I'd like to welcome you at the Conference for Media and Investors for Discussing the Financial Results of TAURON for 2024. We have the Management Board, Grzegorz Lot, the President; Mr. Gołębiowski, Vice President for Trading; Mr. Orłowski, for Assets and Development; and Mr. Krzysztof Surma, Vice President for Financial, the CFO. My name is Mirosława Karpińska. I'm the press team of TAURON Polska Energia. The schedule of today's meeting shall be as follows: the presentation shall be in Polish with simultaneous translation into English. In parallel, this meeting could be heard by way of a teleconference. Questions may be asked in two ways from the room. I will ask to present yourself and ask three questions at most in the series. Questions could be always sent through a tag which is available at the web page of our transmission. After the conference, we'll hold a question and answers session.
The President will take the floor.
We have Ms. Kapakusz, who is for the strategy department, Ms. Kaukaska of the communications teams. We have also persons. So many things are happening. The strength of women in our structures is very, very high. A lot depends on our female colleagues and on our male colleagues too. A year ago, we had met at this conference in part by telecommunications or directly. We are taking into consideration the interests of investors, the society, people, the economy. That is how things are happening. That is how the things we are doing at the company are happening. We are taking into consideration a variety of perspectives. Hence, our decision for such advanced implementation of the RES, which takes into consideration all these components. This perspective is very important for us.
On the 7th of March, we commenced cooperation with TAURON, with use the value of shares that was PLN 3.06, the market value of PLN 0.36 billion, 376 at the end of the year. On the 31st of March, the value was PLN 4.95. For the first time, the shares exceeded PLN 5. One hour ago, it was PLN 4.73. It is a good message that the value of the company is increasing. We can see we have more than 60% growth. Of course, this depends on the stock price, of course. It is important to see that we are creating value, and this value is higher year on year. I think that we will not stop with this. Just before this meeting, we had received a number of questions. One of the main questions was whether we, as the management, uphold our dividend policy. Yes, we do. Absolutely, we do.
This is respect to our shareholders. We have given an explicit communication that we will pay dividend for 2028, starting with 2028. Let's go next. Several information. According to our assumptions, and you've asked for that, and your requests are important to us, there are 45 minutes of presentation. Then we will be at your disposal. I understand that the questions will be hard and difficult to answer. That's what we're awaiting. Krzysztof will tell us we had excellent economic results: PLN 6.5 billion EBITDA. We had exceeded the previous year's results. 1.7 is a debt ratio, the very low. It's at a good level. The investment rating has been maintained. Of the important things, we've done some very hard work to obtain a loan from the restructuring plan. That's PLN 11 billion. That's a lot of money. That's the money we want to use for our investments.
You asked us to change the presentation of results, and Krzysztof said that we have changed the model of reevaluating the balance difference, and we are meeting your requirements. You asked about the changes in distribution year on year, and we also worked on that. We done it. You also asked us to present the economic debt of the company, and this will be shown for the first time using the model that you asked as analysts. The internal element of our structure is that proves how we are changing the assets we have approved by the end of December in three tours. I do not want to say when were the previous, but in these three ones, we have approved the plan. All the iterations have been confirmed and approved by the supervisory board in mid-January. This shows our determination and how we organize our work.
Second thing, we were able to establish the tax group. We have to show it to you. The tax group has been maintained, and we made such a reversal, which has ended happily for us. This required a lot of work for us to be done. Krzysztof will tell how that work looked like. We are going to talk in detail about the financial results. This year is also a year of very heavy organizational effort. We have made a lot of changes in staff and management and managerial positions. We have also performed assessment, the development of our staff, and created individual development plans for a company. There will be individual development plans for each of the managers. We have introduced a state of the art for us, business model based on business units. We manage business units.
We have distribution, generation, heat, and sales, irrespectively of how internally our structure used to us. The companies are just operational models. We manage the business units. We earn money on the distribution. We will show the results, the investments, but the vision into the companies of our group is of secondary importance. We have also undertaken social dialogue with people separating out carbon assets. We have also detaching some of assets. We are meeting regularly with our employees, both male and females. We visit individual units. We have been in Świercza, Łaziska, Jaworzno. We've talked to the people, presented our strategy and solutions that we are employing for each of the areas. Michał will tell you how we do imagine the future because we are fighting for the power market.
We want to sell our markets. Our 200 megawatt units are very important for trading power.
This is very important in the transformation period, and we are also ready to offer this on the market using the model of annual auctions. We are also able to extend the operation of those units until 2030 or maybe 2035. Each year above 2028 will require a different power contracting model because it requires a different approach to investments into revamping. This has to be planned, and this cannot be done later on year on year. I am proud to say that in this period of time, we have almost attained a parity, not 50 by 50, but we have in the entire group more than 32% share of women in our bodies. They have a high contribution to our organization. They supported, they strengthened the organization, and this mix of knowledge, a mix of success, is very stimulating for all of us. We had prepared the rest.
We have prepared reports. You know how difficult it is to create the reports. We had several months of very high effort to do this work together with the consultant. This has been approved. We are very determined to implement this, and we believe, and we are happy to see the initiatives that we can simplify this, make it more lean, and operate it without high bureaucracy. We know that the reports repeating the same working model create great effort, but we can attain the same effect by making it more lean. We're waiting for the omnibus effects and other initiatives that we have undertaken. Audits and compliance. I will show you the statistics. We are working on the audits for us. Audits is something from an independent unit, and compliance are reporting to the audit committee.
We have implemented the highest available standards for both areas, and we are doing those activities to improve our structure, improve efficiency, lower the risk. I will show you statistics in just a moment. Some other things were super important for us. On the 17th of December, we announced our strategy, new strategy. The strategy was prepared by us. There was no consultant working on that externally. Our own teams created those new strategies. We will cooperate with consultants and advisors in implementing this because the external knowledge available is very needed by us. Internally, in the wider managerial group, in which we have directors and companies, we have created our own outdoor program. We know what we want to attain in the future. This also establishes a sponsoring strategy for the future, which reflects what we do in the media and in promotions.
Of course, this is based on all the operating strategies of the individual businesses. Piotr will tell about the details.
We are determined to implement the RES. We have implemented already Miejska Górka. We had a number of difficult questions from you, and we're still awaiting for more questions. We are determined to implement those projects. We are implementing those projects which are generating profits and create value. Miejska Górka has been purchased. We won the auction for power warehouses, 277 megawatts. We have implemented the first pumping power station in Rożnów. We are working on the dam structures. First of all, we have to divide this between the businesses generating energy and responsibility for preventing flooding. You know how did that look in September of the previous year, and you can see our work on that.
We are intensively working on separating these two issues and obtaining express financing for safety. In distribution, we have implemented our outlays. We have 300,000 new clients. We have more than one and a half million new clients with intelligent meters. We plan to implement more of these digitization. We are communicating about that. This client perspective is super important for the clients. We have created a special area for cooperating with the client in each geographical unit. We have dedicated persons responsible for clients. We're not ideal, but improving month by month. I'd like to say it's very blatant, but the process of issuing permits is also available on e-forms, and this will be in a professional database system. Distribution has been opened to clients for a long time.
have been maintaining dialogue with the client since we planned expanding of our net grid, and we work together with clients and businesses to ask for their local needs, and we are able to invest by ourselves, being a responsible business, our money to develop the area to create new investments, to bring new people, new businesses, and develop the business and people that are offered to local governments and local people. We are building the area together, and such initiatives have been already implemented and are continued to be implemented. As for conventional energy, we have the Jaworzno power plant, the 910 megawatts. We stabilize it. The 200 megawatt units are the power units. We have been fighting for those. There will be annual power auctions. We are preparing for those actions.
For this year, we have done a lot of cost optimizations to be better prepared because we want to win those actions. In each of those options and locations, we have the ability to convert to BMS or RDF, like in Świercza, and in other units to go from pickers to storage, etc. I do not want to take Michał's presentation away from him. All this has been communicated to the local government and to our people. Wherever we are working in conventional energy, we will continue to maintain my business, being responsible to conduct a fair transformation. The employees who will be subject to exclusion will find another work in our organization. We do a lot of CAPEX everywhere. Those people will change their jobs, but we will have jobs offered to them in our company if they wish to. That helps us to obtain public assessment.
We know that no transformation is possible without public acceptance. The local sub-governments have also our assurance, telling them that we will be there, we will invest in each of the objects, and we will cooperate with local sub-governments to create investments, to create tax revenue, to enable the sub-governments to cooperate. We are able to show to each location what we plan to do. Everything will be optimized, of course, and changed, but the base model is already ready and going. In the heating, I will not develop that. We will use decarbonization, and we have the objects being implemented. We have tenders for the engines, and the projects are being implemented. The last thing, this is a separate overhead because everything what we are doing is for the shareholders, for the employees, for the client.
We have 6 million clients, and this is our leitmotif for our cooperation. The model that we have implemented last year and is operating, Piotr will update and develop that model. It's a model of allocation of energy from our RES assets to final clients. This is a model that we build our competitive advantage. If we invest, if we buy a PPA model, then we have to know that the cost of production and those sources in the long-term perspective are acceptable and are possible to be allocated to the final client. That's our basic business. Besides return on investments and all the indices that Krzysztof and Michał will be telling you about, our main component is to have the price of elected energy for the client be acceptable and that acceptable both for households and large businesses.
We have 160,000 clients, households, and SMEs which are in the new model for nine-year contracts, 100% green energy, nine years of price guarantee. We are building our assets. We build our ecosystem of distributed storages, heat storages, and large-age colleges, and we are open also for PPA, and we sign contracts for PPA, which make our structure more green. Digitization is something which is super important for us. This improves quality, improves relationships with clients, and also contacts with clients. Also improves ecology because we remove paper. 3 million clients have e-invoices. 2 million of users have My TAURON application. You've already heard that our intention is to involve our clients. Involve clients, our clients with whom we can build new models, and they were also able to get the cheapest elected energy. We're talking about a dynamic tariff both in distribution and in heat.
That was the first step. We are testing a new model here. It's not on mass scale as yet. Some of the clients have adopted it, and Piotr will tell you if you will be interested what are the economic effects of that. It is our common declaration on the 21st of June. We will show another update of the offer. This will be a dynamic tariff for mass scale. It will take into consideration benefits from dynamics of change and also certain security and safety of a client that doesn't want to play with the electric energy prices. On the 21st of June, we'll present also a new e-invoice, of course, and a new e-paper invoice, a simplified invoice. We'll also show the new offer, and we'll offer to all our clients possibilities associated with advice.
The client on his profile, if he will have a client, he will be able to select his most economic tariff, G11, G13, and other tariffs. The client will be able to see what he can achieve, and he will also know how to decrease the use of energy by his own behavior. There will be more rest, more digitization, more storages, and more tools will be available, and the higher will be the chance that the price of energy will be lower. We have to also remember that this will depend on client behavior, and clients will behave like professionals. We will help them. We will educate them. We will provide them with tools, and we will take most of those matters on ourselves.
We are prepared to that 80% of our clients of the SMEs are people who are working on certain products from us, either auction products or tariffs. Tariffs could be passed already because if a client has a tariff, he can negotiate with us, and he can contract with us. I think this is all. The last communication on my part is before I become silent is what I have undertook in the period until March to March 2025. We have done 43 audits by us. I understood both investigative audits where we check for various irregularities, but most of those were the audits generated and activated because we see certain risks, certain deficiencies, and certain ways of improving that we want to implement. In majority, these audits were in-house auditors, very professional, capable of doing all this. We served quite a number of notifications to the prosecuting authorities.
There were sponsoring and gifts. We have 16 notifications about employees, and just a few notifications being under preparation, but we have 15 audits which are ongoing, and we have a very concrete audit plan for 2025, which is being agreed with the supervisory board in accordance with state-of-the-art of auditing. If you ask me when we'll stop doing audits, I will tell you back that we will never do that because we can always improve on something. Every year we'll have audit plans. The plans will be implemented as long as we are in the management, and as well as our successor, there will have something to improve, and we will do improve by doing audits. Thank you.
Vice` President of the Management Board for Trading, before Krzysztof, who speaks after me, will present the earnings, I'd like to describe for you the topography of the terrain, to quote unquote, speaking metaphorically. What was the situation regarding the fundamental market, the indices, and I will move on to describing how our units were operated and the business units, specific business units, what was the impact, commercial impact upon what was seen in the earnings. Let's start with the fact that all the indices that we are interested in are falling. That's a trend that's been underway since 2023. Regarding the hardcore prices, the PSM1 prices index went down by 31%. Regarding the ARA coal, it's a 14.5% fall. And as you know, these are the indices that are synthetic indices. They do not reflect directly the fuel policy of the energy group, including our own.
Nevertheless, they are a certain benchmark. In addition, we were dealing, and that's a trend that we've been observing for a long time, is a decline of the CO2 prices, the carbon credits, CO2 emission allowance prices, 20% from EUR 15 in 2023 to around EUR 63.5, which was caused on many factors: higher generation from renewables, the lack of heat waves, and relatively stable operation of nuclear-powered units in France. What did it bring about? It brought about, first of all, the fact that our main indices of the forward market on the Polish Power Exchange dropped, and we are talking here about the CALP product 24, talking about the 2023 year, and CALP 25, talking about the 2024 index by 33%. Also, this led to events that took place regarding the spot market.
The lower level of coal prices and carbon credit prices was the main factor behind the decline of prices, which went down by about 19%. This was also impacted definitely by the event called the change of balancing market in June. We generated strong pricing signals such as extremely high prices the second half of the year, including also the negative prices. For the first time, we're dealing with negative prices. We're about 186 hours with negative prices, so 2% of the duration of negative prices, which had an impact on a number of circumstances, about the dispatching of those units by the TSO, as well as outdoor dispatching, which we implemented actively. Let me just add, since I mentioned that in the context of limiting the production from the photovoltaic farms and wind farms, we're dealing with a situation regarding our farms.
The curtailment was about 30 gigawatt hours, including 24 gigawatt hours was auto dispatching. We are anticipating certain projected elements regarding the situation where we can expect negative prices. We were switching off our units ourselves. Thanks to that, we were able to secure, first of all, the hedge potential lost revenue and not cause any additional bottlenecks regarding the dispatching performed by the transmission system operators. What follows? That was the characteristics of the pricing situation.
Now, regarding how it impacted the CDSs, so the first-degree margins or the difference between the market price and the variable cost, as you can see on the drawing in the right-hand corner, the bottom, but the CDSs since 2023, practically, the CDSs at the negative level or close to zero regarding the light blue graph versus a reflection of the CDSs on the low-efficiency generation units, the so-called 200 megawatt units. The dark blue line is the reflection of the situation on the high-efficiency units. In our case, these are Nowe Jaworzno, Grupa TAURON, and Łagisza units. You can see that it unambiguously indicates the time of easy money-making for the conventional energy is done, is finished.
We are dealing with a situation where it's not possible to place on the forward market contracts and obtaining a positive margin, and we have to deal with it in a different way. That's the way we were dealing with it in 2024. Moving on. Due to the situation regarding the TAURON generation, in spite of a high dispatchability, availability of the units was reaching 75% regarding the high-efficiency Nowe Jaworzno, Grupa TAURON, and Łagisza units. We were contracting at the potential of 40% of contracting options, those units. The production of electricity came in about 8 terawatt hours, was 12% lower than 2023.
Mainly, the units regarding the futures contracts mainly contracted the Nowe Jaworzno units and Łaziska units, but as a backup, we had the 200 megawatt units, except for those that have some situation related to a power plant or heating systems that would have to be secured due to the production of heat in the given regions. Mainly, it was applicable to Jaworzno 2 and one of the Łaziska units, and that was the situation. Regarding the entire wave of actions shifted to the second half of the year because the tariff of the balancing market was introduced when we had an option to have another exchange, so ability to submit bids for the balancing capacity for the primary and secondary regulation, the restoration regulation, where we were an active participant, but our activity was limited to 15% regarding 2024.
This is a much higher activity now, and that meant that our whole intensity of activities was targeted, and that's why the way you can see that as part of this market, we increased the trading on the balancing market by more than 60%, 160% of year 2023 trading by limiting the activities on the spot market. Regarding the TAURON heat line of business units, the situation also another year, we are dealing with a situation where only the high-efficiency generation units are operating, which are supporting the district heating system, and that was exactly the situation in 2024. In summer, we were only in the original first plans. The assumption was that the conventional unit in Tychy would be operated, but the contract was supposed to be taken over by the biomass-fired unit. The biomass-fired unit, due to a failure, could not be operated during summer.
Therefore, we had an opportunity to generate this heat in the region of 11 megawatts as required from the hard-coal-fired boilers in this case. However, the pattern that you can observe that the units are operating in the condensation, they are not operated is due to the fact that the ability to obtain positive margin is highly limited now. Only under such a mode of regime, those units can be operated. Regarding TAURON Heat, the own in-house generation production was 700 gigawatt hours, so 20% less than 2023. Regarding the renewables, we produced more than 1.5 terawatt hour of electricity, and this is 6% more versus 2023.
It's difficult to compare, so around 123 MW of newly commissioned wind capacity and 55 MW in the PV capacity increased the production, which was offset by the worse hydrological conditions with a decline of production by our hydroelectric power plants. The most important factor degrading the production was, of course, the flood effects where our 12 hydro power plants had a failure, and now I think four, maybe five, around five have been brought back online. Sorry, sorry, doubts about what is the status now. We have some kind of echo here. Please, could you correct that? Okay. Regarding generally where we place our activity, in such a simple balance, 26.5 TWh we needed regarding the supply market. We generated 10 TWh. Therefore, the simple balance, we had to buy about 70 TWh from the wholesale market. That's what happened.
Under the futures market, we bought 24% and 28% on the spot market and 9% on the balancing market. That is regarding the sources. Excuse me, because Krzysztof asked me to speak about the issue regarding TAURON supply. 26.5 terawatt hours of sales, that is about 13% less than 2023. What contributed to that was the balance of losses versus gains regarding the contracts for large business customers. This is the first thing that was also impacted by the prosumers' generation. Now, we are dealing more than 2 terawatt hours of electricity of TAURON prosumers generated by the distributed installations. That is about 17% more regarding the net billing. That is more than 80% more than 2023. Regarding the net metering, that is about 9%. At the average level of auto consumption, only 29%. This is visible in this balance. Krzysztof also mentioned the new energy issue. That is an unprecedented event.
In June, we announced this project that we will be placing our entire renewables energy with our customers. At the end of the year, we had 96,000 customers using this product. These are the products regarding the mass customers, 9-year-long products with a fixed price regarding the business customers, about 5-year-term products depending upon the customer preferences. Now, it's about 160,000 customers, which has brought about the increase of a percentage of loyalty building in 2023. We had 41% of the market was under the loyalty program and 45% in 2024. About 100,000 customers accepted our products, and a lot of customers using the tariff products were interested in this product. It's in our opinion, and we were not wrong regarding that period of anxiety, the war, regional persuasion, that led to the price fluctuations.
All kinds of support systems and shielding systems led to a situation where the demand for stability in terms of costs, and that's how one could characterize the end of this year. A lot of customers needed this stability. That's all from me for now. Thank you. Let me take over now after the period before I move on to describing the talking about the data. Before I move on to discussing the financial data, let me present the three issues that will be already ahead or might potentially have an impact upon our results. Grzegorz already announced those topics. The first topic is the loan from CSKPO, National Recovery Plan. We again bring up this topic. Let us remember, it's PLN 11 billion, unprecedented loan in the history of our group. I think unprecedented loan in the history of Poland.
Even the individual energy groups already obtained those loans, but let us remember, we were the first one. We obtained the entire National Recovery Plan that was available last year. It was the highest single loan for any energy group, even taking into account what happened today. Let us remember that in the other groups, two entities were using this type of support. What's important about loan, it is very long-term. The repayment comes finally 2049, and its interest in the higher term is 0.5%. This is, of course, very beneficial and should have a positive impact upon the net earnings of our group. This at the same time emphasizes our determination, our abilities to carry out investment product in the distribution line of business. This PLN 11 billion, I think, made our strategy very highly credible.
We announced December 17th last year what ahead of us regarding this loan, since I can brag that the first money already has been drawn in the first quarter. We'll have to show the accounting. Definitely, it'll be something for some of the people not so interesting, but the financial guys, yes, because we'll have to apply IFRS 20, and the booking accounting for this financing will not be so obvious as it might seem. The carrying amount, nominal carrying amount, and the balance sheet will be different from the nominal value of liability that we took on. Just let me warn you about this, but after Q1, I'll speak more about that. The second topic that we raised last year, and we promised that we'd deal with that, we said that we need another year and we'll change something regarding that.
We changed the model of revaluation of a balancing difference. Here, probably for you and for us, it was not comfortable, but the results of the distribution line of business were fluctuating very strongly year over year. That was due to the very rapid changes in the electricity market. As a consequence, the cost of purchasing electricity for the needs of the purpose of balancing differences had a big impact upon the earnings of the distribution line of business. Here, we decided to rework this model inside the group, and finally, in quarter four last year, we managed to develop, to work out this model. Its main idea was to change the way the settlements of between supply and distribution lines of business. It does not have a direct impact upon the cash flow outside, but it has an impact upon the cash flow between the individual subsidiaries.
Finally, it has an impact upon the presentation of the earnings within our group, especially regarding the distribution line of business. Now, this model, in our opinion, meant that the earnings, the results in the distribution, the other segments will be comparable year over year. This change was very important. We applied retroactively. We adjusted the opening balance of 2023 when we adjusted the entire result of the entire 2023, and accordingly, we adjusted the results of individual quarters in 2024. What I'll present further on in the presentation includes this adjustment regarding the revaluation model. Here, an important piece of information. We consider this revaluation model to be the first step to a final implementation of the actual model, either based on the AMI meters.
We are of the opinion that it'll be fully compatible now, and thanks to that, we'll not have those differences where we were showing previous years, year over year. The final topic, the problematic, controversial topic that Krzysztof mentioned, the status of the tax capital group. Let me confirm right to start with. We maintained the status. What happened last year? We're doing very structuring organization within our group. We were merging subsidiaries to limit the administrative costs. During one of the mergers, the parity of exchange or swap was wrongly calculated. This parity could have a potential impact on the loss of our tax capital group status. However, in the group, we noticed this mistake. Let me correct certain press headlines saying that the tax office saw this mistake. We were the first one to notice this mistake, and we informed the tax office about what had happened.
At the same time, our subsidiary filed a claim to declare null and void. The resolution included an obvious calculation error. The court agreed with our position and declared the resolution null and void. Based on this ruling of the court, the KRS, National Court Register, restored the decision from the moment to the time before the merger. In other words, expanded the entire merger that was carried out based on the wrong parity. In the meantime, the tax office, knowing the situation, knowing what regulation was breached, filed a petition to declare the tax capital group null and void. We appealed against the decision. We stated that the tax office should take the action only once the final ruling of the court is published, is announced, based on the resolution whether the resolution is going to be null and void or not.
Based on that, the tax office also dismissed the proceedings. I can fully confirm, firmly confirm that we obtained and we maintained the status of the tax capital group and will be able to take advantage of that in the subsequent months because the group status is valid until the end of the year. It will be able to take advantage of the full effects of the status. Moving on to the earnings, Piotr already mentioned a number of things that had an impact upon those earnings. We are dealing with a major decline of revenue. The price declines were behind it and the decline of the volume of electricity sold. However, that did not have a negative impact upon the result that we generated. We have historically the highest EBITDA in our group. We never reached close to PLN 6.5 million of EBITDA.
That's what we like to brag about. We want to show also that the market consensus that took place at the end of the year was about PLN 700 million lower. That means that the market estimated that our earnings will not be as good as they are. Regarding the, and of course, about EBITDA, I will expand more about it presenting the individual segments. However, regarding the net profit, it's much lower year over year. However, as we are reporting in our regulatory filings, we booked an important major impairment charge, especially in the generation segment on the conventional assets, also in the heat line of business. That is way more than PLN 1.5 billion of impairment charges that we booked during this year. It had an emerging impact upon the net profit.
In addition, the perspective Piotr mentioned, so the deterioration of the results in the earning and the falling CDSs determined the ability to restore the tax assets. The assets due to the deferred tax obligation were also adjusted. It also had a negative impact upon the net result. Regarding things that we want to brag about, it's a significant increase of capital expenditures. Definitely, Micha will speak more about that. What we'd like to emphasize, we announced the strategy on December 17th. We said there that 90% of the CAPEX will be allocated to the distribution and renewables lines of business, and that's what happened already this year. That's already finished. This year-over-year increase is about 20% up. This is also important. We are not radically increasing the CAPEX, not to spoil the contractors' market.
We are trying to encourage new contractors to submit bids to us, and we are gradually increasing the CAPEX level. Regarding the net debt-to-EBITDA ratio, it is at the level which is quite low, historically one of the lowest that we reported over the last few years. This was impacted, first of all, by the improvement, of course, of very good EBITDA. That is the main factor behind it. The CAPEX here, the difference between CAPEX is such that the CAPEX year-over-year was flat and very good, very good results on the working capital balance. A major decline of liabilities related to the compensation system and related to the decline of electricity sales prices, curtailment of inventory levels. Went down to PLN 2 billion regarding the working capital balance. Regarding the operational data, Piotr already mentioned some of them regarding the distribution itself.
We have here 1%, close to 1% up year-over-year, 31.7 terawatt-hours of electricity distributed. That's practically right on the money regarding the increase of electricity consumption nationwide, which was about 0.8%. Regarding renewables, Piotr mentioned it, the increase of production in renewables, first of all, was due to the newly commissioned capacities. However, the production from the hydroelectric plants was much lower, weak hydrological conditions, and then the floods led to major reductions there. Also, to a certain extent, small extent, this reallocation was contributed to the fact that we up to now capacities produced less year-over-year. Regarding the decline in the conventional line of business, similar as nationwide, we are dealing with a 10% decline in the hardcore business. The same situation applies to our units.
The price is getting weaker and weaker, and the growing output from the renewables and gas-fired units are pushing out the most expensive units in the merit order. This partly applies to some of our 200 megawatt units. The heat line of business reported similar output year-over-year. Slightly higher temperature during the heating season meant that this production is a bit lower, but there is not much difference between year to year. The last parameter, the matter of reduced supply, Piotr mentioned that we had departures of two major customers in Group A. The customer from the competitive Group 1, I can say, the distribution customer from another utility. In 2023, 2024, we were making purchases from electricity from a Group 24. We did not continue those purchases.
In addition, a bit weaker consumption, especially in the steelmaking industry, coal mining industry, and the automotive sector, especially in the south of Poland, where this industry is located, that had a particular impact upon the reduction of consumption in the business segment. If we move on now to the comparable EBITDA, both the comparable EBITDA versus 2023 and 2024, it is better versus reported EBITDA, which is, of course, a positive signal regarding the factors that determined and adjusted this reported EBITDA. In the 2024 year, first of all, this was the issue of a change of the tariff. As I remember, starting from July 1, the tariff was changed. From the EBITDA point of view, it took away about PLN 550 million. At the same time, it had a positive impact of tax interpretation that related to the famous regulation that reduced the prices by PLN 125.
We had got a positive interpretation that VAT can be included in that price, that improved the result by more than PLN 100 million. The final factor is the issue, as a matter of fact, of the deconsolidation of joint subsidiary, TAMEH Holding, controlled TAMEH Czech subsidiary. They declared insolvency because in the previous year, we set up a provision. Through the consolidation, we restored some of those provisions. We added the result of TAMEH Polska result itself. It led to the one-off improvement of EBITDA by more than PLN 260 million in 2023. Just for information purposes, because we presented during the previous conferences, the key aspects were the setting up of a provision for PLN 125 million and the payments to the price difference fund that caused the deviation of the result by more than PLN 150 million.
I'd like to note on this slide what I mentioned already. We are not showing the balance of impact of the revaluation model of balancing difference because we eliminated that retroactively. We are of the opinion that the results in the distribution line of business are comparable year-over-year. Here and now, again, we can say that our key line of business, we always emphasize that for the majority of you, it's a very well-known fact, but sometimes we are getting questions about the call. We are a distribution group. The most important part of EBITDA comes from the distribution segment. More than 60% generated by this line of business. Let us see phenomenal increase year-over-year, close to PLN 1 billion. Historically, it's the biggest increase in this segment in history. The other segments are contributing a few percentage points, up to 12% at the top of EBITDA.
The distribution line of business, EBITDA is the main factor determining the entire EBITDA. Regarding the negative EBIT in the generation segment, I already touched upon this topic. We're discussing the net profit. First of all, the impairment charge related to the coal assets, plus the not full ability to use the deferred tax asset. Now, let's move on to the individual segments. Based on this bridge graph, we can see that we only had a single segment that had a negative impact upon EBITDA year-over-year, but all the other segments had a very positive impact upon the EBITDA. First of all, the already mentioned distribution, PLN 1 billion year-over-year. The most important factor behind it was the increase of the regulatory asset base. The second factor is the increase of the weighted average cost of capital by 2 percentage points.
That had an important impact upon the earnings of the distribution segment. In addition, we had a positive change on the balance of the regulatory account. That's true, but it was still negative. Nevertheless, this change was from PLN 200 million plus to PLN 80 million plus. Let us remember, we account for the difference in the volumes that were actually performed versus the ones that we had included in the tariff. Regarding the second segment, it's not so intuitive. The result in this segment is not so intuitive because the main determining factor of the positive result, the PLN 250 million increase in the renewables segment, is the price change. One can say that the price has dropped on the market, but we're talking about the increase of EBITDA. However, here, one has to remember that in 2023, we are dealing with price caps, statutory price caps.
Therefore, the price of electricity from renewables was capped at a certain level, which was much lower than the market price. Despite the fact that we had dealt with a decline of the market price year-over-year, it was still much higher than the one that stemmed from the price caps. That is why the positive result. We also had a positive impact coming from the volumes produced by the newly commissioned wind farms and photovoltaic farms to some degree. A negative impact, negative factor on this segment was the decline of the prices of the green certificates. In addition, let us remember that year-over-year, our power plants, some of our wind farms covered by the support mechanism, are reaching the 15-year expiration of this system. Year-over-year, here, the trend will be downward. Regarding the heat segment, here we are dealing with three factors.
One, I already mentioned, the deconsolidation of the TAMEH Czech subsidiary had one positive, very positive impact upon the result of this segment. The negative factors were the results of the generation of electricity line of business. As Piotr mentioned, the CDSs on all hard coal-fired units significantly dropped. It also affected the supply segment. The margins year-over-year are much lower. A positive impact came from the increase of the tariff year-over-year, but it did not offset the decline on the electricity. In the generation segment, exactly the same situation. We are dealing with a very significant decline of the CDSs, both on the electricity producer. We also had dealing with declines on the buybacks. The margin on the buybacks year-over-year was also lower. In addition, in the generation segment, we had one event, even if it is non-recurring.
It was damages coming from Rafał and the insurance companies, partly stemming from the final settlement of the contract for the Jaworzno 910 MW units construction. Regarding the supply segment, it was strongly determined by the one-off events. Here, we are talking 2023 about setting up a provision for PLN 125. The reduction of prices for the customers, the invoices for customers by PLN 125. In 2024, we are dealing in turn with a reduction of tariffs starting from July 1 and a positive depreciation of the tax office. This was a very strong determinant of the result over the last two years. If we now move on to the debt slide, Grzegorz already mentioned that we are listening to you. We changed the presentation form.
We are now showing the full debt, economic gross debt, and then a bridge, how we are arriving at the net debt, which we are reporting to the banks. If we look at 2024, we are reporting for the banks PLN 11 billion 123 million. To show the full picture, what you asked for, we also showed the economic debt, the tax account, also the CO2 costs, which theoretically are allocated to 2024. We are saying that the electricity has already been produced. Therefore, we need to retire a certain number of CO2 emission allowances. However, we are buying those carbon credits under the forward formula, and we are paying most often since the retirement obligation comes in September. We are paying for them in August. This deferred impact of payments for CO2 in 2024 is about PLN 3 billion 200 million.
Then we strip it out, and when we arrive at the financial debt, everything can be read from the financial statement. Strictly from the financial statement, looking at the financial debt, we are dealing with three items and two items that are worth commenting and which are stripped out of this debt, the gross debt of the debt that we are publishing in the financial statements. This is the effect of the leases and the effect of the subordinated bonds. A few words for explaining what are the leases. In our case, these are mainly the rights for use of fruit of land, also the easements and the leases of land. If we are, for instance, building new wind farms and we are leasing land or plots for them, automatically increases the amount, the value of the leases.
Similarly, in distribution, if we are entering new land, new plots, we are doing the easement for transmission. Automatically, it increases the value of leases. According to the contract agreements with the bank, these things are excluded. We are not reporting them as an increase of debt. The second portion is the subordinated bonds. Let us see that we have a downward trend year-over-year. This instrument is also not included due to its characteristics, where this repayment date is after all the senior creditors. The last one before the shareholders, they are paid back. This instrument, we were using very strongly when we had a high net debt-to-EBITDA ratio level. Since this ratio declined, we are reducing the subordinated bonds gradually. We can see PLN 800 million drop year-over-year. Another tranche will repay at the end of this year and another one in the subsequent years.
The trend is downward. Here, let us confirm that this item of the next two years, you probably will not see anymore. Regarding the available financing, let me confirm the group has a very conservative approach regarding the security. We are securing the loan needs at least 12 months ahead of time. As of today, December 31, had secured more than PLN 6 billion for CAPEX. Regarding the maturity of debt, it is very much balanced over the years, not more than PLN 3 billion in any single year. It confirms that the group can easily handle it and refinance it on the market. That is all regarding the financial part. I will probably get back when we show the last slide. In the meantime, let me hand over the floor to Michał, who will talk about the CAPEX project.
Ladies and gentlemen, as was mentioned by Krzysztof, by 17% went up the total CAPEX. 2024 was the year when we were trying to optimize the CAPEX in the conventional line of business, namely defer optimize the overhaul scope, which was possible within the given year, but also accelerate investment projects, especially in the distribution line of business, where definitely we exceeded the plan that we found as part of investment that was possible to complement by the end of the year. Also in the renewable segment, when we acquired and started the implementing of the wind farm project, will be the second largest wind farm in Poland. Moving more into more details in the distribution line of business, our biggest component was the construction of installation of a new grid connection.
Similar, as in previous year, we implemented 42,000 connection agreements, mainly for individual consumers, but also increased the capacity installed with micro-installations and the larger renewables installation on our territory. In the case of our territory, due to the geography, this is mainly photovoltaics farm. Now, at the end of the year, we had 3.9 gigawatts in micro-installations on our area of operation, more than 3.5 gigawatts in larger renewable installations that we had installed in our area of operation. Another largest CAPEX area was the replacement of the grid assets. Here, we modernized more than 950,000 of the medium to high to medium voltage substations. This modernization was comprehensive. We are also increasing the cabling level of our grid, which is about level of 40% roughly, and it's gradually growing. The third large area of investment and distribution was the smart meters, where we spent PLN 247 million.
We reached the share of customers equipped with smart meters in the region of 26% at the end of the year, which was about 1.6 million meters. We are planning to install almost 1 million further meters in 2025. In the renewables line of business, here we continued the construction of wind farms and PV farms. Among others, we commissioned three wind farms and a PV farm with a total capacity of 176 megawatts. The details of individual projects I will expand on in the subsequent slides. We are also continuing the program of modernizing the hydroelectric power plants, taking into account the discussion regarding the participation of Wody Polskie and Aventis in the modernization of the part that is not strictly utility-related part. We also prepared a number of products that will be visible in the subsequent periods.
Among others, the energy storage facilities, as Grzegorz mentioned, 280 megawatts received the capacity market support. We had a larger pilot that will be now submitted for the support donation system, but also the pump storage power plant project in Rożnów, that we are coming to the end of a basic engineering plan, which will define exactly the size of the pond and the network of geological tests. We are preparing projects according to our in-house development. As we mentioned, we had the PV projects that are ready for implementation. They are waiting for the preferential financing. We also initiated six wind projects that will be ready in the subsequent years when we will strengthen the CAPEX portfolio in the conventional generation. As I mentioned, mainly the minimizing of spending.
Our overall policy is based on the fact that regarding the 200 megawatt units, we are focusing on the legal requirements, the legal requirements that are stemming from the Technical Supervision Office requirements and optimize the remaining CapEx. Regarding two units, Łagisza 10 unit and Jaworzno 910, we are trying to maintain the high availability rate because these are the units that are earning money, but they are producing much more via part of the electricity market. The availability rate is important from the point of view of the economics of the operations. We managed to reduce those spending in 2024, but in 2025, we are entering the major overhauls on the unit number 10 in Łagisza. In 2026, we will have to implement a major modernization of the 910 megawatt units. In subsequent years, that CapEx will not be so low as it was in 2024.
However, systematically, it will be decreasing over time. Regarding the heat line of business, we invested PLN 126 million as of today. These are mainly maintenance of the generation units. However, at the stage of preparation, we have in total 13 CapEx projects that are part of a decarbonization plan regarding the heat line of business. The goal is to achieve our strategic objective. First of all, the completion of production for the needs of district heating from the coal-fired units by the end of 2030. We have a number of projects at an earlier stage of development that still are not yet visible in the CapEx directly, but we're at the preparation stage. Systematically, we are investing also in the expansion of the heat market and increasing the ability to supply our district heating network from our own sources.
This year, among others, we commissioned network investment in the large pumping station, which will make it possible to increase by more than 50 MW the load or thermal energy load of the Katowice plant, which will help us improve the economics of our generation part in the heat line of business. The remaining investment projects, the biggest part are the investments in IT, in the customer service, and the steadfast implementation or expansion of the lighting systems for the municipalities. Moving on to the next slide regarding our renewables projects, what's of key importance, the fact that we managed to complete a number of projects and we completed those projects within budget and on time, which demonstrates our ability to implement the renewables project and cooperation with the contractors. It wasn't always easy.
We were dealing with the bankruptcy of one of the contractors or one of the farms, a number of technical difficulties to solve along the way, but we managed to do it within the original schedule. The Mierzyn wind farm was commissioned on August 24th, a farm of the highest towers in our group, 143 meters, larger turbines than we had so far, 3.9 megawatt turbines based on Nordex 131. Also newer technology, newer generation versus what was commissioned before. The Warblewo wind farm, Gamów wind farm, which were the farms that were commissioned in October and December last year, but they added 63 megawatts to our portfolio. We are in the process of implementing three further wind farms. The Nowe Brzeza wind farm, here we completed the construction of a GPO, the grid connection point. We are in the process of installing the turbines.
Regarding the Siersza, we are in the process of constructing the foundations. We are finalizing the pouring of the concrete for the full set of those foundations. This farm is also counting on a lot because this is a farm that should have the highest productivity in our portfolio. We are hoping to have it commissioned by the end of the year. The Miejska Górka wind farm acquired last year. Here we are at the stage of building the foundations, erecting the foundations. We are hoping to get to the midpoint of those foundation erections, but the wind farm will be commissioned in 2027. Once it has been commissioned, it will be the second largest wind farm in Poland. Regarding the PV, here in December, we commissioned the PV farm Proszówek. The PV farm Bałków is an interesting farm because it comes from the in-house development.
We are in the process of assembling the structure and the modules on this farm, the plant commissioning at the end of 2025. Finally, the PV Postomino, this is the cable pulling project, the first cable pulling in the TAURON group, large scale, 90-hectare farm. This will be one of the largest in Poland. In Poland, it has been commissioned in cable pulling with wind farm Marszewo. The modules have been delivered. We are in the process of installing them. We are planning to commission the farm already this year. In total, we have 155 megawatts commissioned in total online. That is the status as of today. Thank you.
Okay. The perspectives for the forthcoming year. How do we see our business as for the individual segments?
In distribution, we see an increase of tariff by more than 3% determined by the regulated assets base by PLN 23.6 billion and increased weighted assets cost of capital by 10.84%. We also, similarly as previous year, will have the positive effect of the regulating account, and this will have a positive effect on our segment. As for generation, we have a similarly as to last year a decrease. The margins are being more tight. Production, even if it's at the same level, the margins are lower. The market is very stable, and the repurchase margins are lower year by year. Results are improved by the inflationary indexation of the power market, which has a positive effect, and the balancing power, which also has a positive effect. Both these factors are insufficient to set up financially an increase of this segment results year by year.
As for the heat, margins will also decrease. It is positive that we have better results due to tariff increase in the transmission and generation. As for the report, the EBITDA will be lower because we will not have the one-off effect of consolidating the Czech company. It should be better if we take out the one-off effect. As for the rest, we have a significant increase in assets, and generation from those assets will increase the overall volume of production, which will have a good effect on the results. We'll also have a decrease of prices in the market. Some of the assets are being hedged, but some of them operate on spot markets, and if spot prices are increased, then this will have a negative result on the segment.
As I already stated, the selling price of certificates will also determine the will have a diverse effect on this effect. Successive wind farms will fail to maintain the certificates because of their age exceeding 15 years. As for the sales segment, we count on the increase of results year by year. We cover all tariff costs. We have an 18-month tariff. The tariff will cover the justified costs. Also, we count on that the results of the pandemia, we had the freezing of the UST and the SME, and that also deteriorated the results this year. This freezing of prices will not take place, so the results should be better year on year. The volume should be quite stable. Taking all this together, we assume that the overall consolidated EBITDA for the group will be certainly not less than the good EBITDA of this year.
That is our assumption. Of course, the Management Board will be determined to get a better EBITDA, but we can promise you that it will not be lower than EBITDA year on year. As for CAPEX, as I already mentioned, when discussing the last year's results, we are reckoning a progressive increase in CAPEX stocks reaching PLN 100 billion until 2035. We do not want to make it in leaps. We will assume an increase of 20% year by year. Of course, we have to have the reservation because we will have to have the possibility of access and availability of arrest in projects. The majority of funds spent for these investments will be in the distribution, and this is, by way, no surprise, 60% of all CAPEX will go to this area. We can say that the 60% will be also next year.
Will it be exactly 60 or less or more than 60? It will depend on the profitability of the rest projects. We expect that the net debt, as compared with the very low index for this year, will be slightly higher. This is all for the 2025 outlook. I think we can dwell on details during the questions and answers. We are going now into the question and answer segment. First of all, we will answer questions from the room, and then we will take questions from the internet. You continuously have the possibility of sending us questions for the chat available on the transmission web page. Let's start.
Can you hear me? Paweł Pochalski from Santander.
I have a question relating to the distribution segment. We have seen in this strategy 60 billion CAPEX. I want to know what does the company assume? What a RAB increase?
That's one half of the equation. The question is how the regulator will increase the depreciation. You assume the WACC 10.8 for this year, but I compared that with PGE 12 and 8. I want to know why the cost of capital for TAURON is different than it is for the other groups. The second issue, can an analyst or can investors count on the fact that the bonus for reinvestment remains for the successive years on a stable, say, 3% level? Is it a shoe or is it just wishful thinking? That's my question.
I try to respond to those questions. Partly in the strategy, we have a response to the first question. The expected RAB at the end of 2025 should be more than PLN 50 billion.
Relative as to what we expect for this year, 2023, we can say about PLN 27 billion-PLN 28 billion difference in the strategic perspective. As for the bonus for reinvestment, the question was already answered. Why there is a difference between ourselves and PGE? First of all, this is the bonus for reinvesting and, for some part, decision of the regulator and the difference in the regulatory account. That surely has some effect, and we have to look at the results in the distribution segment, not through the WACC only. If we focus on the WACC only, then you have to remember that PGE had generated funds from a shares issue some time ago. TAURON did not issue any shares, and one of the main elements there was to assign those funds for distribution.
They have increased strongly historical outlays as compared to those which we had, and hence we have the difference between the WACC level. It really outlies results from the historical increase in the outlays. In our strategy, we want to significantly increase the level of investments. That will increase our argumentations with the Europe president. Can we say that the president of Europe will guarantee 3 percentage points bonus for investments? It is not clear that it will be 3-1. It results from how much funds do we spend. From the model, it does not emerge clearly. The president has said that it will be at least 1 percentage point as compared to 70 as a bonus for reinvestment until 2020. That has been stated.
Of course, we also want to insist to have a document or a new document which will tell us how will the WACC possibly change and how will the bonus for investments be relative to the reinvestments and whether it will be constant. For the time being, we do not have any documents, and I am unable to confirm that we have the 3% guarantee above the minimum WACC of 7-7.5.
Rafał Sawicki, please comment as to the law that yesterday was adopted by the Council of Ministers. Their justification was that you are purchasing for this year month by month. We can understand that. Is it really that way? Do you consider that you have to work that way this year by changing the tariff? The second question refers to the decrease in tariff, what the president had discussed.
Does it relate to sales only or distribution? Can you state the volume for decrease for the large industrial recipients of energy?
I'll start with the first part about the tariff. Information is very okay for us that until the 31st of July, there will be a new tariff submitted. From the point of view of the client, which is of course most important, until the 30th of September, that is until Q3, we have the freezing of prices. Each client will have PLN 500 per megawatt hour. That's the first message. The second message is that the tariff application will be submitted by the 31st of July with effective 1st of October in Q4. It's okay for us because we see a perspective of a decrease in prices.
If we submit today a tariff for Q4, we hear a chance for the tariff being lower, then it has been approved for today. You didn't purchase the energy for Q4 as yet? It's a more complex issue.
I don't want to talk about the hedging strategy because that is an element of competitive advantage. Seeing that there is a decrease in prices, there is a number of other business elements. From this perspective, there is a chance that submitting the tariff application for Q4, the price will be lower. Did you foresee such a movement of the government in your strategy? It doesn't have anything to do with the governmental strategy. That was the same last year. We know that in mid-year, we had submitted tariff applications.
If we look at the hedging mechanism, this is something that emerges from our strategy of managing security or risk management. We hedge this in central measures. I do not want to say whether each month, twice a month, in the same trenches. Each company does it its own way. Looking at the mechanism that we are talking about today, not talking about the tariff that we have for 18 months. Until this year, end of this year, if you look at this, how the guarantees have decreased by 10 years, am I right here? Yeah? We have these. We have the decrease in price. There is a potential that we submit a tariff application for Q4. We could show a decreasing tendency. It is important. The intention is important. If you look at the prices, I am not talking about the freezing of prices.
I'm not talking about the customers, but how are the prices approved by the office? The prices three years ago reached PLN 1,200, PLN 1,400. Then they decreased to PLN 723, then to PLN 623 at these levels. Looking from that perspective, this is taking place with the fall in prices on the wholesale markets. It is possible to get a further decrease of the tariff price this year. It is a different matter how the client looks at it because the client, maybe he had PLN 400 and PLN 500. What will happen in Q4, it's not our decision. It is a decision of the government to take. Looking at the perspective of freezing prices and the question of market prices, these things are converging together. This is because we have more and more RES in the system.
It's important that irrespectively of the tariff applications we're talking about, we are very determined to have the prices in the energy market very low, but retaining our margin because we are a commercial company. Looking at what we're doing today and at our expertise from the clients with dynamic tariffs, we're doing the offer of semi-dynamic tariffs to give an opportunity to the clients who want to get involved to get their prices decreased. By using energy in specific hours, in a specific way, we are able to optimize its use. It requires optimization, but this is true for every aspect of life, for health, your appearance, etc.
Sawicki. The tariff and distribution is decreased by 1% as compared to 2023. I will repeat again. We have a different portfolio of customers than 2023 in the distribution segment.
We have several customers with high consumption, 2 terawatt hours. We've lost them. That's one component of the bridge. The second is lower demand for energy by the steel industry and mining industry. Because we're not exposed in the automotive industry, we will not see that. We could see that in 2024, the automotive segment will be decreasing up to 2026.
Sawicki from Rzeczpospolita. Okay. It's okay now.
Two questions. First, I'd like to ask about the Monday meeting with the Prime Minister. What was it about? What did you hear? What do you intend to implement of what the Prime Minister had recommended to you as the representative of the majority shareholder, that is the State Treasury? The second question, the generation structure. I'd like to ask, what is the generation structure? How do you earn on repurchase of energy on the balancing market?
What are the perspectives for 2024 for the market, for repurchase of energy and from the balancing market purchases? I
am to talk about the I'll answer the second question first. The structure in 2024 is as follows. 60% of the result we made using the new principles of the balancing market and 40% for the existing pockets, the spot and term market. As for repurchase, I do not have that information at this moment to say what is the part of repurchase and the trading part. Such repurchase is being done, I don't know. If we sold 10 terawatt hours, then 8 were made, so about two terawatt hours were repurchased. That's the volumes this year. Since last year, we had startup for that lasted six months. We assume that the generation from the balancing powers will be much higher.
I don't think twice higher because the situation is changing dynamically, but we will be very interested in giving the balancing powers the initial, secondary, and regeneration. Last year, in the initial period in June and July, the new Jaworzno was standing still. We count that this Jaworzno plant will be dedicated to such activity as it was planned. I was at that meeting. I don't feel competent to communicate what was given at the closed meeting from. You've read yourself the information that was officially distributed by the Office of the Prime Minister yesterday and today. The meeting was very good. The perspective of the State Treasury as our shareholder, we have 33% of the state, about 30% of the State Treasury in our company as a shareholder. The perspective of the State Treasury is as follows. We have to do our business. That's a natural thing to do.
The State Treasury looks at our companies as elements which provide a pendulum for developing the economy, national and regional companies, and giving the country competitive advantage. The trend in the world and Europe is, of course, that we respect globalization. We love competition, but we have to take care of our regions, about Europe, and also Poland, Poland, Silesia, Upper and Lower Silesia, because this is our green domain. Our work as managers is to balance out the competition on the one side, the competition between different markets and technologies. We will have to affect the local impact. We have to impact locally because every one of us wants our regions to develop, the economy to develop regional because that's good for our results and also for future generations that will live there. We also have to balance out the profits that we are generating.
We can see how strongly we are demanding the results, but we also have to take care of the prices to ensure development. We have to make everyone aware, and we have to show the perspective of the State Treasury to see how large we have our companies like ours to ensure development and compete with Asia, Africa, with Spain, with Czechia, with the United States, and other areas. We already today see when we negotiate with those companies which want to install data centers. The discussion is as follows. Give us the grid, give us elected energy, green energy, cheap energy, low taxes, variety of subsidies because then we can put those data centers in our areas. We are today competing with PGE and Asia for locations, but together with Hungary, Czechia, and Slovakia, and other countries which are fighting for those investment projects.
For me, it was an excellent meeting seeing the perspective of our major shareholder holding 30% of shares. What is very important for me that looking at today, after this discussion, we are showing your strategy. We're talking about the value of our shares. We want to maintain our dividend strategy. We're communicating further investment projects that would be very convergent with long-term creation of value. I hope I've answered this question.
Thank you. Thank you. Do we have any further questions from the room? One more.
Gabriel just short question. Looking at your competition, we can say that in their eyes, there is more attractiveness for gas-based investments. How does that look from your perspective? Do you want to be more active in the gas generation segment?
As we've already segmented and communicated, one of the options that we are preparing for our assets is to build peak power gas units. Initially, there were no such options available in the company before, but we consider a different technology being more promising. That is, units which will not have such high efficiency, but will be more flexible and will have lower unit CapEx and high availability. Either these will be open cycle turbines or gas engine turbine batteries. Our assumption here is that such units could be built between 25%-40% lower CapEx. Assuming that energy mix will be present with less increasing and effective use of conventional blocks will decrease, we will have to have much lower costs and higher flexibility. Less efficiency, but lower unit costs. These are just investment options being prepared.
We have submitted applications for issuing connection conditions to the grid. We have further projects in the pipeline, and they will depend on the rate of conversion. We could be increasing the rate to 2-2.5 gigawatts in our portfolio. Today, it is very difficult to say about the economics of the entire process. It will all depend on the future structure of the new power market that will be implemented after 2030. We assume that those units will be more competitive as to CCGT as for support. We assume that the power market should be the main source of generating revenue. If the power market will not be effective, we will not undertake such a project. This is just an investment option which assumes what we need in the system, 10%-20%, maybe 10% power effectiveness, and will be cheap and much effective.
It all depends on the demand for the service. We're approaching the topic from a commercial viewpoint. If there will be demand for energy, security, safety available from 200 MW, then we will be able to maintain those units. With respect for our promises, we will then perform overhaul and sell those services. If there will be peak power demand for gas-fired units, then we will invest in those units. If there will be other options, then we'll be able to rapidly react to that and invest where we get the most value. We have not assumed that we have to build so and so many gas systems because that will require a fixed document. We're not doing that. We're looking at what would be the demand. This will have to be transformed into support systems or energy centers.
In case of a peak system, there has to be a dedicated support system for such units. That is how we will approach this unit. It may happen that in six months, we will meet, or maybe in three months, and there will be some demand from PSE or from the legislator because, say, they need long-term energy warehouses. We will approach that project commercially. When we do it, we want to be at the front or first. We want to be trendsetters or the first persons who assume the risks, of course, once it is reasonable, and have to be at the upfront of this investment possibility. That is how we approach those projects. Nothing by force. In auctions, the power gap is also in gas. We have to be reasonable in our approach to gas.
We have to take into consideration the cost and the lead time required to supply such units. You have to be very, very cautious if you undertake such a large project. It's quite different for the projects that we're being implementing today because they were being prepared several years before, and they are now just being finished off. No one ever has asked a question about separation of the coal assets. 90% of the questions last year was about separating of coal assets. I don't want to provoke you, but there were no questions asked about this subject matter at all. Thank you.
Any other first questions from the room? No? Let's now go into the chat to ask questions. The first question.
Instead of buying onshore farm for 2012 exhibit, is it better to buy an EBITDA contract below PLN 350 per megawatt hour and then secure as delivery of energy to client?
Yes, of course, that's better. It's even better to buy for PLN 300, PLN 520, or PLN 300. Of course, it's better. We're talking about it. We can say after this meeting, and if any investor wishes to sell his assets for PLN 320 or PLN 300, yes, we're buying it. We're negotiating here with many suppliers. We're asking everyone to come and discuss with us if you want to sell at such a low price. As for the investment, and then I would give the floor to Piotr and PPA. In our strategy, it's a mix of activities. You want to be an owner of some of the assets and some of the energy we are obtaining from the PPA.
Looking at our group, the volume of energy that we sell and generate, and even in 100% green energy, 100% will be from our assets. Is it worthwhile to buy a purchase to do about two times EBITDA? I don't know. That might be from movements of the competitors. Such a price, from our perspective, would be very high. We always have to assess the profitability of the assets. It is not our intention to overpay for the wind assets. This market is very difficult. There is little supply of protection. There is high competition for what is left on the table. We assume that the supply will grow over time, particularly in the years 2027 to 2029. There will be more projects available. We cannot hide from you that the market is very difficult. If we go for PPA, PLN 550 for the megawatt hour, that would be a great offering.
I think you've already answered the questions in our strategy. We have already stated that even if we assume optimistically that our projects will develop in 2025, we will still have to have 46% energy from outside our assets to become green at the rate we plan to do. If there is a situation whereby the return will be better on a project for repurchase of energy from a wind farm, and that would be a better solution than building or acquisition, then that would be the better for us. Of course, PPA is not PPA as such. It's just a contract, a contract for bad times. It has a number of clauses of which we are fully aware, which are associated with securing risk.
Because if we sign an initial phase contract, the farm may not be built at all or may not supply as much energy as we need. Not everything is gold with glitters.
Okay. Next question. After discussion with the Prime Minister, do you see a risk of preferring national investors in building assets or distribution assets, which will lead to an increase in distribution costs?
I see no risks after discussions with the Prime Minister. That is the first conclusion. The matter of communication and the scope presented was quite explicit. I do not have to repeat that. It is quite different. We, as a company, referring to what is here, in our DNA, in our strategy, we are locally for local impact. We, as a company, want to affect, and we have a concrete effect on increasing the region. Scale of the country, we trade with energy.
We compete everywhere in Poland, and we can build a farm wherever there is wind. There is also the issue of distribution and heat. These are local businesses, and there is an enormous effect of local businesses. We support ourselves with local businesses. We work very hard to widen the number of suppliers. There are details available how we do that. For us, it is important to build a competitive market. When I came to the management board, we have seen that the supply for services was much lower than the demand we had. For a long period of time, we have worked on getting confidence of local businesses, which, of course, have to invest into devices, into people just to provide services to us. For a long period of time, we were unable to find a service in a crack because of the cutting costs of payment deadlines.
Those people lost confidence for the large energy companies and went to different businesses. We had to work more than a year to present our strategy, guarantees, and presentations to make those people come back to us and again go back into investing into devices and competencies. In the majority of cases, we are able to make that mature. It is not a question of just one year. When I talk to you during a conference, it is very easy to lose confidence as a sector, but building such a confidence takes years. We have a long period of time to encourage investors and local businesses and suppliers to employ people to invest into devices and machines and also expand their businesses because we are a reliable partner and we have a concrete plan for many years ahead.
Of course, we will be hit by a situation where we have a local supplier and we will have a supplier from Asia, which is much cheaper. This is a topic that does not apply to our company, but that applies to the entire European Union or the entire country. This is something that should be addressed, how to build competitive advantage of the European Union, how to balance these two issues. First of all, we have to cut costs, and secondly, we have to build value for the entire economy. We have to be here very intelligent. We have to be very, very, very keen to get abreast of this. There is not a single outright yes, no problem. These are things that have to be very smartly agreed. The pressure of prices and competition is present everywhere.
This is also a healthy challenge for local manufacturers and distributors. No one of us wanted to go back to monopoly because since I'm from here, you have to pay me. That applies both to our company for competition on the energy market. It does a lot for us. This deals with the distribution. Competition is a very healthy, motivating tool for the company, for managers, and everyone. Michal will tell you about the examples here.
We are trying to expand over time the base of our suppliers, among others organizing the first for a number of years in the heat supplier days. This year also, we accelerate regarding the distribution line of business in the context of the openness to the direct talks with contractors and encourage them to join the base of our suppliers.
This year, we had first-time such extensive consultations regarding the expansion of distribution grids, the target of which was, first of all, to meet the needs of local government units, but also to transparently show what we are planning to our suppliers. We also made a number of revisions of contracts that were quite tight, lopsided, so as to increase the number of suppliers that are able to accept the risk of working with us. We are going towards the desegregation in the case of large investment projects, especially in the heat line of business, but also in the context of the potential generation capacities. We want to apply the so-called investors' supplies to separately purchase core technology, for instance, the gas engines for the heating heat line of business investment. We are facing a situation where the five general contractors are bidding the same exactly technological solutions.
As a matter of fact, based on the same engine, however, they are adding on various margins, construction costs, and various risks. We want to separate the supply of the core technology from the supply of the construction services and structures, such contracts in such a way so as the largest number of contractors take part in the construction part and effectively manage the allocation of risk. Our direction is to reduce the barrier of entry for suppliers to become a more attractive partner, but that's the only thing that will make sure that we can effectively implement investment projects at a sensible level of CapEx.
Okay. Another question. Is it possible to treat the acquisitions of renewables farms as an acquisition of an asset and then transferring, passing on for the electricity recipient consumer in the pass-on plus?
Is it in contrast to the merit order system that sets the electricity prices?
Let me just add one word. It's not passing on the cost-plus formula because in today's competition world, full of competition, I pass on costs on you. It's a weak element when the customers have so much choice. It doesn't have a good end, the strategy. We are looking at this the following way. When we increase the share of renewables in the system, the production cost, variable cost, will be getting lower and lower. That's what we are observing. What is a challenge? The challenge is that the cost of balancing our profile should be as low as possible. Those companies that will be able to bring about the following situation, but in the cheapest way, they'll be able to combine the cost of production with the customer profile will be the winners.
That's why our investments in research facilities, in the development or expansion of dynamic tariffs. What I'm just talking about is the fact that we are combining the production profile with the customer demand is the wind profile. Our strategy is the onshore wind farm because this is closest. Of course, we supplement with PVs, and we have to build the ecosystem of those distributed energy storage facilities and heat allocation. The cost of profiling is as low as possible. That's what we're talking about. Not passing on one-to-one the cost, but we are building about how to build a long-term competitive advantage while maintaining the margin, give the customers an opportunity to pay as little as possible for electricity, but they'll pay those electricity prices if it's in line with nature and so on. There'll be hours when it's expensive.
will be hours when it will be very cheap. The weighted average cost of the bill should be lower. That is the most important thing. This is the direction we are taking. We are not transferring onto the customers one-to-one, passing on the code, but this is our strategic intent that we are calling it humiliating the prices, quote-unquote, to bring about reducing the prices. We are combining those two things together. All the other efforts where we are investing, what level of capacity, what energy makes this to make these two things combine, merge each other in the cheapest possible way. Would you like to add something? No. That makes life easier. What about the bond issue that was planned at the end of 2024? Are you planning to issue bonds this year? Let me put it this way.
We signed a large program, PLN 3 billion worth. We prepared the documentation, and last year, as various other sorts of financing, we are testing the market, checking what potential terms of financing are available at that time of time. It turned out that the terms of financing in case of bonds are higher than in case of financing from other sources. We decided not to issue bonds last year. The program is fair in place. We are observing the market. We do not exclude such an option to issue bonds on the market also this year, but it all will depend whether the conditions are favorable or not. As I said, as I showed, we have quite a conservative policy that provides us with freedom to select conditions. We have PLN 6 billion available financing for this year.
We are looking at the financing in the perspective of another year if the conditions on the market are favorable. Of course, we can consider, we'll be able to consider such an issue.
Okay. Do you think that in case of a substantial decline of volumes in the generation segment, we have revenues?
Balancing market, the electricity trading, and capacity market will be sufficient to cover the fixed costs and maintaining the positive EBITDA. Let me take over the question. Generally speaking, we have to look probably at the 2025 timeframe and the subsequent years. If you look at the 2025 timeframe, of course, we showed that the earnings of the generation line of business will decline, but we're not afraid that it might lead to, under any scenario, to a negative EBITDA in this area.
The balancing market and the capacity market and the sales of contracted electricity should definitely generate a positive EBITDA in the segment. If we look more long-term, we are communicating to the market, to you and to our employees, that the key aspect is the capacity market for the 200 megawatt units. Without this market, these units with declining production volume will not be able to cover all of our fixed costs and maintain the operation. The key thing for maintaining all of the 200 megawatt units in the coming years is to acquire revenue from the capacity market. It will all depend upon the capacity market auctions regarding the 910 megawatt unit issues. It has a guaranteed capacity market ending 2035.
As we wrote in our strategy, we can see definitely the possibility of this unit to be operational and for it to be able to cover its fixed costs based on the balancing market and the capacity market and the electricity prices on the market because CDSs on those high-efficiency units are possible to be achieved, positive CDSs, so positive margins. We would have to get some nuance to this answer. As I said, 2025, definitely positive EBITDA. In the subsequent years, of course, we are assuming a positive EBITDA in this segment because we said if the 200 megawatt units are not able to operate, we will be gradually phasing them out. As of today, they are preparing themselves for the capacity market. We hope that we can get revenue from this market in the 2028 timeframe. Okay.
We promised to you, as we had a discussion after individual quarters, you asked us several times what will happen if the capital market is not there, and colloquially speaking, those units will not be included in the merit order. It is not possible in case of our organization, the model that we have in place and our responsibility to maintain the unprofitable or loss-making units. First of all, we are doing our best to make the units profitable. It is a gigantic effort by the TAURON generation line of business to optimize CapEx, to optimize OpEx, and all the other aspects. We are continuously working on optimizing the overhauls. However, when it is not longer, first of all, the goal is to obtain, to enter the capacity markets, to win the capacity market auction, and to move, go through those three iterations in 2028.
We're looking at the capacity gap, at what's happening. It seems to us that that's an opportunity. It can be done, but of course, it requires on our side to have a very smart and conducting this refurbishment and overhaul policy. You have to be a good engineer to organize all that. At the same time, we are sending a message that if required, if there's a demand for an extension of this capacity market and this backup from the 200 MW units, at rational pricing, we are able to offer such a service up to 2030. That's a rational amount, and it seems a challenge, but a realistic challenge that we can realistically meet.
We can get this information within one year because we have to plan then the modernization, refurbishments under a different cycle, different regime than we are talking about year to year, but of maximum three years. Theoretically, it is possible to extend it even up to 2035 technically, but we also need a relatively quick decision and visa outlays in the billions. This is large money. If someone were to have such a demand for such a service, large outlays on renewables, on peaking plants, it will be also a major investment in such units. We are open commercially. That is our purpose, commercial, so respect for the demand side. Customer is our lord. Is the king. At the same time, we are looking at Siersza, for instance. In case of Siersza, we have specific actions aimed at converting this to other types of units.
It gives us an opportunity to maintain this status, but to conduct commercial operations there. By the end of June, we will know technically what business case and we'll be able to take decisions what we are doing regarding that. Okay. Time has come for the last final question, our Q&A session. This year, any major acquisitions in the renewables are planned.
Acquisitions, in the nature of existing this, but you cannot really plan in the long term. We're active in this market. We are talking, first of all, about the wind farms at various stages of development. We expanded a bit of our range of searching. Once we expanded our development capabilities, we are open to acquire projects that are at an earlier stage with the readiness for construction.
We're talking to a number of entities regarding the existing assets, the fully ready assets or the development, the portfolio under development. Let's be frank regarding the size of projects that we market to projects that we've acquired last year, 190 MW in Poland. There are no such projects in Poland, more of such projects in Poland at a similar development stage. It is highly unlikely we can add a portfolio as such, readiness for construction, for development, the stage of development is such a number of MW as we did last year. However, we'll be working on those projects and depending upon whether we can achieve, come to terms, reasonable commercial terms with the seller and win competitive processes. We'll be taking specific acquisition decisions. We are active. Supply is limited. Therefore, the probability of buying a large advanced portfolio is lower than higher.
Let me add to what Michal said. We might not feel it yet. You can see it because you have a transition state, but this race regarding who will become the leader of new energy already began. We are talking about how we are contracting PPAs, how we are digitizing our operations, how we are converting energy from one source to another, reallocating it, what is our production portfolio on the ecosystem of a market that is being developed here now. At the moment, the foundations are being laid down for the future. Therefore, that's our intense approach to this topic. It's not possible to wait because if we outwait this moment as a company, then we'll never have such an opportunity again to become a leader in the new model of the functioning of the energy sector. That's our ambition. Thank you. Thank you very much.
We have answered all of your questions. Thank you very much for the questions. Of course, the press team of TAURON Polska Energia is at your disposal. I would like to invite you to another meeting that we will be holding right after presenting the earnings for Q1 2025. For today, that is all. Thank you very much for your presence both here as well as online. See you next.