earlier, the facility is operating well and continues to achieve excellent safety and operating results. Its management team is world class and continues to attract talent from across the nuclear industry. Over the next 20 years as Bruce Power refurbishes its fleet through its life extension and MCR projects, it will add an incremental 5,000 direct and indirect jobs and an incremental $2,000,000,000 in annual direct and indirect spending. Further, we are truly pleased by the support the Ontario government has publicly voiced for the nuclear industry and specifically for Bruce Power.
As I mentioned, Bruce Power's life extension and MCR projects are key to providing Ontario with emissions free, low cost, reliable electricity for decades to come. The Unit 6 MCR is proceeding well. The MCR project preparation phase was declared complete on October 1, ahead of the ISO's planned schedule and budget. This work included installation of protective shielding and bulkheads to isolate Unit 6 from the operating units. The next step in the project is the fuel channel feeder replacement program, which involves the removal and replacement of major components, including pressure tubes, calandria tubes and feeders inside the reactor.
Our share of the life extension spend in the 2020 to 2023 timeframe is $2,400,000,000 and the capital cost estimate for the remaining 5 units is about $5,800,000,000 We believe Bruce Power, MCR and Asset Management program is a sound long term investment for TC Energy. There are 3 Bruce Power initiatives related to innovation I would like to share with you. First, I spoke earlier on Bruce's valuable contribution to the medical community via the isotope production. This initiative is also very important to TC Energy and Bruce Power because of the partnership with the Saugeen and Jimboe Nation or SAN. In 2019, the SAN and Bruce Power entered into a collaboration agreement to jointly market new isotopes in support of the global fight against cancer, while creating new economic opportunities within the Saan territory.
2nd, Bruce Power is exploring small modular reactor technology. An agreement with Westinghouse to pursue applications of Westinghouse's micro reactor was made in 2020. This activity allows TC Energy to closely follow the SMR developments and may offer insights into future investment opportunities for the power and storage business. And third, Bruce Power is evaluating the opportunity for mass production of hydrogen using nuclear technology. Although it's early days, through its participation in the Nuclear Innovation Institute, Bruce Bauer is collaboratively advancing research into how nuclear power can play a role in the future hydrogen economy.
Changing gears now, I'm going to talk about future growth for power and storage. This is a slide showing the broad fundamentals of the electricity marketplace and the shift to low carbon generating assets or in other words, the energy transition. Economic growth, demographics, electrification, energy efficiency and distributed generation all impact power demand. Overall grid demand is expected to grow modestly in the next decade at just under 1% per year. The graph identifies significant growth in solar, wind and natural gas with a reduction in coal fired capacity as part of the supply stack in the next decade.
This change in the supply stack increases the need for firming resources like natural gas and pumped hydro storage. These resources are critical to maintain the stability of the grid, support reliability and create the platform for the energy transition. We see a bright future for the Power and Storage business unit and this slide reflects how we think about growth. We intend to leverage our 20 year plus experience in the power business to grow our portfolio. Our experience with hydro, wind and solar assets in the recent past demonstrate the expertise required to enter into new markets and new generating assets.
Additionally, we run successful power and natural gas trading desks, which provide us additional insights into the details of energy markets. Finally, our long standing partnerships with developers, engineers, constructors, equipment manufacturers and others provide us the opportunity to properly evaluate real time opportunities. A recent example of our growth into solar assets is our execution of a long term PPA for the 74 Megawatt Claire's home solar project right here in Alberta. Our commercial expertise in the Alberta energy only market allows us to properly evaluate and execute the PPA. Further, we are exploring opportunities to electrify and green some of the electricity loads in our other business units here at TC Energy, and we will talk about that in a bit more in an upcoming slide.
Innovation and the advancement of technology in the power sector is also a key to our growth aspirations. Great strides are being made across the sector, including progress in batteries, nuclear small modular reactors, hydrogen, CCUS and others. We see a role for TC Energy and Hydrogen Infrastructure Development as it closely aligns with our core business. We safely operate over 93,000 kilometers of gas pipelines and 653 Bcf of natural gas storage. Expertise in moving fuel and the storage of gases fuels along with power generation are all components that are required in the growth of the hydrogen economy.
As I mentioned earlier, growth in intermittent generation resources will drive the need for firming resources. Currently, the vast majority, 93% of all electricity storage on the grid is pumped hydro. In the future, firming resources such as pumped hydro will make use of renewable generation that otherwise may be curtailed by storing it during times of excess and redeploying it during times of need. We are focused on utility scale pump hydro and feel we have a competitive advantage in developing this product, Managing projects that are large, technically challenging, have multi year planning requirements and have regulatory complexities is something TC Energy does well. Utility scale pump storage demands all of these skill sets.
Today, we have a grid scale pump storage project under development in Meaford, Ontario. It's a 1,000 Megawatt project with 8,000 Megawatt hours of capacity. This means it can produce at 1,000 Megawatts for 8 consecutive hours if required, providing enough electricity for 1,000,000 residents of Ontario. Our other pump storage project Canyon Creek is being developed in Alberta. It's a 75 Megawatt project with 2,775 Megawatt hours of capacity.
This means it can produce at 75 Megawatts for 37 consecutive hours, if required. This is a smaller project, but has more storage capacity in its initial design. This increased capacity is designed to take advantage of price volatility in the energy only Alberta market. Price volatility can occur during certain weather conditions like cold snaps or heat waves or when there is some kind of mechanical problem on the grid. As we look to the future, the power and storage business is exploring opportunities to electrify and green some of the company's energy loads.
This includes studying the possibility of electrification of some pipeline compression as Stan alluded to earlier. It also includes items such as switching to green electricity for existing electricity consumption. Our strategy is a gender load match plan, which focuses on aligning TC Energy's electricity loads to new renewable development opportunities across our footprint. This strategy allows us to connect with renewable energy developers and provide them with a solid creditworthy counterparty, enabling those developments to obtain attractive project financing and ensure implementation of the project. Additionally, we are actively evaluating options to purchase renewable projects where possible.
Lastly, we are also looking at generating emission free power via available waste heat at select compressor sites. We have a test project underway here in Alberta and we're partnered with Siemens. On this slide, I'll provide a snapshot on Power and Storage's earnings. The darker blue is our ongoing base business. Excuse me.
The darker blue is our ongoing base business EBITDA and the outline represents assets sold. These sales include Coolidge, which was sold in 2019 and the Ontario natural gas fired plants sold in the Q2 of this year. There is about $120,000,000 of EBITDA growth from 2020 to 2024 inside the base business. The main point here is that we intend to deliver beyond the 2024 estimates shown. Well, we have come to the end of my presentation.
And to sum things up, I'll highlight a few key takeaways. Number 1, our first priority is always on the base business. We will continue to maximize the value of our portfolio through operating safely and reliably. 2nd, we will continue to progress the life extension and MCR program at Bruce Power. 3rd, we will execute a disciplined and systematic approach to participation in the energy transition, which includes targeting firm capacity, specifically large complex projects, leveraging TC Energy's base business to develop electrification opportunities internally through agenda load match strategy, pursuing low risk investments in the power space and increasing diversity in our generating technologies, and finally, evaluating new power generation technologies and actively participating in these technologies that align with our core expertise.
We see a lot of opportunity for the Power and Storage business unit, and it will be instrumental as part of the growth of TCEnergy in the next decade. I'd like to thank you for your time, and I'll pass things back to David now for Q and A.
It's great. Thanks, Corey. As I mentioned at the outset of Corey's presentation, Francois Poirier is going to join Corey and I on the stage here as well to take your Q and A. And maybe Francois in the interest of giving Cory a second to catch his breath. It's like one of the first questions that's come in is related to potential opportunities to invest in the regulated electric infrastructure and renewable space.
Given market valuations for these types of assets, could you achieve scale either through greenfield development or M and A without compromising your targeted rates of return or risk preferences?
Thanks for that question. And as I've said before, I think we think about M and A on an opportunistic basis. If your strategy your growth strategy is relying solely on acquisitions in order to deliver your growth, it's quite likely that you're going to lose some of the discipline you have in terms of managing risk and return and maintaining that price discipline. Our preference is to grow through organic means and that we supplement that organic growth with acquisitions. Having said that, as you saw with the Colombia transaction, sometimes it's difficult to build incumbency, and you have to acquire it.
So to the extent an opportunity became available that was consistent with our risk preferences, and we could earn a return on enough capital inside the life of the investment underpinned by regulation or long term contracts and we could accelerate our penetration and our incumbency into different markets along the energy value chain, we would definitely consider those. We have a core competency in integrating businesses. And from my perspective, it's something that's going to serve us well down the road. But again, M and A for us is an opportunistic add on. And I believe and I know Corey believes that we can continue to grow our power business.
I agree with him. I think we're going to beat that 6% growth over the long term. That's certainly our ambition. We see opportunity. We see that area to be opportunity rich for us, and it matches up well with our core competencies.
Thanks, Francois. The next question, maybe I'll direct it your way, Corey. Could you elaborate on the work that Bruce Power is doing in the areas of small modular nuclear reactor technology and the mass production of hydrogen? What types of future investment might these opportunities create?
Thank you. It's really a great question. And as you heard from my presentation, I think Bruce Power has got their hands full with a lot of work upcoming in the future on their core business. But what they've done a great job of is really partnering with other members of the nuclear community to build an ecosystem so that they can advance those types of new technologies, whether it be small modular reactors and partnering with OEMs or partnering with other developers on determining the best path forward and also working collaboratively with government agencies think about future licensing and other needs as well. So I would say that what it does for us is it allows us to have insight into what is happening real time in those technologies and then be able to share that data with our customers and be able to apply them to opportunities in our jurisdictions.
Thanks, Corey. Next question for you. You mentioned renewable investment opportunities in your remarks. Could you elaborate on that a little bit more? And do you foresee it becoming a larger part of the business mix, if you will, within power and storage?
It's another really good question. And I would say that based solely on the future of the electrification of the economy, one would have to believe that all of our portfolios are going to become more dependent and more have a larger component of renewable energy, especially as costs for both wind and solar continue to come down and technology improves, we will be opportunistic on how we can add opportunity sets in this sector to our portfolio and be able to leverage it across the entire TCEnergy business so that our internal customers as well as the power and storage business can take advantage of the value created.
Okay. Next question is on our pump storage initiatives. Sorry, it's a multifaceted question. Maybe we'll start by providing a little bit of background on those initiatives with regards to what we have going on, Cory, particularly in Ontario. And then maybe in addition to that, could you maybe highlight what's required what will be required to get that to FID?
How long might that take? And then how long to get it into service post FID?
That's a good question. Lots of pieces to it. Our pumped hydro project in Meaford is a collaboration between TC Energy and the SON located near Meaford. And we are currently in process of working with the ISO and Her Majesty's government for determining and examining the commercial underpinnings for the potential project going forward. Like we stated earlier in my prepared comments, much of that of any pumped hydro project is complex.
It is a long lived project and it will take us time to work through a program that will serve the needs of the Ontario constituency as best as possible. So we expect that it's going to be a process measured in months and not days, and we expect to continue to work with our stakeholders in effective fashion.
A couple of questions that are coming in around the electrification of our pipeline network. How significant could that investment opportunity be for the Power and Storage segment? And how should we think about your direct investment opportunities versus those that may be contracted out to 3rd parties?
Maybe I'll start and Corey can supplement. As I think you've heard from Stan and Tracy in their remarks on the natural gas side of the business, We have about 425 compressor stations across our fleet in Canada, the U. S. And Mexico. The horsepower equivalent in megawatts is about 8,000 megawatts of load, which is very substantial.
But as I think Stan mentioned, considering reliability, access to the transmission grid, what is the underlying generation that would be supplying the electricity and are you in fact reducing your scope to emissions as part of that electrification process. We see that as an opportunity to perhaps increase our electric motors in terms of the compression from perhaps 5% to 10% in the U. S. And from 10% to 15% or 20% in Canada, but over the next decade or more. With respect to the underlying generation that would stand behind that, it's clearly an opportunity for us to invest as a principal through our power and storage business.
In fact, our natural gas business or any other of our business units would become an internal client of ours. And I can tell you in terms of our ambitions and looking at our own internal consumption, we could effectively become one of the top 10 corporate PPA counterparties in the world over the course of the next 10 years. How do we measure that in megawatts? Is it 1,000 megawatts? Is it 2,000 megawatts?
You can apply your own rule of thumb with respect to the capital cost per megawatt going forward for a build out of our renewables fleet. But we see it as a significant opportunity for us not only to reduce emissions and reduce our footprint across our fleet, but also as a growth opportunity in a way for us to allocate capital going forward to grow our power and storage business in quite a meaningful way.
Thanks for that, Francois. Next question, how does small nuclear sorry, small modular reactor technology at Bruce fit with the MCR plan? Is it expected to modify the MCR plan or supplement?
Yes, I think that it's separate and distinct. The idea of small modular reactors and the investigation and the evaluation of it as a new technology really is an opportunity for Bruce to demonstrate its expertise in the nuclear industry and partner with other participants in that sector to ensure that we are moving the technology forward over the course of the next 5, 7, 10 years.
Okay. Corey, maybe a related question. Could you frame the opportunity with Westinghouse? And when do you expect the commercialization of micronuclear reactor technology?
Well, like I said earlier, I've been in the power business for 20 years. And the development of small modular reactors or micro nuclear technology has been around for a while, and we are starting to finally get some momentum in the industry making real meaningful progress. But I do think there's still some key elements that need to be resolved and that will be a collaborative partnership between government and manufacturers. So if I were a betting man, I would say it's something that's in sort of the 5 to 10 year time frame before any of the technologies have reached all of those licensing and technology goals to make them ready for implementation.
Maybe I'll just quickly flip back to Ontario pumped hydro and our project there. Just an additional sort of question, Corey. What do you see as the biggest challenges to getting it to FID?
I think the biggest challenge to getting that project to FID is aligning with all the stakeholders around the commercial terms and conditions in order to receive proper rate recovery for the risk that's taken in order to put a project of this magnitude and this size in place. It's not a simple project. It will be a large investment by a number of different parties. And so it's important that we reach a collaborative outcome on how we do that and what are the economic terms and conditions.
And next one, maybe for you, Francois, you might want to start. Is there any potential for TC Energy to increase exposure into transmission assets? And are there any material gating factors that would prevent you from considering these types of assets?
Thank you
for the question. It's an asset class that we really like. It's developing, building and operating long linear infrastructure over multiple jurisdictions under typically federal regulation, but also in some instances state regulation. I think it matches up very well with our core competencies. As I'm sure you're aware, we expect to see tremendous investment being required in transmission and distribution assets as the grid rebalances and the energy supply mix evolves incorporate more renewables and their intermittency and also the more distributed nature versus the centralized nature of the more traditional fleet.
So that means that in many instances, transmission assets are embedded inside utilities. But to the extent there are opportunities for us to invest in dedicated transmission projects, as I said, I think it very much fits our risk preferences and our core competencies around developing long linear infrastructure, and I think it's something that we would have a strong interest in pursuing.
Okay. And I think we've got time for one more question, I think very much on a related note. With your desire to grow in power and mentioning regulated, do you have an interest in acquiring an electric distribution utility? And if so, how do you view interacting with a significant number of retail customers versus your existing smaller customer base?
Maybe I'll take that one again. That's a very fair question, and it's something that is at the forefront of our minds. We operate long linear infrastructure under federal regulation. We have hundreds of customers. In many cases, distribution utilities operate under state regulation with millions of customers.
And so it is in many respects, our core competencies do translate to distribution. But in some other respects, for an asset of that nature, more than likely, we would be relying on acquiring those competencies with mind and management that would come along with those distribution assets. As I said, with respect to the evolution of the generation mix, we do see significant investment in distribution infrastructure being required. And to the extent we can earn a return on enough capital consistent with our risk preferences, this would be a situation that we would be very interested in. On the distribution side as opposed to the transmission side, I think it's more likely that it would be through acquisition as opposed to development.
On the transmission side, I think there may very well be equal opportunity to both develop or acquire those types of assets.
Okay. Thanks, Francois. I think that in the interest of time, I think we'll leave it at that. So that concludes our Power and Storage segment. I thank both Corey and Francois for their insight on that part of our business.
And we're now going to transition into a finance update. Don Marchand, our Chief Financial Officer, will join us now. Again, he'll provide you with an update on many of the initiatives that are underway here and provide you with some background on the financial side of the business between now and 2024. With that, I'll turn things over to
Don.
Great. I'll just remind everyone of the old adage that the camera adds £10 but nobody ever said the same thing about IQ. That said, I'm still perplexed how I could have all my suits managed to shrink just hanging in the closet for the past several months here. Thank you for joining us. Good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are.
2020 was truly one for the ages, not quite finished yet, but pleased to say that our business model once again has been battle tested and performed extremely well as we would have expected. We are executing despite COVID. We will advance a $10,000,000,000 capital program this year, bring $5,000,000,000 of assets in service. Our operations are largely unexpected financially, and we've done all that safely. We our financial strength and liquidity remain robust as does our growth portfolio with 30 $7,000,000,000 in flight right now.
We continue to add new projects. And I would characterize our opportunity set as tremendous as you've heard over the course of the morning, and I'll touch on it again here over the next few minutes. With that as a backdrop, we expect the dividend to grow 8% to 10% in 2021 and 5% to 7% thereafter. So for the next 25, 30 minutes, I'll expand on these themes as well as usual test your eyes out on a few of these slides in smaller font. A few housekeeping matters to start here.
In terms of key assumptions, despite borrowing 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars from our yet unborn great grandchildren, we'll assume that fiat currency continues to exist and we won't revert to bartering. With that, we expect the Canadian U. S. Exchange rate to be 1.35 through 2022 and 136 thereafter. Coastal GasLink is equity accounted for in this presentation after our equity sell down that was completed in May, and we assume we move to a 25% ownership stake in 2021.
We acknowledge that we have a non binding offer outstanding to acquire the publicly held units of our pipe LP. However, neither completion of a transaction nor any future drop downs are reflected in these slides. So with that, I think it's always helpful to quickly revisit our key tenants as to how we operate our business. We've attempted to freshen these up over the years, but fundamentally nothing's changed over the past couple of decades, and they have served us extraordinarily well navigating the myriad of events and disruptions over these many years. Firstly, we take a very long term view.
It is grounded in fundamentals and we are not trends chasers. We believe time and its compounding effect are powerful and offer under often underappreciated in a short term focused world. Our risk preferences inform when and how we invest capital. Fundamentally, as we've always indicated, we lock in revenue streams, long term annuity streams. We finance that with long term capital and essentially capture a spread and then repeat, repeat, repeat.
We like to build things. We think there's a great value proposition. If you can manage your risk and be appropriately rewarded for that of building assets at a mid to high single digit EBITDA multiple and then having them valued at something in the double digit range after they are in service. We take a long term perspective on thoughtful capital allocation. As Russ and Francois indicated earlier, we balance a value growing dividend of about 40% of our cash flow and then retain 60% to reinvest in assets with similar characteristics.
If we can't find sensible things to do with that money, we will accelerate the return of capital and shrink the balance sheet in a proportionate manage and maintain our credit metrics. On the financial side, we target being the top credit in our sector. The cost of money is the biggest input cost to our business. So it is front and center of our minds continuously. We never want to compromise our long term prospects due to short term events, and we want to preserve the ability to act at all points of the cycle.
We do from time to time buy high quality assets counter to the cycle, and conversely, we will sell assets from time to time to improve the balance sheet and fund new initiatives. From a disclosure perspective, we are committed to fulsome disclosure responsive to the investment community's needs with a focus on information versus data. And I will touch on some of the non financial disclosures in the next slide here. We acknowledge and support the growing role of ESG and non qualitative measures in the investment process. We believe it provides us the ability to differentiate ourselves in a positive manner, and we see this as actually a competitive advantage going forward.
This is not something new. We've been managing both financial and non financial risks and has been a key determinant of our success for the past 60 plus years. Our reputation is critical given the breadth of stakeholders we deal with. We have approximately 100,000 landowners that we cross their properties. We deal with 200 indigenous communities.
We operate in 35 U. S. States, 7 Canadian provinces and 12 Mexican states. This is a team that has deep capabilities in not just technically, but across commercial, regulatory, etcetera. We have 350 people dedicated to our environment, land and indigenous relations exercises.
We have 1200 engineers in house and 500 technologists on top of that. The litany of engineering accomplishments we've done over the history of this company is quite amazing, and that is quite often why we are selected to be the supplier of choice for energy infrastructure. We view all of this as table stakes. It is imperative for us to continue to operate and do new things to do things very well with a very long term view. Other data points, we spent $1,300,000,000 on pipe safety and integrity last year, and we were involved in over 140 research projects to improve our operating performance.
And virtually all of what we expend in this area is a flow through to our customers or recovered from them, meaning we have 0 financial incentive to do anything but try and be best in class. We are listening. We conduct over 400 meetings a year with the investment community. We commit significant resources to that, and we are trying to be responsive to your specific needs. We are aligning closer to TCFD and SASB, and we are working to improve the accuracy and completeness of the work of the ESG raters that we deal with.
So and more to come in 2021, so stay tuned on that front. 2020 is almost in the rearview mirror. So good time to reflect back on what has been accomplished on the personal front. I did over 100 days of Bring Your Kid TO Work days, which kind of lost its luster near the end. In the face of COVID, we did take swift action to improve our funding and liquidity to the tune of about $11,000,000,000 of enhancement in the Q2 of this year.
From an operational perspective, the flows on our systems have been largely normal with a couple of minor exceptions in the form of Market Link, which was a victim of some of the disruption in the crude oil markets and some curtailment of flows in Northern Border Bakken associated gas was shut in. But generally, our pipes operated largely full. We experienced no major anomalies in our revenue cycles, and we expect no material impact on 2020 earnings and cash flow from counterparty performance. Given the circumstances and role we play in the economy, we have made a concerted effort to fulfill all of our obligations on a full and timely basis, keeping our people safe and employed, paying our suppliers. We do spend over $1,000,000 an hour on our capital program and we support local businesses where possible along with First Nations and making sure we pay our $720,000,000 a year property taxes to counties and municipalities who rely on that.
In many cases, it is possibly the single biggest source of income for them in terms of running their operations. Moving to the chart. In terms of sources sorry, uses of capital, we'll use about $16,900,000,000 of funds this year, dollars 9,800,000,000 into our capital program, dollars 3,200,000,000 into dividends and distributions and about $3,900,000,000 of debt maturities. That was funded with approximately $7,000,000,000 of funds from operations, dollars 1,300,000,000 Canadian equivalent from the government of Alberta to underpin Keystone XL construction and approximately $4,900,000,000 of portfolio management and project financing through the sale of the Ontario thermal plants and bringing joint venture partners on Coastal GasLink. We also issued $3,800,000,000 of debt on fairly attractive terms.
Through 2020, we have put substantial funding in place for our largest projects. As noted on Coastal GasLink, we introduced joint venture partners for 65% of the project, and we now have project financing for 80% of the construction costs, which reduces our equity contribution going forward to quite a modest level. On Keystone XL, the government of Alberta will provide equity funding for construction in 2020 and as well our guaranteed project debt facility, which combined totaled US5.3 billion dollars or approximately 2.3 2 thirds of our TUGO costs going forward, addressing 2 of our biggest hurdles and moving forward with the project, which was risk sharing and funding. We'd also note we have First Nation Equity participation in both of these projects moving forward. Natural Law Energy was formally announced this morning, and it is our intent and expectation to complete the 10% equity sale to First Nations and Coastal GasLink in 20 21.
Moving on to the next slide here. I just want to spend a minute walking through the diversity and stability of our revenue streams and where variability exists. On a consolidated basis, we estimate EBITDA of approximately $9,300,000,000 in 2020, About 67% of that will be from regulated operations, 30% contracted and a small 3% from merchant operations being liquids marketing, Market Link and power and storage merchant plants in Alberta. About 63% of that will be denominated in U. S.
Dollars and 37% in Canadian. Moving around the wheel here from the top right. In Canada Gas, virtually all of our operations are under cost of service regulation. And as Tracey noted, we did achieve 5 6 year settlements on NGTL in the Mainline, which knocks in base return on equity and capital structure for an extended period of time here. In U.
S. Gas, we have a portfolio of 13 pipes, which connect the best basins to premier markets. They are all FERC regulated. And through periodic rate cases and settlements, we are ensured the opportunity to earn a return on and off any capital we put into those businesses. In Mexico, all of our pipes are under long term take or pay contracts with CFE and paid in U.
S. Dollars, and we it's characterized as deep in the money transport that connects 50 year plus reserves to highly sophisticated U. S. Refineries. That is underpinned by long term take or pay contracts.
We do have a modest amount of variability in liquids marketing and the market linked asset that typically represents low single digit percentage of EBITDA. And I'd note again that Market Link would become a contracted asset when Keystone XL comes in service. And lastly, on the Power and Storage side, Bruce Power dominates this business unit. That facility is contracted out to 2,064 with the Ontario ISO and again full recovery of capital within that contract. We do, as noted, have merchant power and storage assets in Alberta that generate 1% to 2% of EBITDA on an annual basis.
Just touching on some of the financial risks and levers. On the counterparty side, our counterparty portfolio is diverse and heavily investment grade. That said, we continue to monitor certain WCSB and Appalachian exposures there, but we do have transportation. We're seeing very high contract utilization, which is encouraging, improving price curves and market access, company specific actions and consolidation in the sector and a substantial collateral and financial assurances held, which give us comfort that we can't guarantee that we'll be drama free, but we are very encouraged by the performance of our counterparty portfolio this year. In terms of interest rates, as noted here, approximately 95% of our portfolio is fixed rate with an average term to maturity of 22 years.
And we do have regulatory and commercial arrangements in place in terms of flow through cost of service and rate trackers that pass on interest rate risk to our customer base in some instances. In terms of foreign exchange, our U. S. Dollar revenue streams, which include Mexico, are naturally hedged by interest on our substantial U. S.
Dollar debt portfolio. Aside from that hedge, we are structurally long about US2 $1,000,000,000 after tax per year going forward. We actively hedged that out on a rolling 24 month basis, which leaves us with currency sensitivity of fairly minimal in the front end of that, probably about take about a $0.10 currency move to impact EPS by a $0.01 in the front year. But beyond that 24 month hedge horizon, it's quite sensitive where a 1% move in the Canadian U. S.
Dollar exchange rate would impact EPS by about $0.02 In terms of income taxes, if you're modeling income taxes going forward, the first thing to do is exclude regulated Canadian gas pipes, where taxes are flow through item on a cash basis and that's quite variable. And also exclude equity AFUDC in the U. S. And Mexican pipes. With the residual, apply mid to high teens rate to the remaining pretax income.
And looking at the current deferred split, generally in a 40% to 60% channel going forward here, and we expect it to be in the middle of that range over the next couple of years. Lastly, in terms of depreciation, it does vary, but on average represents about 2.5% of gross plant property and equipment on an annual basis. We do review this frequently and this is a key component in regulatory rate making, and it's also a very important tool that can be accelerated or decelerated as appropriate to ensure return of capital matches economic life. Moving to the capital program, what you see on the slide here is our $37,000,000,000 of secured growth. This includes 3 years of maintenance capital through 2020, 2021 and 2022.
Everything on this slide is in or moving into execution. And as Tracy noted earlier, pleased that the NGTL capacity open season that was conducted back in the late spring reaffirmed $9,000,000,000 of growth in NGTL capacity is indeed needed by our customer base. We've spent approximately $13,500,000,000 through the end of September on this portfolio, which leaves us about $24,000,000,000 left to go. And as you can see by the in service dates, this program will be largely completed by 2023. The pie chart indicates that effectively all of this is contracted or regulated in many instances both.
And where it is contracted, it is all 20 plus years. And again, a reminder that CGL is equity accounted for here, and the amounts you see here represent our expected remaining equity contribution, which is relatively minor. Moving to capital, a little more granularity on the capital program by year through 2023. Again, this includes maintenance capital. And on this chart, we've also included capitalized interest in debt AFUDC and a modest amount of development spend on projects on the come.
When you add this all up, it's about $27,700,000,000 reflected here. The reconciling items from the prior slide, which indicated $3,700,000,000 left to complete within most of within in this timeframe. We've added 2023 maintenance capital here and to the tune of about $1,700,000,000 and we include about $1,500,000,000 of capitalized interest in debt AFUDC in here, booked at an effectively around a 5% interest rate. As well, we have a placeholder for approximately $800,000,000 for modest development costs, mainly on future Bruce MCRs and the MOD III program in U. S.
Gas Pipelines. And just to clarify here, the liquid spend depicted here is predominantly Keystone XL. There's about $5,600,000,000 of maintenance capital in here, of which approximately 90% is recoverable. Moving to the funding program. For the bankers on the line here, there should be sufficient fees for your post pandemic clothing and grooming needs after spending a lot of time on WebEx, Teams and Zoom with many of you.
So, yes, quite
a few of you are starting to look like the cast of Duck Dynasty or in some cases, even Tiger King, but we'll help you reel that back. Looking at the left hand side of our funding for the next 3 years here, we see a total requirement of about $44,000,000,000 $28,000,000,000 of that is CapEx, of which $10,000,000,000 is Keystone XL, which includes capitalized interest. We have $11,300,000,000 of dividends and distributions with the growth rates as previously outlined and about $4,800,000,000 of debt maturities over this time frame. I'd also note again that the LP buy in is not reflected in here, and dividends distributions reflects distributions to LP unitholders going forward. From a funding perspective, dollars 22,500,000,000 funds from operations puts a pretty healthy dent in that.
We see $10,700,000,000 of senior debt issuance, again, dollars 4,800,000,000 to refinance the maturities within this timeframe and about $5,900,000,000 of incremental debt within our targeted credit metrics. Keystone XL, it's about CAD10 1,000,000,000 spend to go here. That will come from government of Alberta guaranteed debt of US4.2 billion dollars hybrid issuance of about US1.5 billion dollars and 2 years of the DRIP at 35% participation rate going forward. And you can see a small sliver of commercial paper and cash on hand to balance things out here. Looking at EBITDA growth rates going forward, starting on the left hand side, you've seen EBITDA grow from $5,300,000,000 in 2015 to the $9,300,000,000 we estimate for this year.
That represents about a 9% CAGR. We're coming off a super cycle of shale infrastructure build out as well as the Columbia acquisition. And against that, we've had sizable asset sales over this time, which has served to improve the quality of earnings as we exited Merchant Power and monetized assets at fairly attractive price levels. Moving through to 2024, we see $12 plus 1,000,000,000 of EBITDA in that year. That represents about a 7% CAGR from 2020, and that is driven by the $37,000,000,000 of secured projects on the prior slides, including KXL, which will deliver US1 $300,000,000 of incremental contracted EBITDA.
We see further quality improvement as AFUDC and capitalized interest turn to cash flow. And in 2024, we would see about 90% of that EBITDA is being contracted or regulated. Beyond 2024, there are numerous levers across the spectrum, either requiring no capital, light capital or heavy capital, and a very large opportunity set to work on here. We usually get about 3 years visibility on new projects. We have many irons in the fire right now, some of which you've heard, some of which have a public profile such as pump storage and have been alluded to by my colleagues earlier in the day.
We'd also note that continuous operational improvements can also be significant. We do have latent spare capacity in the system that we can fill up along with things like rate case management and cost optimization. As always, there's normalizing items in here that we need to take note of. Again, the impact of asset sales has is a headwind in here, which will tail off here once we see the full year impact of the Ontario thermal sale in 2021. Bruce is sizable and not necessarily linear.
And Canadian regulated EBITDA, as Tracy noted, is anomalistic given the flow through nature of interests and cash taxes. This slide indicates the stability and longevity of the asset base. What is assumed in here is completion of the $37,000,000,000 secured growth program, but no Bruce refurbishments beyond the current Unit 6. Maintenance capital spend on the asset base in the normal course of again, of which 90% is recoverable and normal course recontracting principally in U. S.
Gas Pipelines. The contribution from merchant exposed assets remains modest And as noted, Market Link would become a part of Keystone XL when completed. So what this depicts is a base level of $10 plus 1,000,000,000 effectively locked in through the next decade, supplemented by KXL's US1 $300,000,000 of contracted EBITDA. This portfolio conveys, in my view, a pseudo utility like profile. And when you look at it cumulatively, we have line of sight to $100 plus 1,000,000,000 of EBITDA through this decade and into the next one and arguably into the next one after that.
We haven't depicted the use of any surplus financial capacity in here, which would be additive to the profile you see here. You saw this earlier in Francois's slides, but it's a busy slide, but it encapsulates our enthusiasm as we look at the investment options in front of us. The building blocks for our growth going forward, we have invested over $110,000,000,000 through since 2000 through various cycles and energy mix shifts. So our origination capabilities are fairly deep. We have $37,000,000,000 of secured projects underway, financial strength underpinned by 100 plus 1,000,000,000 of highly visible EBITDA through this decade, an irreplaceable footprint in an environment of hard to build anything anywhere and an opportunity set, as you can see here, that provides a pretty attractive intersection of what the world wants, our investment criteria and what our capabilities are.
So the question, can we continue to find a home for $5,000,000,000 or $6,000,000,000 a year to invest within our long standing risk preferences and return expectations under varying energy mix scenarios, and we believe the answer is a strong yes. As outlined through the presentations earlier, aside from the $37,000,000,000 underway, we have a suite of projects under development, conveyor belt of in corridor expansions, the likes of Elwood Power, Wisconsin Access, the investment in maintenance capital, which preserves and in some cases, grows rate base, electrification of the fleet, feeding new and expanded LNG export terminals. For example, today's announcement of Costa Azul moving forward, we'll be serving that through North Baja. The Bruce opportunity is enormous. As outlined by Corey, it's a decade plus investment cycle of emissionless power that provides economically priced power for about 30% of Ontario's needs in the support of jurisdiction, with the contract out to 2,064.
Our renewables credentials are solid in wind, solar and hydro, and we will choose if and when how to engage in emerging technologies, which again is another leg up in terms of the opportunity set. This will all be screened through our established criteria, including ESG and return hurdles. There'll be no window dressing and no loss leaders as we look at investing into this space. I'd also note that most, if not all, on this slide would arguably qualify for sustainability linked or transition bond financing. Touching again on the dividend growth outlook again, principles are we seek a balance between sustainable value dividend and reinvestment.
Earnings matter, maybe old school, but we firmly believe in that. Fundamentally, little change to our historic conservative payout ratios and our variable merchant earnings streams do not constitute the backbone of our payout decisions. You can see a 2 decade profile here, again above trend growth since 2015 given the CPG acquisition and the shale build out. And based on the tail end of that, we reaffirmed the 8% to 10% growth through 2021. That normalizes to a 5% to 7% range as we look post-twenty 21 based on the secured portfolio that's in flight, habitual replenishment with annuity like revenue stream assets and the deep set of opportunities we've just reviewed.
Where we end up in that range will depend on the mix of projects. Currently, we're weighted towards lower return NGTL spend, which as we gravitate to things like potentially Keystone XL and Bruce coming into service here would move us more towards the upper end of that spectrum. The cadence of projects as well as how we execute on those will also inform where we land in that range. We do not include inorganic growth in here. We do have a long history of strategic M and A with successful integration, but we never budget for it.
Imperative to that is maintaining financial strength at all points of the economic cycle, and our focus would remain solely on high quality crown jewel assets that fit our risk preferences and return hurdles, we have no interest in the lower quality end of the spectrum. Before I wrap up, I did want to highlight what from our perspective represents an intriguing, compelling and rather historic spread between our common dividend yield against the Canada 10 year bond and U. S. 10 year treasury. I usually leave it to rest to subtly complain about our valuation, but as a soon to be retiree trying to get by on a fixed income, this might be the kind of thing that grabs his attention as he sits down for dinner at 4:30 each afternoon.
So to wrap up, this is a highly capable and responsible organization. We have a very solid base business. It's once again proven itself out through COVID. We have a $37,000,000,000 suite of secured growth and a track record of replenishing that. Our opportunity set is large and aligned with what we are good at.
In an environment of where it's tough to build anything anywhere, this is in fact a competitive advantage, and we are poised to capture disproportionate share of needed investment in North America's energy delivery systems, and we expect this will deliver attractive appropriate returns going forward. And with that, I will turn it over to David for the Q and A.
Okay. Thanks for that, Don. I appreciate the update. So once again, we are taking questions electronically, and I will pass these along to Don here as we have throughout the morning. So Don, maybe the first one.
Investors are wondering where do you expect debt to EBITDA to be at the end of 2020 and over the forecast period, both with and without XL? And are you still comfortable operating the business in the high 4s?
Yes. So firstly, yes, our long term targets on credit metrics are high force debt to EBITDA and 15% area FFO to debt. Exiting 2020, we expect to be in the low to mid-5s, which is driven by the investment in Keystone XL right now and consistent with what we would have expected and what we would have presented to the rating agencies leading up to FID. Once Keystone XL is in service, we would expect our metrics to move very rapidly into our target range given the cash flow that comes off of that asset. If Keystone XL were not to proceed, we would gravitate back there probably on a more near term basis.
Thanks, Don. Next question is with respect to dividend yields that you highlighted a little bit earlier, Don. With dividend yields at all time highs and some suggesting investors no longer place much value on a growing dividend, have you considered slowing dividend growth and using the capital to either reduce debt or potentially buy back shares?
Well, firstly, given the current interest rate levels, we would given its stability and growth trajectory to become more valued. We don't look at our dividend as a single point in time, single year perspective. We look at it over a multiyear horizon. So with that, we'll we tend to go through these air pockets from time to time, but this has served us well for 20 years in terms of our capital allocation. And again, we believe that this will be acknowledged in the marketplace at some point.
If this were to persist for some very long period of time, obviously, we would revisit capital allocation. And if your shares do persist and become such where you could buy back shares at such an attractive level that's immediate forever and guaranteed, you'd look at that. But we have a lot to do here, and again, we don't get too fixated on short term aberrations in the marketplace.
Our next question is asking about terminal value. How do you think about terminal value in a world where some would suggest that the transition to a low carbon world might occur more rapidly?
Yes. So we look at signpost continuously as we have for many, many years. You've seen the outline of our thinking over the course of the presentations earlier today. So we do fundamentally believe there is a very, very long tail to our current asset base. If that were to change, again, we would we watch the signposts and we have tools available to us to do things like accelerate depreciation and accelerate the return of capital going forward.
So again, this is not something new to us. It's something we look at continuously. And when you look back over time, when things like the demise of the mainline were being considered many, many years ago, we look through that and we look at the long term fundamentals and that governs our decision making. Okay.
Next question. Given the recent weakness in the share price, would you consider further portfolio management activities rather than implementing your dividend reinvestment plan to fund Keystone XL and other projects as you move forward?
So a couple of points on using the DRIP to fund Keystone XL. Firstly, it's a very high return on capital project here given its nature. So the return on even DRIP capital and hybrid capital is the spread there is quite substantial. We're also cognizant of our financial metrics and financial strength through the piece. And as we presented to the rating agencies leading up to Keystone XL FID, we showed them a substantial amount of subordinated capital to fund the project, to maintain our credit ratings in the form of hybrids and DRIP.
We'd also I think they also took some comfort from the execution risk of that funding plan going forward here. So again, it's a balancing act between maintaining our financial strength through something of this magnitude and balancing accretion, which would be substantial if we can get this thing over the finish line.
Okay. Next question relates to one of your slides, Don. Earlier, you mentioned or we talked about the $12,000,000,000 plus of EBITDA guide out in 2024. Does that assume a full year of KXL? And what are the assumptions on ownership for both KXL and Coastal GasLink?
Yes. So in terms of the in service of KXL, it would be in 2023 with a ramp up, but we would see much most of the benefits in 2024. So, yes, KXL would be largely represented at 100 percent operational level in 2024. In terms of our ownership levels, at this point, we have 100 percent ownership reflected in there, net of a carry on the government of Alberta's interest, which we would take out post completion. Their natural law energy investment would come in once the project is derisked.
And as Bevan mentioned, it doesn't have much accretion or sorry, much of a dilutive effect on our returns on that project. So you could assume 100% ownership of Keystone XL in 2024, net of the carrying charges to the province of Alberta. In terms of Coastal GasLink, we would have a 25 percent ownership stake in that project. Again, that would be expected to be in service. That would be equity accounted for.
So what you would see is our 25% ownership interest plus a modest fee stream to reflect our development operatorship of that pipeline going forward. So it would be less certainly much less material than Keystone XL.
Okay. Another question on really funding and if you will, portfolio management, if you will, or existing parts of the business might be a priority or could be seen as potential asset sale candidates as we move forward to fund our capital program?
Yes. So anytime we issue share certificates, we look at alternatives to doing so in terms of other securities such as hybrids and then portfolio management and recycling capital in that fashion. You've seen us quite ambitious on the sale front over the past several years here, and but I would make the following observations. We're into the really good stuff now, the really core asset base. We do balance selling assets with our tenant of wanting to own and operate everything in our this this true living within your means, which aside from Keystone XL, I think is where we're at right now of through our capital allocation of being able to essentially internally fund a $5,000,000,000 to $6,000,000,000 capital program without increasing share count on an annual basis, preserving share count increase and larger scale asset sales for more transformational activities.
So as we look at our portfolio right now, we're really into the core assets. Would we part with something if the if it's worth more to somebody than our whole value? Absolutely, we look at that every day. But again, ideally, living within your internally generated cash flow and your capacity is where we see the sweet spot for us going forward.
Okay. So again, I think in many respects, Don, you've answered this, but another question has come in again with sort of referencing portfolio management. Portfolio management to improve your growth rate from withdrawing capital from certain assets Or are you really looking at portfolio management to address funding of organic growth over the longer term, just as you've done in the past?
Yes. So it can be for many reasons, but largely driven by, I'd say, an opportunity set that exceeds your internal capacity at any single point in time, monetizing mature assets or assets that are worth more in someone else's hands than ours. So, yes, we look at our portfolio continuously. And given who we are, we see pretty much everything that trades in the North American midstream space. So we generally know what our assets are worth.
We also watch very closely the many lives of many of several of our assets, Assets that look to be at a mature point do often have many lives. And those right of ways, those corridors are worth conceivably a lot of strategic value going forward. So before we part with something, assuming it's mature for the next 5 years, we look beyond that and assess what might other lives or expandability it might have there. I think there's a reference to project level debt in the question. We like to keep things simple and understandable.
We tend to finance in the center with a couple of mild exceptions. They're generally project unique or regulatory driven. We have done project financing at Bruce given its unique nature. You will see the KXL through the Government of Alberta relationship and at Coastal Gas Link, again, given the joint venture status of that. We finance at the asset level for FERC rate making purposes, as they look at the capital structure of the asset, specifically when they are determining capital structure and rate hearings.
We would consider it in Mexico at some point in time as a means of potentially recycling capital or capping sovereign risk in that country. So that would be another candidate for project level debt going forward.
Okay. Looks like we might have come to the end of the questions that have come in for Don. If you do have a last question and want to submit it, we will try to ask it here. But in the interim, Francois and Russ are going to make their way to the stage. As we had indicated in the agenda at the beginning, the 2 of them will join me here to talk about or to provide you with an opportunity to ask some questions.
And once we're done that, Russ is just going to offer a couple of last minute or last comments as we close out the morning. So with that, looking like there's no further questions. I'd ask both Francois and Russ to join us. Okay. Thanks, gentlemen.
So we do have a number of questions that have come in through the morning for both, Russ and Francois. Maybe I'll start Russ and Francois you may want to add to response to the first question. Investors are asking, given the uncertainty associated with Keystone XL, can you continue to grow earnings, cash flow and dividends in the 5% to 7% range if the project doesn't move forward?
I think as you heard Bevan say today, the Keystone project remains a very important project for North American energy security, job creation, environmental stewardship. We commenced construction on that project here in April. As Bevin pointed out, we've made some pretty substantial progress, including completing the border crossing here in May. Today, the project is employing about 3,000 people. The plan is to ramp up construction as we move into the Q1 of next year into the 15,000 kind of range.
Obviously, it's a very important strategic project for our industry, for Alberta, for Canada, for North America and of course for our company. But as you've heard me say many times before, our long term growth is not predicated on any individual project. As Francois mentioned this morning, in order to grow at 5% to 7% over the long term requires an investment of about $5,000,000,000 a year into our core businesses. And I think as he discussed with the combination of maintenance capital, ongoing investment into things like Bruce Power, continuous request for in corridor expansions. And I think as you heard from the team today, a whole host of opportunities that we expect will come as the energy markets transition to a less carbon intensive mix.
So based on that, I think that our challenge is really going to be more about capital allocation and making sure that we choose the very best projects as I think our view would be is that we have more opportunities than we have free cash flow. And that's what underpins our confidence in the 5% to 7% guidance that we've given you. It looks just like it has looked historically. If you look at the $110,000,000,000 that we've invested over the last 20 or so years, we haven't won on every one of those accounts, but on average, when you're investing a large portfolio like that at this sort of 7% to 9% after tax returns that Francois mentioned, I think it's very likely that we'll continue to grow this company at the same rates going forward that we have over the past 2 decades. So Francois, you might want to add to that, you're going to be in the driver's seat.
Yes. So just to underscore my confidence in our ability to maintain that growth rate with or without KXL. And as Russ said, our job is going to be to prioritize among the opportunities we're going to see. If you look at our track record over the last 30 years, we've been great originators. 20 years ago, when the Alberta market deregulated, we acquired long term PPAs, and that was a very profitable activity for us.
When the Western Canadian Basin before hydraulic fracking was starting to mature, we repurposed one of our underutilized natural gas pipelines to liquid service. We acquired Bruce Power when the opportunity came available for us to do that. And then, of course, with hydraulic fracking, we embarked upon a very dramatic and robust growth program in terms of expanding our natural gas pipeline. So this is these are muscles that we've regularly flexed over the last 20 years. I would say over the last 3 or 4 years, we've been so opportunity rich.
We haven't really been leaning into origination the way we are going to be going forward. And as you heard throughout the day today, we think the opportunities will be diverse. We will evolve as energy systems evolve and as opportunities to invest our capital evolve. And what's core for us is to make sure that we have the capabilities, the organization and the skills to execute on the opportunities in a manner that's consistent with our risk preferences as we've done over the last 20 years.
Okay. Thanks, gentlemen. Maybe next question from the investment community. Given some of your peers have set net zero targets, will TC Energy set similar targets in the future?
Francois? Maybe I'll start. And of course, we believe it's and it's changing where we're thinking about allocating capital in the future. In our sustainability and climate change report, we said that culturally we didn't want to be simply making an aspirational statement around net 0, but we wanted a concrete set of interim and long term goals as well as a plan to get there. So one of our key deliverables for 2021 is that plan.
And so you can expect to hear from us later in 2021. Russ, do you have anything to add to that?
Yes, maybe just as you know, think about scope 3 emissions. Obviously, what we can control is the scope 1, scope 2, and you've heard lots of plans today on how we're going to do that and the opportunities that's going to create. But scope 3 emissions are those of our customers. And obviously those emissions are very important to us as well. As you know, a lot of the opposition hasn't necessarily been about our business necessarily or our pipelines, It's been more about what's been in it.
And primarily the pointy end of the stick there has been around the Canadian heavy oil business. From what we can see, our shippers almost universally across the board are positioning themselves to be part of the transition and part of the solution. For example, what we're seeing in the Canadian oil sands is strategies to implement new processes and technology that will significantly reduce emissions. They've reduced emissions by about 20% through this decade and further commitments to reduce it by another 25% as you move through this decade. So as Francois pointed out, the world is going to change and it's going to consume renewable energy.
But I think as he pointed out in his slides earlier today, as we move to 2,040, crude oil is still a large portion of the energy mix going forward. And I strongly believe that the Canadian producers want to be competitive, not just on price, but on reliability, environmentally responsibility and GHG emissions. And I think they're on the path to do that. So we're working collaboratively with them. And obviously, the combination of our Scope 1, Scope 2, the things that are controllable and the Scope 3 emissions and the reductions that will take place going forward will position Canadian and U.
S. Produced hydrocarbons to be competitive on a global basis for a long time to come.
Next question is for you, Francois. Given your recent success in negotiating deals with First Nations on both Keystone XL and the Coastal GasLink project, could you continue to see this evolve and play a larger role in the future development of new energy infrastructure?
First of all, I'm very proud of and I want to congratulate the team for reaching an agreement with the Natural Law Energy Group and working to expand the number of indigenous groups that are part of that agreement. We're very proud of that. Other proof points, as Corey mentioned, we're in discussions with the SAAN to advance their knowledge of the environmental impacts and the economic benefits that could be available to them from the Meaford project. We learn a lot from these types of engagements. Our desired brand is to be the partner of choice with all of our key stakeholders.
And clearly, indigenous communities are a key stakeholder of ours. So you could where it makes sense, you could see us pursuing these types of partnerships in the future. I will also point out that we do definitely provide benefit agreements on many of our projects where we offer supplier and employment opportunities to our First Nation partners. And yes, I think you can expect to see a continued trend in that regard from our company going forward.
Okay. Next question. How do you manage customer rate shock on potential acceleration of terminal value? And are there specific policies in place today or that the industry needs to discuss in a broader consultation or notice of inquiry to make this happen? Maybe I'll take
a first crack at that one, Dave, is first of all, our capital allocation and our investment preferences have always been based on return of and on capital through the life of our projects. And just let me be clear, there's no evidence today that there's any risk to the terminal value of our assets. It's something that we continually monitor. But as we pointed out today, we expect that natural gas and crude oil from the Western side of Metro Basin to the Gulf Coast is going to continue to operate well into 2,030, 2,040, 2,050. That said, we continually monitor the life of our assets and ensure that our depreciation rates match what we think the life of the asset is.
To the extent that they need to be accelerated or decelerated, we do that. And we've been doing that for a long period of time. But I said that the basins that we're serving, if you take a look, for example, at the Western Sedimentary Basin, we get a lot of questions around that. And it's competitive, it's long term. We're seeing it continually grab market share.
Going into places like the Pacific Northwest and California, those are the places that you would expect to see potential reductions in demand going forward. But in fact, we have an expansion underway right now that's underpinned by 25 30 year contracts with those utilities. As we've seen a decline in conventional production in places like the Rockies, the Western Sedimentary Basin has continued to pick up market share. Those tolls are competitive because the pipe is old and it's depreciated, so the tolls are very competitive. And those tolls are actually approved by the regulators in those states under those contracts that those utilities have signed.
To the extent that we need to accelerate depreciation, they have signed a contract that allows us to charge the rates that reflect our cost of service. One element of cost of service is depreciation. But if we add accelerate those the depreciation, reduce the useful life, Our view is that those won't have any material rate shock impacts on our shareholders and they'll be managed carefully. We don't expect anybody to move those targets by a decade at a time, but we'll continue to watch the signposts. And as I said, this isn't anything new for us.
We continue to monitor and watch and fully expect that we'll get a return of and on capital of all of our assets. That's an underlying tenet of how we've made our investments going forward and how we'll continue to make our investments going forward. We'll look at the long term fundamentals and then we'll look to the constructs that underpin those fundamentals, either rate regulation or long term contracts that allow us to generate a return of a non capital. And when we get the return of capital, we'll redeploy that capital into the new energy systems going forward. So this isn't anything new and we are very confident that terminal value is not impacted by current views of energy transition.
Francois, I don't know if anyone anything you want to add to that?
No, I think you answered very completely. Thanks.
Okay. The next question, Francois, I think you touched on this a little earlier in your response to another question. But at any rate, a question being asked, how have your capital allocation and financing decisions changed over time? And how will they continue to evolve, as well as might they be increasingly informed by evolving ESG considerations?
Yes. Thank you for that question. And I think Don alluded to our approach in his prepared remarks and in his Q and A. Capital allocation has always been for us about assessing our ability to earn a return on enough capital throughout an asset's life. And we've always considered ESG factors, although a decade ago, they might not have been referred to as ESG factors.
But operating in predominantly regulated jurisdictions, we're expected to consider safety, integrity, environmental impacts, and we're also expected to govern our assets using best practices. So we're going to evolve our capital allocation to where the opportunities are and maybe that's where this question was heading. But we're always going to be focused on earning a return on enough capital. As I've said before, we've got a 20 year track record of adapting to where the opportunities are. I expect that initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and electrify the economy in our footprint and in our corridors will afford opportunities for us to allocate an increasing amount of capital towards those categories.
So we're very excited about that opportunity, and that's why we're confident about our ability to deploy $5 plus 1,000,000,000 a year in capital going forward.
Okay. Time for, I think, one more question. Again, a little bit on a of a related nature. But throughout the morning, we've mentioned that we're well prepared to respond quickly to changing market signals and signposts. Could you elaborate on what you potentially see unfolding signpost wise over the next 2 to 3 years?
And can you also give examples of signposts you've seen in the past and what historical actions you've taken to address them?
Maybe I'll start with the forward looking ones and if Russ wants to give some examples of what we've done in the past. And as Don mentioned, we do a lot of scenario analysis to test the resiliency of our asset base under various different demand and supply scenarios. To me, the signpost that's most critical for us to be able to allocate capital going forward along the themes that we've discussed today is we've seen definitely an acceleration of a policy trend that's supportive to greenhouse gas emission reductions and electrification. We've seen it at the federal level in Canada. We've seen it at the state level and at the provincial level as well.
From our perspective, in order for us to allocate capital in a manner that's underpinned by regulation or long term contracts, the key signpost is that those policy trends will translate into a regulatory environment that is supportive of us allocating capital. I think it's the role of governments to establish policy, and it's the role of companies like ours in the private sector to operationalize those policies. And what we're looking for is a constructive regulatory environment that allows us to consider the impacts of our investments in terms of emission reductions, in terms of economic impacts and all of the other aspects that we continually are being asked to consider. And that's the key signpost for us. The other would be the competitiveness, the cost competitiveness of the various technologies.
Renewables on an LCOE basis are increasingly becoming competitive, perhaps not across the board, but certainly in many jurisdictions with other fuel types. I think with respect to hydrogen and CCUS and other technologies that may be a little bit further off into the future, but we do closely follow the cost competitiveness of those technologies. I would add SMRs in that category as well. So looking forward, those are some of the things that we're going to be watching for in terms of where we want to allocate our capital.
Maybe just to add to that, I agree with 100% with those. But as I think about the presentations we've made to you, our shareholders over the last number of years, it's incorporated a couple of really important tenants and we continue to watch those tenants and test them with our board. The fundamental tenants are that energy demand will continue to grow and that has continued. There's those that believe that efficiency will outstrip growth in population and desire to consume more energy. We haven't seen that yet, but obviously that's a signpost that we'll watch for.
Our view continues to be and supported by all the forecasts out there, the demand for energy both domestically and globally will continue to grow. Secondly, and this isn't the 1st Investor Day or second or third that we have put forward the tenant that the global energy system will transition to a lower carbon intensity. And we've been investing along that theme for a long period of time into renewables, into things like Bruce Power. You've seen us change and react to those mileposts as they occur. And then thirdly, that our business will become more difficult because of legislation, regulation, and those that are opposed to what we do.
And again, that just raised the bar for us in terms of our responsibility around environmental stewardship, indigenous inclusion, safety and reliability. And we've updated our game on all of those fronts. As we saw those signposts change, we believe that us reacting in the way that we have and continuing to check-in on our tenants and the capabilities that we've built around ESG capabilities, as Francois said, we didn't call it that before, have really given us a competitive advantage and we look forward to continuing to differentiate ourselves. That's why I believe we've captured a disproportionate share of opportunities. Customers look at us as the company that can actually manage their way through our way through these minefields and still deliver the energy that people need.
The fact is people know they need energy, they just want it to be delivered safely and reliably and responsibly every day. And that's what we do as a company and certainly what we're going to do on a go forward basis. So we'll continue to watch the signpost that that tell us where we need to go. And I think we've got a very strong track record of being able to react in a very profitable way for our shareholders. Okay.
That's great. Well, thanks very much, Francois and Russ, for your responses to those questions. And thanks very much to you, the investment community, for your questions throughout the morning. I think with that, I'm going to turn it over to Russ Girling for a few final closing thoughts. So thanks again, David.
So in closing, I'd
like to thank you all for joining us today. We hope that the last 3 hours have given you some insight into our long term strategy, the significant advances we've made over the last 20 years and the promising outlook that we see for the future of your company. You've seen many of the themes that we've talked about today at our previous Investor Days, but simply put, we believe the long term fundamentals will continue to create opportunities to connect growing natural gas and crude oil supplies to market. There will also be significant new opportunities to replace aging infrastructure as North America consumes more energy and transitions to a less carbon intensive energy mix. As outlined earlier today, we are a leading North American energy infrastructure company and we have a proven business model that delivers results.
The demand for our services has never been greater. As a result, comparable earnings per share and comparable funds generated from operations are expected to reach near record levels again here in 2020. Looking forward, our 5 operating businesses in our 3 core geographies provide us with multiple platforms for continued growth. Today, as you've heard, we are advancing a secured capital program that totals $37,000,000,000 with a robust portfolio of other projects under development. Together, they're expected to drive future growth in earnings and cash flow per share.
That in turn is expected to support annual dividend growth of 8% to 10% in 2021 and 5% to 7% thereafter, consistent with our growth rate over the last 20 years. At the same time, our objective is to live within our means and maintain a strong credit profile to ensure that we have the financial strength and flexibility to act at all points in the economic cycle. This will allow us to opportunistically capture acquisition opportunities that could supplement our organic growth as we move forward, similar to what we've done in the past. As this will be my last Investor Day, I wanted to sincerely thank you, all of our shareholders, for your support over the past 2 decades. It's been the privilege and experience of a lifetime to serve you and this great company.
Looking forward, as you've heard today, your company is well positioned to manage the challenges of the evolving energy markets and continue to capture opportunities that will inevitably emerge in the changing marketplace. I'm extremely confident that under Francois's leadership, with the support of his executive team and our 7,500 dedicated employees, you will continue to see disciplined, steady growth, similar to what you've seen for the past 2 decades for many decades yet to come. So in summary, we believe that we offer a compelling investment proposition given the quality and stability of our underlying utility like business, our tangible outlook for growth, our deep organizational capabilities and our financial strengths. So again, thank you all for joining us today, taking time out of your schedule and your continued support of TransCanada or T. C.
Energy. Thank you very much.