Ladies and gentlemen, welcome warmly to the presentation of the new strategy of ORLEN for 2025 to 2035. My name is Wawrzyniec Smoczyński. I specialize in strategies of large multinationals. I have the pleasure of hosting today's meeting. Welcome to the Highest Voltage Corp of the Institute of Power Engineering. We also welcome those who are joining us online through streaming. We're happy to welcome you here. It is January 2025, yet this is the most important strategy that will be launched this year. ORLEN is the largest Polish company, the largest CEE company. It shapes the fuel market in Poland and co-shapes the energy and fuel market in Central and Eastern Europe. There is no other company that would exert such a great impact on Polish economy and energy, also in the region.
No other company would have such a great impact on security, also energy security in Europe. This was a painful lesson that we learned in recent years. We are entering the fourth war of the full-scale war against Ukraine, the war which turned the fuel market upside down, not just in Central and Eastern Europe, but across the whole continent. That is not the only challenge facing ORLEN. The climate policy, which is a just and sound one, and is aiming at reversing the impacts of energy companies. It aims to reduce emissions. We need reducing emissions from such companies as ORLEN, but also balancing priorities and agreeing on the right order and sequence of actions to ensure that final consumers, also those relying on power companies, can receive all the benefits possible. Another challenge for energy companies are technological developments.
These advances have changed the world. In 10 years, we will store, transmit, and consume energy differently. Since April of the last year, the management board has been working on the new strategy, which will be presented to you today. What path will ORLEN take? What aims will it adopt for the next 10 years? The CEO and Director General, Ireneusz Fąfara, will tell you about that in just a moment.
Good morning, and thank you. First and foremost, thank you for being here, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for being here with us, those who are here in person and those who are joining us online. Thank you. This is a special place and a special day. However, this time and place correspond to what we want to present you with, the Highest Voltage Hall.
I need not say, I think, that, the tension we are feeling here, the tension in me, in Magda, and in everyone working on this strategy is, of the highest level. For 65,000 employees of ORLEN, this is an important day because this is a celebration. We are presenting you with a strategy we've been working on for 9 months, since April of the previous year. This strategy will outline the directions of our company. We are certain it will also be important for the directions taken by the state and also for us as citizens of this country. We will present the strategy in a language that is usually used to present strategies. We will talk about raw materials, and we will talk about the strategy. We will give you some figures, figures, OpEx, CapEx, and so on.
That's the language we use to formulate strategies, but we would really like to succeed in one special thing. We would like to send out a message to you, a message that is above this strategic language, that is above the details of the strategy. We wish to send out a message about our values. As we worked on this strategy, we were guided by values, that is, we were thinking about values, the values that we live by on an everyday basis at our company. We wanted to embed these values in our strategy. Those are trustworthiness, reliability, responsibility. And a value I find most important, I and I think that also the management board members find it most important, integrity. Those four values guided us as we formulated our LNG strategy. The word security was used. Of course, that was the overarching goal.
For many years, I've been managing companies. I know that our goal is to increase their value. We are all aware of that, and we are not departing from that. Still, we're here at a very special place. Maybe I should say, unfortunately, but we are in this position. There is a war on our doorstep. Security is a word used in every situation, at the Christmas table, in all everyday conversations. We are responsible for the energy security of our country. We are an extremely important component of the whole system responsible for the energy security of Poland. That is what we were guided by as we formulated the strategy. What I will say will be of pivotal importance to our strategy, I wanted to say we will implement the largest upgrading and investment project in Polish energy.
If I were to sum up this program, I would say we will step up the extraction of gas. We will build four offshore wind farms, large-scale energy storage facilities, small nuclear reactors, and we will modernize the extraction of fuels. Those are our objectives. The energy of tomorrow starts today. That is the motto of our strategy. That is the title of the strategy we are presenting to you today. We decided that security is of fundamental importance. For us to feel safe, we need to be aware that energy security is being provided to us, is being provided to us and certain in Eastern Europe, where we are operating, where we want to be the leader of energy transformation. I'm sure you know this map very well. We operate in these very countries.
We sell 20 billion cubic meters of natural gas every year, and 9 of our own extraction. We have 7 refineries that process 38 million tons of crude oil, and we sell them at about 3,500 gas stations, and we also sell in wholesale. We are the largest producer of electricity in Poland. Almost 17 TWh of electricity annually. About 1.3 GW is non-carbon green energy. We have 5 million users of the VITAY system or platform. VITAY plays a role of utmost importance in our strategy. I will elaborate later on. We sell products divided into four product groups. That is energy, gas, fuels, and heat, which is very important as well. This is our place within Central Europe. It is a special place.
This is a special place because Central Europe is indeed Europe, but this is the part of Europe that is quite different from the western part of our continent, especially when it comes to the energy market. This is the fastest growing part of Europe, but we also can see some tendencies and trends in energy markets that are quite different from the Western Europe. We took that into consideration while preparing our strategy. First of all, we can see the increased demand for gas and fuel, and gas, which is a transition fuel for in the transition of energy. We know that this is a fossil fuel, but still gas is less toxic than carbon, and that is why it is of utmost importance.
We presume that until 2030, we will see increasing demand for gas, and later, we believe that by 2050, this demand will slowly and steadily decrease. When it comes to the demand for fossil fuels in different parts of Europe, we can see that it is still growing, but then until 2050, it will decrease, but this dynamic will be different than in the western part of Europe. It is related to a history, to the predominant cars that we drive in our part of Europe and other factors. The energy mix is changing in our part of Europe as well as in Western Europe. We will still continue to produce energy from gas, but we can see a growing demand on the zero emission or low emission energy sources.
The renewable energy sources will be of significance in our region as well. With that, we can see the changing behaviors of our consumers. An average consumer right now consumes around 550 cubic meters of gas and about 1.8 MW of electricity per year, and it is also around 800 L of fuels per year.
But on the other hand, the same consumer is changing now, his own habits, and their choices. Awareness is growing. The costs are different right now, they are changing, so we can feel it on our pockets, but also we can feel the changes in our environment. That is why consumers also want to switch to renewable energy sources. Also, we can see that consumers want to switch to electrified transport, and at the same time, the client, the consumer, expects comprehensive services provided to him or her by diversified channels. We have to respond to those expectations. And we divide our strategy into four groups. So first and foremost, we decided that gas as the transition fuel, will be very important in the phasing out of carbon.
Of course, we can see urgent need to lower the emissions in the industry and the energy sector. That's why we have to diversify our energy sources. That is why we are committed to deliver up to 27 billion of cubic meters of natural gas by 2035. We can see the pressure on the carbonization of transport is obvious, and it results from our expectations, the people who live on this planet and who wants to have this planet clean, but it also results from the regulatory pressure. So that is why we assumed that by 2035, more than 25% of energy sources will be the renewable energy sources in our energy sources basket.
So the zero emission, non-carbon energy sources demand is increasing, and we can see that energy consumption, on the one hand, in our region is growing, but on the other hand, we need to have this energy coming from renewable energy sources. That is why by 2035, we want to retrieve around nearly 13 GW of capacity coming from renewable energy sources, and we want also to increase and improve the economics of the energy storage. We are committed to introducing the SMR technology. Some people say that even this year, this SMR technology will be introduced into the construction process, according and in line with the permissions that have been granted in Canada. We are not sure yet, but we believe truly that SMR technology will be an important part of our energy source structure.
A client-oriented approach is key for us. The client is finally the end point, the final receiver of this energy that we are producing, and they need affordable and accessible energy in transport, energetics, and heating. We want our number of customers to be increased by up to 10 million clients or more. Our strategy is built on four pillars and two foundations. The four pillars are the maximization of the values, the investments that are thought through, and stable yield. We will invest only in those assets that will give us high yield, high return on investment, that will fit into our energy mix and our strategy for the upcoming years. The next element is the innovative and sustainable portfolio of products. The transformation for the future. We are talking about this very often.
We know what future we want. We know what regulations there are that shape the future. But on the other hand, we are not quite sure how to do it. For example, and there is a question on SMR, there is a question on big energy storages. They are still in the developing phase. But we do want to invest in innovations and projects that will drive the energy transformation and transition. First and foremost, we want to invest in zero and low-emission projects in Poland and abroad. The next pillar of our strategy is the optimization of our assets. Right now, ORLEN consists of four big companies, which have shares in more than 360 of smaller entities. This is a huge, an enormous organism, so to say, an economic organism.
We, of course, have our core business, but also some other operations and businesses. You know that perfectly really well, and we know that not all of them were beneficial to our image. That is why we want to get rid of the things that are not beneficial for us, that are not beneficial for our image, and we want to focus on our core business. We want to focus on the things that will bring us the highest return on investment and that will guide us better towards energy transition. And the last pillar is capital management.... I believe that our commitment, it is more of a commitment than an offer towards investors.
I believe that our commitment, that will be covered by Magda in a moment, is a disciplined approach to the structure of costs and a focus on building partnerships. That is our commitment towards our investors. This is our ORLEN 2035, strategy. These are the four pillars. They are based on two foundations. The first foundation is the corporate governance, which builds the integrated, cohesive, and digital organization. It is close to my heart, and I feel very much committed to it, and obliged to deliver on the promise of introducing the corporate governance that is based on those values. Due to the historical aspects that I don't want to expand on today, this corporate governance is not in a perfect shape.
As when we consider that our company is so ambitious, big, and so significant in this part of Europe, but we want to improve this corporate governance. The other foundation is the decarbonization of assets and the energy transition. We want that, but we also are obliged to do that, not only by the European regulations, but also we are obliged to do that, to deliver on the energy transitioning and the decarbonization of assets because of the climate change and what is going on in our planet. I would like to tell you some more about our company. This is quite complicated because we really want to show you in the process approach, who we are, what, and what we do. Who are we? We have the four basic businesses. First of all, we have upstream and supply, so w e are here mining fuel, crude oil, natural gas, and hydrocarbons.
So we also are producing fuels, polymers, monomers, and this is all fueled by the energy and by the energy, networks and the grids, energy grids. We are sure that by 2030, we will already have delivered on certain projects in the, in some of the projects that we, have already been engaged in. We have the heating systems, and these are all our projects that, and products that we offer to our customers in the form of the heating services, the fuels to our end consumers. The elements that are subject to energy transitioning will be added slowly and steadily to the functioning of our company in a way that is well thought through, so that we achieve synergy and a beneficial interaction between those elements in our structure.
When it comes to upstream, we'll add here the sustainable feedstock supply and something that is absolutely innovative. This part of our company will be responsible for the CCUS, that is carbon capture, utilization, storage, and transport. This is a very ambitious and new task. I believe that this year we'll be able to tell you more about that. To the energy sector, we will add two elements related to renewable energy sources, that is, offshore and onshore companies. I mean, here, the wind power, the photovoltaics, and this sector will also be responsible for developing and implementation of the SMR technology. Why? Because it is necessary, it is needed, but also from the perspective of the functioning of the company, this will produce the green energy to downstream, which is crucial in our core business.
First of all, we have to have these green energy sources, and the downstream sector of our company also has to produce the green fuels for our consumers. So here we will produce biofuels, we will produce green fuels, biofuels also for the transport and also for the air transport, and transport by aircraft. But also, it's connected with our refineries. This all will work towards producing green products. We believe that by 2035, we will have already been ready to produce green energy that is not toxic to the environment. And our goal is, first and foremost, our ambition for 2050, Net Zero-
[Foreign language] Emissions of our company. And, in 2035, we will see lowering the emissions in absolute, the absolute emissions in downstream and upstream by 25%. We want to lower the emission intensity, by 55%, and the net carbon intensity will be lower by 15%. But in 2050, is the year that we want when we want to be absolute zero emission company. [Foreign language] And now the financial results. I'll just give you a brief outline. [Foreign language] . This is our objective. Those are our ambitions. We want to give our shareholders an attractive dividend. By 2030, upstream and supply will be the main component driving transformation project.
We foresee stable profits from a downstream project and also from the energy segment, and this, of course, will be incorporated in the consumer and product segment. The dividend has been increased to PLN 4.25 per share. We will have a progressive dividend policy. Every year, dividend will increase by 15 gr per share. That is the guaranteed dividend increase. But that's not all. There's a new element here as well, something that has a real financial effect. [Foreign language] . The one we had to date was, had a theoretical financial effect. It was a zero or negative value. While we want the management board to have a guaranteed possibility to recommend, the payout of higher dividend, up to 25% of financial flows from operating activity in a given year, decreased by financing costs. This has a real financial effect.
Every year, the management board will take sound decisions on taking this additional opportunity. [Foreign language] . The energy of tomorrow starts today. [Foreign language]. What does that mean? [Foreign language] . Let's go back to what I've already discussed. This is what our company looks like. Now I will attempt to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, how we will implement this motto in different areas of our company. The energy of tomorrow starts today. Gas, let's start with that. It is of utmost importance. So somehow a different perspective, however, we believe that from our geographical context, it follows that natural gas will be very important until 2050. It will be the fundamental driver of the energy transition.
By 2035, we want to increase extraction capacity and access to natural gas, own gas, up to 9 million in 2024, and 12 billion cubic meters in 2035. We will continue to extract gas from Poland, for this is extremely difficult in terms of the volume. Poland is reaching its limits in terms of exploitation, extraction, sorry. But we believe that this amount can be extracted from Poland. We want to increase our extraction in Norway, and we are closely eyeing up, also in business, terms, North America, where we want to roll out. We also want to increase commercial opportunities. We have specialized units, which know how to navigate their way in their markets. We want to ensure 27 billion cubic meters of gas through purchases across the market through our fuel bases.
We believe that 6 billion cubic meters will be available for Poland, or if not, it can be sourced abroad. Carbon dioxide capture. We want to support regulatory efforts to ensure CCS in the Baltic Sea region. This, based on the 1970s agreements, this is not possible, but we want to change that situation. [Foreign language] . We are conducting talks about storing CO2 in different locations, not so far away from Poland. We will start building the first CO2 export terminal in Gdańsk. We will create our own capacity for CO2 capture and others, and we will offer this service to other entities that have problems with that. I'm sure you're aware that many production facilities are facing this problem at the moment. What awaits downstream is increasing the production of alternative fuels, and accelerating decarbonization of transport.
Our objective is clear, 29% by 2035. That should be our, the share of, renewables in our energy mix. Those are our objectives. We have already prepared our capacity to increase, this share up to 21% by 2030 and to 29% by 2035. We will bank on innovative development of our own products and other products as well. What seems more popular are strategic partnerships, and we will be looking at that as well. We will be developing our strategic partnerships. We will decrease emissions in downstream. We will achieve that by producing hydrogen. At the moment, we don't have any renewable hydrogen. The hydrogen we're using is, derived, from fossil fuels. We want, to achieve, 210 million tons of clean hydrogen by 2035.
Clean hydrogen will be used for production purposes and also will drive transportation. We want to maintain our operational excellence, but we want to increase it to 97%. We have 7 refineries, which makes this a challenge because they are quite old. It's a challenge for our maintenance services. Of course, we will rise up to this task. At this point, I must say that we will continue to take all efforts to reduce the accident rate, which is negligible already at this point in time, especially in the context of our capabilities and, as compared to our competitors, but we want the accident rate to be zero. People are most important. Refineries in the petrochemical context, this is quite a challenge. The petrochemical market is witnessing strong supply pressure, high supply, small demand.
Europe has practically ceased to produce petrochemical products based on its own energy raw materials. Production is moving beyond Europe's borders to the U.S., to China. We want to rise up to this challenge. We want to use circular raw materials in our petrochemical segments. We will reuse, recover our products. We will rechannel them into the production system. We want to introduce mechanical and chemical recycling. We don't have much experience here, however, we want to boost our portfolio through strategic partnerships. We will create a portfolio of sustainable products and raw materials. We will deepen the value chain. We will decrease the number of monomers and increase the number of polymers. When you look at these figures, you can see 63% of advanced production at this moment. In 2035, this should go up to 70%.
It doesn't look like much. However, if we look at the scale of challenges and the scale of investment, we see this as a very ambitious objective. Energy. It has two dimensions. The first, non-carbon one, 13 billion GW of installed capacity in renewables. That's our goal, in Poland and abroad. We're looking at the developments, especially in the Baltic Sea region, from the perspective of our geographical position and our other facilities, Możejki or Prib altika, these areas of pivotal importance. It will be an important element of our contribution to the Polish presidency of the EU to help others perceive us as an energy hub in the Baltics. Therefore, we are looking at markets in other countries, and we do not rule out investments in renewables in other countries. Of course, we want to digitize. We talked about the virtual power plant.
Digitization is inevitable. And another element where we practically have no experience, that is developing energy storage facilities. We want one-fourth of the renewables installed capacity to be installed in a storage that is 1.4 gigawatts. We will develop through strategic partnerships. That's how the market operates. We share risk. We are a large company in the center of Europe. We are conducting calm and reasonable talks about this with potential partners. We want to add low-carbon energy sources here. Let me go back to the issue of natural gas. By 2050, this will be a very important element of Poland's energy policy. We want to have 4.3 gigawatts installed in CCGTs, that is, gas power plants, combined cycle gas turbines. We are building two such facilities in Ostrołęka and Grudziądz.
We're planning also construction in Warsaw, and we're not ruling out one or two more facilities, depending on our financial capabilities. The financial market is taking a rest place, but we will see how it reacts to such investments and see if we can use the financial market to support our development. I've already mentioned SMRs. We hope to have two SMRs for our own needs with 600 MW capacity, at least two SMRs. As you know, we're engaged in a project with an external partner, which has very ambitious plans. We'll see how this will unfold. Their ambitions are much larger, 0.6 GW of power produced in SMRs. And another unique challenge, something which is not known to our DNA, the heating system. It has gained importance and become more challenges.
Increasing emissions from heating systems, we have a plan until 2030. We're working on a plan on reducing emissions by 2035. It is an immense financial challenge. We want to decrease emissions by 60% in this segment. The decarbonization of heating production is an immense challenge. At the center of this, we have the customers. We want to provide to our customers, we want them to use our services. We hope to have a base of over 10 million users within VITAY. It will be a one-stop shop for all the products that we offer, starting from fuels, ending with heat. We want to make them accessible through this platform. We also want to increase the number of users to 10 million. At the same time, we want to play an important role in supplying power to electric vehicles.
We hope to have a 33% share in providing electricity to EVs. Those will be charging stations. This is connected with what I mentioned earlier on, energy as a service. Energy understood as a choice. Through our VITAY platform, we will offer this service to our customers. This is a great challenge, to reorganize the company, to introduce changes that will enable us to offer all products to customers at one place, while we have a wide range of products which are very varied. But I'm certain we will rise up to this challenge. And all those grand, ambitious goals that I was talking about during my this presentation are represented here in this house that is built of four pillars, and has two foundations, that I and my management board we believe that it is crucial. So...
and it is all glued together by cohesive, a digitized, organization. This is a very ambitious task. This company has been growing, in, not in a stable way, but sometimes ORLEN grew very fast over a short period of time because some other companies were included to the company. But then, the growth wasn't so dynamic for some other period, and it's all due to some emotions, sentiments. And now we, I want to stand up to this challenge to make our growth more stable, and this is our fundamental task. This is the task for the management board, and I'm committed to lead the way to achieve our goals.
It all comes down to decarbonizing transport, to leading us, guiding us through the energy transition, so that we all feel safe, we all have accessible energy, clean environment, and be happy about the fact that we live in Poland. The energy of tomorrow starts today. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, you are presented not only the framework, but also the details of the strategic plan for the next years. As you can see, the energy transition in Poland will be the transition and transformation of ORLEN as well. The market, the competition, the all the players are already thinking ahead, how to finance their plans, how to finance their strategy. All the more so because our biggest energy company has now just announced their strategy. How the transformation in ORLEN will look, the Vice President of the Management Board for Financial Affairs, Magdalena Bartoś, will talk about the financial plans for the future.
Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome. Irek, our CEO, just presented to us the strategic pillars, and now I would like to show you the financial perspective of our plans. We are building a strong, integrated, and diversified, and more resilient organization. Our financial ambition is to keep the stable, pace of the EBITDA, increases in growth, and we would like to raise our profitability that is measured by, EBITDA growth. The annual, average EBITDA will grow from the present, level of PLN 33 billion to around PLN 56 billion-PLN 59 billion in 2035. But the pace of this growth of our EBITDA is not the only thing that is important, but the composition of, this growth is, of significance as well, and the evolution of particular positions. In the years to come, in our strategy, the upstream supply segments will contribute the most to the group profits.
Among other things, thanks to profits on extraction and excavation, and investments in renewable energy sources will give us longer perspective profit, because this will bring us the most profit at the end of the horizon of our strategy. We believe that the EBITDA will grow more than three times by the end of our strategy horizon. This downstream segment right now is going through a huge transformation, and it has a lot of macro challenges, but in a longer perspective, it will build value thanks to developing the alternative fuels basket and the growth of sales of petrochemicals based on the renewable feedstock. We are also expecting the macroeconomic environment to be more gentle and favorable to us in the second part of our strategy horizon.
That is why we expect that our downstream sector will increase its EBITDA about twofold. It all will be also contributed by the consumers and product segment, thanks to increased offer for our consumers. But for us, consumers and product segment value is not only measured by the figures, by the profit in Polish zlotys, but we are truly client-oriented. Our reports with the customers influences our whole organization. Now, the capital expenditures. Our policy on CapEx, when it comes to all of the aspects of the CapEx that we are investing, well, we have a diversified structure here as well. So we are investing in upstream and downstream, and in total, we will invest around PLN 350 billion zloty. We will change the structure and the distribution of our CapEx.
In the first part of our strategy horizon, we will invest mostly into Upstream, supply, and Downstream. This is around two-thirds of our CapEx by 2030. In the second part of the strategy, most of the CapEx will be allocated to the energy segment. This is around 50% of our CapEx by 2035. The largest increase of CapEx will be seen in the first four years of our strategy, and this is because we need to invest in Upstream segment. We are building the portfolio in Norway, and we are potentially also entering the North American market. We also can see the needs for investments in Downstream. We want to invest in the new chemistry project, but also I'm talking about the decarbonization strategy and the alternative fuels needs.
When it comes to renewable energy sources and low carbon and zero carbon project, this also, these are also the projects that we need to invest in. In 2035, the CapEx will reach around PLN 15 billion-PLN 18 billion, according to our plans. Areas that need the most investments throughout the whole strategy is the energy sector. We want to invest in renewable energy sources and in gas energy sources and downstream, so the mentioned new chemistry project and alternative fuels investments. From the beginning of our communication with you, we have been repeating that one of the most important element of our strategy is the power and the stability of our balance sheet.
In line, in a long way, the investments that are made within our group, our debt will also increase, but we are sure that we will not exceed our debt capacity of more than twofold of our EBITDA. In the first half of our strategy, this debt will grow, and then in 2027, we plan to have around 1.4 of debt compared to our EBITDA. In the second part of our strategy, we believe that we will see profits, so that this will help us to decrease the debt and increase the EBITDA in 2050. Now, I would like to talk about the flexibility of the CapEx.
The recent years have shown us that a macroeconomic and geopolitical situation can change very quickly, and that is why we have to be ready to react to this volatility of the situation. We are aware that our investment plans is not trivial at all. It's a very difficult task, a huge challenge that we want to face with full responsibility, and our CEO quoted to our values, and I believe that the responsibility is visible in the slides. So we want to build flexibility in our investment plans. We are looking at our investment plans and from the perspective of baskets of CapEx or the investment projects. The first basket is the maintenance CapEx. So this is the CapEx that helps us maintain the effectiveness of our operations.
We plan to have the average annual CapEx, and this basket will be equal to PLN 7.84 billion. Over the full horizon of our strategy, we want to allocate around PLN 60 billion to distribution grids. This is the CapEx that we need to experience in these baskets. The next two baskets give us the possibility to be flexible when it comes to the CapEx amount and deadlines. The first one is the development CapEx, and the second one is the one related to mergers and acquisitions and partnerships. I mentioned the flexibility of managing the CapEx in our company because we really need to be able to respond very quickly to the changes in our market. Let's move on to the next part of my presentation.
This is yet another proof of how we planned our investments. Our CEO mentions reliability and responsibility, and this is represented by these figures. We commit to our shareholders and towards you, ladies and gentlemen, that our CapEx will be evaluated reliably, and we will invest more in the projects that contribute to the modernization and decarbonization of the group. We will have stricter requirements towards the projects that are of higher risk, and for the first time in the history of the group, we are presenting the minimum expected yield and return on investment. So the and the hurdle rates. The projects, the CapEx that will be allocated to the investments in the traditional segments that are to be... are to maximize the value of our business, the hurdle rate is 10, 10%-12%.
The investments in the innovative and sustainable portfolio of the products are the investments in the projects that, in the longer term, will build the value of our group and build a sustainable group beyond the horizon of our strategy. Towards these projects, our hurdle rates are 7%-9%. Asset optimization, these are the projects that increase our effectiveness, that build our integration of our group. Towards these projects, we expect to have the hurdle rates at the level of 8%-10%. What is very important here, in evaluation of our investment project, we will take into consideration the emission rate. The programs that are zero carbon, that are characterized by the zero emission rates, will be in the center of our attention.
We also mentioned our policy of managing risk and capital, and we mentioned that we want to focus on partnership, and among these partnerships, we'll focus mostly on the strategic partnerships. Let us go back to the values that Irek mentioned. Trustworthiness, reliability. To us, it is the capability of an organization to implement investments and strategic priorities together with its partners. In our strategy, we are looking for partners with whom it will be easier to-
... provide the capacity, or the capacity we need, and to share risks. We want to build on our experience. We already have experience in upstream and supply, especially in our extraction projects in the Norwegian continental shelf. We are actively looking for partnerships in upstream and supply. We will look for them in Norway and potentially also in North America. In the downstream segment, we will be especially looking for partners in new business lines. We will be looking for access to technology and know-how, especially in decarbonizing upstream and supply, obtaining feedstock and decarbonization. In the energy segment, we have our first experience in building offshore wind farms based on partnerships. We will continue this initiative. We will also be looking for new partnerships in energy storage projects.
When modeling our financial assumptions and our financial plans, we adopted an estimated share of our partners in our segments. We hope that cooperating with our partners will help us drive the group in the direction of effective and reliable implementation of our strategy. It is time for a coda, for rounding off my presentation. I started with our first financial ambition, which was providing a stable pace of growth in operating EBITDA growth. Our second financial ambition is to provide our shareholders with attractive and progressive dividends in the coming years. Our strategy and development actions are to build longer-term revenues for the company. We are obliged to share our financial profits with our shareholders. We want to be a trustworthy and honest partner, a stable partner for our shareholders.
We want to pay out attractive dividends, and we tie that dividend, not just with its guaranteed level, but also with actual financial results of the group. We want to share those with our shareholders as well. We have a basic dividend amount starting from 2025, and that is 4.5 PLN. That is an increase as compared to the previous strategy, and we declare that it will grow by 0.15 PLN every year. That's not all. Our dividend is also tied to actual financial outcomes of our group. The management board will have the opportunity to pay out additional dividend, up to 25% of the operating cash flows of the group, reduced by financial expenditure.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me reiterate, the foundation of our financial planning, that is, our building of a stable, diverse, integrated, and resilient to business cycles group, is aimed at ensuring a stable pace of, operating, growth and attractive dividends for shareholders. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your attention. Ladies and gentlemen, it's quite a challenge to present 10 years, covered by a strategy within just one hour. Thank you for your attention over this, last hour. I'm certain you have a lot of questions about, the specific components of the strategy, decarbonization, investments, the financial plans. Therefore, now we have about an hour or an hour and a half with you. We will now close, the part which is being streamed. We are closing the part of the event, that, is, organized on stage.
We will have a half an hour for questions. To your left and to my right, we have members of the management board who are open to your questions. They will give you answers in the spirit of transparency, reliability, and trustworthiness, as well as honesty and integrity. You can discuss the strategy for the years 2025, 2035. Let me close the official part of this meeting, and I encourage you to participate in the informal part. Thank you very much.