Good morning and welcome to our 2021 Virtual Investor Day. Thank you for taking the time to join us today. This morning, you will hear from our senior management, follo ewed by plenty of time for Q&A. Before reviewing the agenda, I will cover a couple of housekeeping items. First, our press release, presentation, and related financial information are available on our website at aes.com. Second, I would like to draw your attention to our safe harbor statement. Today, we will be making forward-looking statements during our presentation. There are many factors that may cause future results to differ materially from these statements, which are discussed in our most recent 10-K, filed with the SEC. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures can be found on our website, along with today's presentation.
Turning to the agenda for this morning, in a moment, you will hear from Andrés Gluski, our President and Chief Executive Officer. Andrés will share his long-term view for both the sector and AES, including an overview of our ESG initiatives. Andrés will be followed by other key members of our management team. Leo Moreno, Lisa Krueger, and Chris Shelton will provide additional color on our growth initiatives in U.S. renewables, U.S. utilities, and new businesses, respectively. Gustavo Pimenta, our Chief Financial Officer, will discuss capital allocation priorities, our financing plan, and our longer-term guidance. Following closing remarks by Andrés, we will move to the question- and- answer session. To ask questions, please dial the number listed in today's press release, which is also available on our website in the media section. And now, it's my pleasure to introduce our President and Chief Executive Officer, Andrés Gluski.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to AES's Investor Day: Accelerating the Future of Energy Together. There's never been a more exciting time to be at AES because we're facing a once-in-a-lifetime transformation of our sector. Previously, I had worked in telecommunications in the '80s and '90s, and what I'm seeing now in the electric sector is the same kind of revolutionary transformation. There are two things that are occurring. On the one hand, people are demanding more efficient, more resilient, greener energy. And on the other hand, the new technologies are making it possible. So we have a once-in-a-lifetime coming together of many factors, which means the sector is going to change dramatically over the next years. One of the big drivers is global governments, as exemplified by the Paris Climate Accords.
The Paris Climate Accords have been signed by countries representing 70% of the world's GDP, including the United States. So the goal is to have net-zero emissions by 2050, which is a very ambitious goal. And the U.S. is now participating actively. Biden made green energy, the green transformation, a pillar of his economic policy. He's named John Kerry as the climate czar, and they've set out a goal of net-zero emissions from the electricity sector by 2035. And it's not only the public sector that's demanding cleaner energy. It's also the private sector. A major driver of this transformation are big corporations and consumers. An example is the RE100, which is more like 270 companies now, and their pledge is to a greener future by 2030. So it's very important to have shorter-term goals than just 2050 if we are going to reach those global goals.
So let me walk you through a path to net-zero, which is going to show the big sectoral transitions which must occur. So if you can see the purple chart, that part of the bar that's purple, that's fossil fuels. So if you look at total primary energy today, most of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels, not only in electric generation, but transportation and heating as well. You can see at the bottom of the bar, green, that's renewable energy. So what you can see here is that renewable energy, the dark green, will grow substantially over the next five, 10, 15 years. But you see the light green, and that's growing even more dramatically, and it's taking or replacing fossil fuels. What is that? That's green energy for transportation. So this isn't only electric vehicles.
It's also the production of hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels like ammonia for transportation, for shipping, for heating. And those will be fundamental. So you put the two together, and you can see that the demand for green energy is enormous. Now, on the top of the chart, you have a line, and that is per person energy consumption. So as we become more efficient, per capita consumption has actually been dropping as expected to continue to drop. But as the green technologies come in, not only will they be cleaner, but they will also be cheaper. They'll also be digitized and more efficient. We expect energy consumption to go up. So you can see in this path to a net-zero future, there's a dramatic transformation occurring, and that transformation is starting now. So let's just take renewables.
Renewables are expected to grow by a factor of five between now and 2050. But we can see that even in the short term, total renewables in the globe grew by 50% over the last five years. They're expected to grow by another 50% between now and 2025, and then the growth will accelerate. So that is just the amount of renewables, the dark green part of the chart that I had shown you before. Now, digital is playing a key role here. AI-enabled digital platforms enable us to use all of this energy more efficiently. It allows us to put more renewables on the grid, use energy storage to provide resilient and affordable energy. Now, AES is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this transformation of our sector.
As I will explain, we're involved in different sectors of the energy transition, and we're integrating all of them to provide customers what they want today. So we have a 32 GW pipeline of potential projects around the world to meet this growing demand for renewables. So about half of that is in the U.S., and the other half is international. And if we look at that pipeline, 62% is solar, 24% is wind, and 3% is energy storage. We do have 11%, which is LNG, which we believe is a necessary transition fuel in some markets, which will depend on their economic possibilities and also on their renewable potential, be it solar or be it wind. So we're growing rapidly. We went from less than 1 GW in 2017 to 3 GW of new PPA signed for renewable energy in 2020.
We are announcing today that we are increasing our goal from 2-3 GW of new PPA signed per year to 3-4 next year. And we expect to reach 4-5 GW a year of new renewables signed. So what you're seeing is an acceleration in our growth. We're also going to be talking about greening growth at our U.S. utilities. Lisa Krueger, Executive Vice President for our U.S. strategic business unit, is going to talk about grid modernization, transmission, decarbonization. So we're planning investments of $2.3 billion over the next five years, which will be a 9% annual growth rate through 2025. Now, we are targeting attractive risk-adjusted returns. So on U.S. renewables, between our synergies, our scale, our innovation, we're getting about 10%-13% after-tax returns.
In terms of outside the U.S., a levered after-tax return is in the 14%-17% range. U.S. regulated utilities, it's around 10%, and LNG and other infrastructure is greater than 15%. So these are very attractive returns from our sectors, but this is based on our synergies, on our scale, on our commercial relationships. Now, let me talk a little bit about the transformation that we're seeing in our sector, and I think this Venn diagram is a good illustration, a good way of thinking about it, so first, you have energy storage that is necessary to put more renewables on the grid and to efficiently dispatch those renewables. You have digital AI, which is, again, making that dispatch more intelligent, making people's home consumption, making companies' consumptions more efficient.
You have, of course, renewables, and we have to continue to build renewables ever cheaper, ever more efficiently, ever more quickly. And then you have transportation, which is that huge opportunity of the future as we effectively electrify the transportation sector directly through electric vehicles, but also through the production of green fuels like green hydrogen or green ammonia, which is another hydrogen fuel. So now, let me pass it to one of our customers, David Bissell of KIUC, the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative, with whom we jointly worked to create a 24/7 load-following renewable generation. So I'll leave you with David.
KIUC is a small not-for-profit cooperative which provides generation, transmission, and distribution services to the island of Kauai. We've done several projects with AES over the last couple of years. We're very confident in the capabilities to bring projects through to fruition and get them in service, which on Kauai and in Hawaii is a difficult thing. It's a tough development environment here. We have a lot of confidence in the group we've worked with, Woody Rubin and his team, to actually come through and get a project built and working. I think the word "team" is the key part. AES and KIUC have worked together as a team on these projects. These were innovative projects. They weren't a cookie-cutter, sign a contract, and they miraculously appear in a couple of years.
I'd estimate that our engineering teams have spent hundreds of hours working together, trying to solve problems, trying to deal with unique situations here as they're ongoing. So we've been very pleased to work with AES, and we look forward to working with them for years more to come. From the people of Kauai, we want to thank the AES team. It's great that AES is bringing its resources here, and AES is becoming really the preeminent energy supplier for the island chain. So we appreciate it, and aloha to everybody.
Now, let me take those Venn diagrams that I showed you and make them concrete. Why are we the leading integrator of technologies to meet customers' energy needs? So let's think about storage. There we have Fluence, one of the leading energy storage providers around the globe. We have Uplight, which provides AI-enabled digital platforms for energy efficiency here in the U.S. We have 5B, which is a prefab solar that allows us to build faster and better. And then the new area of mobility, where we have Motor, for example, which is a platform that Lisa Krueger will be talking more about, that enables customers to have an electric vehicle experience in a very efficient way off their iPhone. So let me go in a little bit more in terms of Fluence.
So Fluence has been consistently ranked number one in terms of energy integrator for energy storage by Guidehouse, by Navigant. It has a cumulative 2.4 gigawatts of installed energy installations around the world that are installed or have been awarded in 24 markets. We were first in very important markets like the U.S., like the U.K., like Germany, like India. And we are now on our sixth-generation design, and we recently bought AMS, the leading AI-enabled bidding engine, to really maximize the total value of energy storage to our customers. Uplight, and we have an exciting announcement today, is energizing the customer experience of energy efficiency. It has access to more than 70% of U.S. households. That's 110 million customers, final consumers, and businesses. And it is the engine behind the energy efficiency programs in more than 80 U.S. electric and gas utilities.
And today, I'm very happy to announce that we have teamed up with Schneider and other private investors to accelerate the deployment of Uplight. So in a transaction today valued at $1.5 billion, AES owns 30% of Uplight. Schneider and other private investors are coming together to really power Uplight so it can provide even more services and more AI-enabled energy efficiency products. With 5B, 5B is a prefab solar. And as you can see on the screen, it folds and can be unfolded on the sites. So the key thing is this enables us to double the energy density of solar power on a given site. We can build it in one-third of the time. And as you can see, it's low to the ground, so it has greater wind resilience than conventional solar. Motor, we'll be talking a little bit more about that.
That is a platform that allows customers to try electric vehicles without the expense of having to buy a new vehicle, and also today, we're announcing a green ammonia project in Chile, so Chile has fantastic solar resources, possibly the best solar radiation in the world, but it also has the infrastructure to become a major producer of green hydrogen and green hydrogen fuels like ammonia, so this is fundamental to the economic strategy of Chile, and they're incentivizing the rapid adoption of green hydrogen fuels for transportation, for maritime shipping. We have signed an MoU with one of the leading global providers of hydrogen to provide green ammonia in Chile, so at this stage, we have an MoU for feasibility studies.
If these give us the results we expect, we could have a major project by 2025, and it would require almost one GW of green energy to produce green ammonia. We are very excited about this possibility of opening a new business for AES and completing our support for the green energy transition. We are leading this change in our sector with the highest standards. Our values are fundamental to us. AES is a values-driven company from its start in 1981. We have been recognized for our commitment to sustainability. For eight years running, we have been awarded one of the world's most ethical companies by Ethisphere. We are also a great place to work by FTSE4Good. We are climate transition ready. We were the first large U.S. electric company to come out with a report consistent with the Task Force on Climate Disclosure in 2018.
We have come out with a new report in 2021, which really examines, are we resilient to a 2-degree change in global weather? And the result is yes, because we're investing in renewables and we're hardening our existing infrastructure. So we're also in this report laying out what are we going to do to help reduce the effects of climate change in this report. So it's basically, what are you doing to prevent it? Should it occur nonetheless, are you prepared for it? And in both counts, I can say that the answer is yes. Now, we're very aggressively decarbonizing our own fleet. So today, pro forma, we're at 25% of our total generation is coming from coal. And we're announcing a new goal today to go to no more than 10% of our total generation by 2025.
And as you can see, this is a radical reduction because if you go back a few years, we were much, much higher. Now, we're also setting a new longer-term goal. And our new longer-term goal is zero emissions from electricity by 2040. Now, this is globally. So in the U.S., there's a target of reaching net zero emissions from electricity by 2035 as set out by the Biden administration. So this is a global goal, and this is one that we're going to be working very hard to achieve. Now, one example of how we're not only working on our own fleet, but helping others decarbonize their economic activity is the mining sector in Chile. So in the mining sector in Chile, we have built 2 GW of renewables to replace fossil fuel energy. This represents another 4.5 million tons of CO2 per year that's being reduced.
So on the energy front, we're providing green energy replacing fossil fuel energy, and we're also going to be helping them reduce their emissions by using cleaner fuels in the transportation. So altogether, we are working together with the mining sector in Chile to reduce their total carbon footprint. Now, I would like to have one of our partners in this, which is Shehzad Bharmal, Senior Vice President of the mining company Teck in Chile, talk a little bit about how we're working together to green their operations.
Our goal is to be the leading diversified mining company when it comes to sustainability, and we are being recognized for that. And of course, building strong partnerships with companies like AES is critical to meeting that ambitious goals that we have set for ourselves in our strategy. And they are ambitious. For example, we have set the objective of becoming carbon neutral across our operations by 2050 and striving to do better than that in terms of timing. And in support of this objective, we have set a milestone goal of 100% renewable energy for our electricity needs in Chile to clean renewable power. And that's where AES has been a strong and essential partner. Across the sites, we are deploying innovative uses of technology with scale that's important and with pace.
These include AI to improve productivity and efficiency in our processing plants, machine learning for predictive maintenance on our mobile equipment, and clean power is a critical component in many technology advancements. One of the things that we know that win-win negotiations require a lot of determination, a lot of trust, and a lot of creativity. It is an opportunity to create real benefits for all parties, and we could see that in Chile. In the end, our goal is to contribute to a better world through responsible production of these essential mining products, and thank you for that opportunity.
AES has been recognized as an innovative company. In the past 12 years, we have won six Edison Awards. And as you know, only two Edison Awards are given every year, one international and one U.S. We have won international ones. We have won U.S. And this shows how our innovations are not only in the R&D, but they're actually things that we're doing on the ground to produce cleaner and better services. Our last one was, for example, for the project with KIUC that you heard David Bissell talk about. And we're doing many things to improve our business and the communities where we live.
One example, which you see in this picture, is in El Salvador, where to increase the number of women working as linemen, we have promotions of only women in El Salvador because we found that to be the most successful. We're going to continue with this to make sure that we have gender balance across our company. We were one of the first companies to react to COVID-19. In February, we started taking steps. By March, the first week of March, we were working remotely. We had set social distancing at all our workplaces. We enforced the use of masks. We had weekly calls, which included medical experts like Dr. Ashish Jha to talk about COVID-19 and how to prevent it. In our communities, for example, in the Dominican Republic, we had excess N95 masks from construction projects. We donated them to hospitals and primary care facilities.
We electrified new wings of hospitals, for example, in El Salvador, where they were building a new wing to take care of COVID patients. In many, many ways, our people all over the globe have contributed to their societies in helping to reduce the terrible effects of this pandemic. And our ESG work has been recognized by third parties. So as you can see here, AES is the middle chart, and we have various organizations which rate ESG achievements. So the first Dow Jones Sustainability Index, we're in the top quartile, and we get a score of 82, where the industry average is 43. If you look at ISS in terms of their ESG rating, where one is the best, on E, on S, and G, we have a rating of one. In terms of CDP, we get a climate grade of A- , a water grade of A- .
MSCI, we get a letter grade of A. And here, the higher score is better. So out of 0 to 10, we get a grade of 6.7. And finally, sustainability, where 0 is best, 100 is worst. We get a number grade of 33.4, where the industry average is 36. So across the board, we are rated among, in terms of our peers, among the best. So we have a proven track record. I've made a lot of promises here about carbon reduction in the future, about growth of renewables. But I feel we have a proven track record. If you take the last five years, we have grown our Adjusted Earnings Per Share by 10% on average. If you look at our Parent Free Cash Flow, we've grown it at 8% annually on average. And if you look at our dividend, it's grown at 7% per year on average.
Now, these results have been recognized by the market. So these are the results as of December 31st. So if you look at that one year, we outperformed the S&P 500 and the S&P Utilities Index. We outperformed it on a three-year basis. We outperformed it on a five-year basis. So all this hard work has been reflected in better returns for our shareholders. So why AES? Well, first, the time is now. We are at the start of a major transition of our sector. Second, AES is in a leadership position in terms of integrating, innovating, and bringing all these technologies together to facilitate that remarkable transition. And third, we're doing it with the highest standards. As you can see, across the board, on E, S, and G, we are a leader. Now, I would like to pass the word back to Ahmed Pasha.
Thank you, Andrés. Our next speaker is Leo Moreno, who is President of AES Clean Energy, our renewables growth platform in the U.S.. He will discuss the U.S. renewables market and how we are positioned to take advantage of the significant opportunities that we see. Leo?
Thanks, Ahmed, and good morning, everyone. In the last quarter of 2020, AES merged its renewable platforms in the U.S. The leading solar developer, sPower, AES's distributed energy business, the wind developer, Advance Energy, and other teams in the U.S. into a single business unit, AES Clean Energy. That allows us to extract synergies between the platforms, have a single face to the market, and deploy better solutions for our customers. AES Clean Energy today has a 5 GW portfolio of contracted and operating assets, almost 500 people only focused on U.S. renewable growth, and a large and growing pipeline of projects. I'll talk about three topics today. First, how the dramatic transformation in our sector is leading to big tailwinds in U.S. renewables. Second, how we're well positioned to capitalize on this trend with our pipeline.
Third, how we use innovation as a competitive advantage to deliver high-value products to our customers and maximize our returns. Now, we're seeing tailwinds like we've never seen before in our sector, and there are several forces at play here. First, the Biden clean energy agenda already changed the outlook for renewables in the U.S. Second, a big push from all stakeholders, but mainly customers, for clean energy. Between utilities, large-scale C&I, medium and small businesses, and even residential, we expect 175 gigawatts of renewables to be contracted in the U.S. in the next five years. And lastly, the interest from ESG investors in clean energy, which made capital very abundant for our projects and has dropped the cost of capital already. And this is a self-reinforcement cycle.
The appetite for renewables drives scale in the industry, which brings the prices down, makes renewables more competitive against other technologies, which in turn further increases the demand. So that's why we think that this is a transformational trend that is accelerating. Now, let's talk about the large C&I market. There are 285 companies that have signed the pledge to be 100% renewable and joined the RE100. Just two years ago, this number was 155. So it really shows how this trend is accelerating. These corporates alone signed 12 GW of PPAs in the U.S. last year. And with the growth in technology, digital transformation of all industries, and corresponding cloud usage, this could accelerate even more. We could have 100 GW of new PPAs just from these corporates by 2030. Now, let's talk about regulatory policy in the U.S.
There has already been an increase in the expectations for renewables in the U.S., but there could be more upside. The 2020 COVID relief plan passed an extension of the tax incentives through the ITC and PTC to solar and wind in the U.S. through 2025. Those were expected to taper off beginning this year and to be completely rolled off by 2024. It also extended tax incentives through an ITC to offshore wind. The Biden plan goes beyond. It talks about $1.7 trillion of federal investment in clean energy, and it has a target of net zero emissions from the power industry by 2035 and for the whole economy by 2050, so this has already led to a dramatic increase in the expectation of renewables in the country. But there could be more.
The GREEN Act, which got introduced to the House in February, extends the ITC tax incentive to standalone energy storage, which is very important for us, and further extends the tax incentives to wind and solar through 2026. The administration could also move to remove tariffs, which affect the supply chain of renewables, decreasing the price of our projects and increasing demand further. So it's a very positive outlook. These are the projections for new projects in the U.S. This is from the BNEF. So they are talking about 35 GW of new PPAs to be signed in 2021, and that should increase slightly over the years. In July 2020, just six to nine months ago, the BNEF was projecting 20 GW for 2021. So that shows how in this short period of time, this expectation has increased. Now, even prior to these tailwinds, we were delivering great results.
We had a great 2020. We got the award from Project Finance for North America Deal of the Year for Highlander Solar. This is a mega project in Spotsylvania, Virginia, 620 MWdc . We achieved 50% completion COD in December last year, and the second COD we expect for Q3 2021. This is a project that has clients like Microsoft, University of Richmond, Apple, Etsy, Akamai, and Swiss Re. It really shows how we can use scale to drive attractive prices for our customers and meet our required returns. And if you look at the pie on the right, it shows how strong we are in energy storage. We delivered 0.5 GW of batteries in 2020 in the U.S. We continue to be a leader in batteries.
Now, the outlook for us is very robust for solar and storage, and we expect more wind now that we're incorporating the team from Advance Energy. Our pipeline in the U.S. is very robust. We have 16 GW of projects across the country with different technologies, and these are real projects. We only count as pipeline if we either secure the land or we file the interconnection, and this picture is illustrative. It doesn't have all of the projects, but it shows how we are in most of the important growth markets in the U.S.
Our focus today is in California, where we have a very strong track record, PJM, where we have our big Highlander project, New York, where we have one gigawatt of projects ready to bid in the upcoming auctions, in Hawaii, where we're a clean energy leader with almost 500 MW of renewables contracted, and New England, where we've been very successful with smaller projects. We also have a growing footprint in other markets like MISO, SPP, and certain WECC markets like Arizona. In other markets in the U.S., we play more opportunistically. Now, this pipeline is already very large, but we're growing it fast. We're expecting to add three to four gigawatts of new projects to this pipeline in the U.S. per year. Now, what differentiates AES? AES, Andrés talked about how innovation is one of the main competitive advantages of AES. We innovate in three areas.
First, in engineering, where we combine multiple technologies in a single project. Second, in commercial, where we combine different projects to deploy a unique solution to our customers, and in technology, where we use our leadership in energy storage to maximize the value of flexibility of batteries. This is a highly innovative project in the island of Kauai in Hawaii. It's the newest of a successful partnership we have with KIUC, the local utility. If you recall, AES and KIUC won the Edison Award, the highest prize for innovation in our industry in 2019. We built the very first DC-coupled solar storage project in the industry, and this design has now become a market standard. Now, this new version of this project, which we announced in December last year, combines four technologies. We have hydropower, pumped hydro storage, battery energy storage, and solar.
If you can see in the picture, this is the generation profile of this project over a 24-hour period. As you can see, it's highly sculpted to what the customer needs. It directs the renewable energy to when the customer most needs it, in this case, the 5:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. peak. So in some hours, we're generating from the hydro, in some hours from the solar, in some hours we're deploying the batteries or the pumped hydro. This is an example of a very high-value, 24/7 offering, very unique for the customer and 100% renewable. The value proposition for this type of project is very different from a pure solar project, where the only differentiation is price. Our second example, we're going to go beyond a single project. We talked about how we combine different technologies in one project.
Now we're going to talk about how we combine different projects and technologies into a single product. Here we deliver a similar outcome, but in large scale. So some of these C&I customers, they have load that is flat over the 24 hours. So if they contract from a solar plant or from a wind plant, that's not optimal because in some hours they'll have more energy than they need, and in others they'll have less. So here we combine different projects into a high-value product that actually matches the load of the customer. And energy storage is the glue here. We use our proprietary insights on energy storage to shift the energy from the renewable projects to the hours that the customer needs. You can see in the graph, in each of the hours. Sometimes we're generating from solar, sometimes from wind, sometimes the battery is deployed.
We significantly reduce the market exposure for the client. So again, we have a very high-value offering, very distinct from a single project. Lastly, it's technology. We are global leaders in energy storage. It's been 13 years since we deployed the very first grid-scale project. We have proprietary insight that leads us to create more value. This is the Lancaster Area Battery Project, a 127 MW, 4-hour project contracted with PG&E for 15 years. We announced this contract in December last year. Here, PG&E needs the resource adequacy and the day-ahead value of the battery. They pay us a capacity price that covers our required returns. AES preserves the dispatch control of the battery, so we can create additional revenue streams. Batteries are very flexible assets. They respond in milliseconds, so they can take advantage of price variations during the day.
And in California, where renewables are penetrating very fast, this flexibility has a value. And this value should increase over time as you get more renewables. So we're able to create another revenue stream from the assets. Again, it's an example of a product where we deliver very attractively priced outcomes for our customers and at the same time maximize our returns. In summary, how do we differentiate ourselves? First, with the assets, a vast pipeline, and a very talented team. Second, with our capacity to innovate engineering, commercial, and technology, which leads us to deliver high-value products to our customers while we also maximize the returns on our investments. Now, Andrés talked about an expectation of 3-4 GW in 2021 and 4-5 in 2025. We expect 60%-65% of these investments to be in the U.S.
We expect a higher market share in a growing market. And we'll use our 16 GW pipeline to deliver that. To summarize this presentation, we're in a unique moment. We have an industry in transformation and tailwinds like we haven't seen before. We have a large and growing pipeline and a great team. And we use innovation as a competitive advantage to deliver high-value products that maximize our returns. So we're well-positioned to capitalize on this trend. Thank you.
Thank you, Leo. Our next presentation is on our U.S. utilities. Lisa Krueger, who is the President of AES U.S., will discuss how we are driving future growth from our existing utility platforms. Lisa.
Thank you, Ahmed. As Andrés discussed, we are experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime transformation of the energy sector.
This transformation is being driven not only by an acceptance, but an urgency around the need for decarbonization fueled by rapid advances in solar, wind, and battery technology that are accelerating the electrification of buildings and transportation. In addition, digitalization allows us to leverage the use of data and information to plan and operate our utility assets more efficiently and to better understand, interact, and provide personalized offerings to our customers. Today, I'd like to tell you more about what this energy transformation means for our U.S. utilities and how we're accelerating the future of energy. At our U.S. utilities, we understand that fundamental to this energy transformation is a focus on our customers, that we must modernize and make our transmission and distribution grids smarter to support the enhanced service quality and reliability of our increasingly digital customers.
We must support the integration of renewable technologies, both utility scale and distributed energy resources, onto our grids to make our commercial and industrial customers' sustainability goals and our residential customers' personal preferences, and to enable the growing use of electric vehicles. All of this while continuing to meet our customers' reliability and affordability needs and a growing expectation for an Amazon-like experience. In our U.S. utilities, we are investing nearly $4 billion over the next five years to modernize our grids, to further decarbonize our AES Indiana generation fleet, and to seamlessly provide safe, reliable, affordable, and increasingly cleaner electric service to our over one million customers. Our investments to accelerate the transition to a smarter, greener energy future are in large part subject to regulatory mechanisms that are or will be pre-approved or with tracking allowing recovery as investments are made.
These constructive regulatory environments, as well as having the lowest residential rates, provide significant opportunity for investments and growth in our rate base to serve our customers in Ohio and Indiana. Our new AES brand is based on the essence of who we are at AES, committed to our purpose of accelerating the future of energy together with our customers, communities, and regulators. Our value of all together is reflected in our new brand for each of our two U.S. utilities. Dayton Power & Light is now AES Ohio, and Indianapolis Power & Light is now AES Indiana. AES Ohio is a fully regulated transmission and distribution utility serving over 530,000 customers across 6,000 sq mi in 24 counties in West Central Ohio. AES Ohio has a rate base of approximately $1 billion and has an authorized return of 9.99% under its last authorized distribution rate case.
AES Indiana is a fully regulated, vertically integrated utility providing generation, transmission, and distribution service to over 512,000 customers across 528 sq mi in eight counties surrounding the city of Indianapolis. AES Indiana has a rate base of approximately $3.5 billion and has an authorized return of 9.99% under its last authorized rate case. Our AES utilities have a long history of delivering safe, reliable, and affordable electric service to our over one million customers. We have the lowest residential rates compared to our peers in each state. Our low rates allow us to invest in our grid and in the transition of our Indiana generation fleet and maintain affordability for all customers. Our U.S.
utilities have identified nearly $4 billion in capital investments over the next five years to accelerate the smart energy future by anticipating our future customer needs for personalization, optionality, and convenience in all customer interactions, differentiated reliability to meet the evolving needs of a growing digital economy, green energy offerings enabled by increased investment in utility-scale renewable energy resources and battery energy storage, the efficient integration of electric vehicles and transportation electrification, the efficient integration of distributed energy resources, and an energy marketplace to enable customers to procure energy products and services to help them manage their overall energy usage and spend. To meet our customers' evolving needs, we're deploying leading technologies to transition to the future of energy where we can help our customers meet their most important objectives: safety, reliability, affordability, and sustainability.
In aggregate, we expect rate-based growth of $2.3 billion through 2025, a compound average growth rate of 9% over this period. Overall, our U.S. utilities earnings are expected to grow in line with our rate base through 2025. In AES Ohio, we are executing on a five-year, $1.3 billion capital investment plan, and we've made significant progress in reducing regulatory uncertainty. The first component of this plan is approximately $400 million in transmission investments. Last year, we filed a FERC transmission formula-based rate, and in December, we reached a unanimous settlement. This settlement contains an ROE of 9.85% with the potential for an increase up to 10.35% after four years if certain adders are approved in separate proceedings. We expect a final order by FERC in our formula rate case any day. The second component is our .
In October 2020, we achieved a major milestone in executing our AES Ohio strategy and reached a nearly unanimous settlement to resolve four open regulatory proceedings and allow us to move forward with our smart grid plan. We expect an order on this settlement during the summer of 2021. This comprehensive settlement provides for the return on and recovery of $249 million of smart grid capital investments and associated O&M through the existing infrastructure investment rider, IIR, over a four-year period. AES Ohio expects to file a Phase II smart grid plan near the conclusion of this first four-year program. Importantly, this comprehensive settlement resolves regulatory uncertainty associated with AES Ohio's recovery of the rate stabilization charge, or RSC, of approximately $79 million annually until the approval of AES Ohio's next ESP, electric security plan.
AES Ohio will file for an ESP no later than October 2023, and these types of plans usually take 12- 18 months to be approved. So we expect to receive the RSC through 2024 and have incorporated the anticipated drop-off of the RSC into our long-term earnings growth rates. Finally, we have investments in our distribution network that we recover through rate cases. AES Ohio filed a distribution rate case in December 2020. This case includes capital investments made since our last rate case in 2015, as well as some significant repairs and upgrades we made during the Memorial Day tornadoes in 2019. Generally, we would expect an order for rate cases in 12- 18 months after filing. In AES Indiana, we are executing on a five-year, $2.7 billion capital investment plan.
Last March, we received approval of our seven-year, $1.2 billion grid modernization plan, known as TDSIC, transmission, distribution, and storage system improvement charge. The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, IURC, approved the full amount of our filed request. Recovery is via rider with 80% tracked and 20% deferred and recovered in the next rate case. On the generation side, in December 2019, we filed our integrated resource plan, IRP, with the IURC. Indiana requires an IRP filing every three years. This plan outlined how we expect to meet the generation needs of our AES Indiana customers. In this plan, we outlined the retirement of Petersburg Unit 1 in May 2021 and Petersburg Unit 2 in May 2023, along with the expected replacement with renewable resources. In 2020, we began implementation of this plan with an all-source RFP.
In late January, we reached agreement and executed the documents to acquire the 195 MW Hardy Hills Solar Project in Indiana under a build-transfer structure. On February 12th, we filed our Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity, CPCN, for this acquisition with the IURC. We expect approval by the IURC in Q3 2020, and once received, we'll issue a notice to proceed. This project is the first to be acquired in accordance with IPL's 2019 IRP and all-source RFP process, and we continue to negotiate for the acquisition of additional renewable resources from this RFP to serve the long-term needs of our IPL customers as identified in our 2019 IRP. We expect to file a rate case in 2022 to include the recovery of these renewable investments.
At AES Indiana, we will have reduced our coal capacity by 59% from 2015 to 2023 through the conversion of coal units to natural gas, the retirement of coal units and the replacement with combined cycle natural gas, and the upcoming retirement of our Petersburg Units 1 and 2 coal units and the replacement with renewable resources. With the addition of renewable resources upon the retirement of Petersburg Units 1 and 2, we expect to increase our renewable resources by over 117% from 2015 to 2023. Looking forward, we expect technology innovation and customer demands will continue to drive changes in our Indiana generation fleet. As we evaluate opportunities, we're committed to meeting our customers' energy needs of reliability, affordability, and sustainability.
In our next IRP, we will be developing a preferred portfolio to meet the future energy needs of our customers, and of course, we'll be looking closely at the future of the remaining one GW of coal generation at Petersburg, as well as our other fossil generation, as we anticipate renewable technologies, storage, and demand-side resources will become increasingly competitive relative to fossil fuels. As I mentioned earlier, our U.S. utilities identified future customer needs, and we're making investments to accelerate the smarter energy future. Digital platforms and insights are allowing us to personalize services for our customers and interact with them in new ways. We recently announced two new innovative services for our AES Indiana customers that accelerate the future of energy. On the left, we have AES Indiana's partnership with Motor. Motor is an AES portfolio company that is accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles.
Motor's business model is to simplify and improve the customer's end-to-end experience of adopting an EV. Motor has several products, including an EV fleet product for businesses, flexible EV subscription services for individual consumers, and a complete end-to-end EV purchase program. Earlier this week, AES Indiana filed a plan with the IURC that supports this vision. Through Motor, AES Indiana customers who purchase or subscribe to a new EV will have the opportunity to participate in managed charging, which is a form of demand response. The filed plan is designed to provide benefits for all AES Indiana customers through a more efficient use of grid resources. On the right side of the chart, you see a screenshot of Plus, a new app AES Indiana also launched this week.
Most importantly, in its initial rollout, Plus will offer customers the ability to enroll in programs such as Green Energy, in addition to providing customers with information to manage their energy usage and convenient and simplified payment choices, including split bill options. We're very excited about these two new innovative AES Indiana customer services. We're exploring many other opportunities to use digital tools and insights to help our customers achieve their most important objectives while leveraging our AES utility platforms and our strategic relationship with them. Our five-year capital investment plan of nearly $4 billion directs a 9% growth rate in our U.S. utilities rate base through 2025. As I mentioned, our earnings expectations align with the 9% rate-based growth over this period, including the impact of the anticipated drop-off of the RSC for AES Ohio at the end of 2024.
But as we've discussed, more capital investment is needed to meet the future needs of our customers. We have already identified nearly $3 billion in growth capital investments for 2026- 2030 to make our grid smarter, to enhance our customer interactions and experience, and to further decarbonize our AES Indiana generation fleet. These investments will allow us to continue to provide our U.S. utility customers with safe, reliable, affordable, and sustainable electric service. At our AES utilities, we're accelerating the future of energy together with our customers, communities, and regulators.
Thank you, Lisa. Next, we have Chris Shelton, Chief Product Officer and President of AES Next. He leads our investment initiatives in new technologies and platforms. In fact, Chris originated many of our successful businesses such as Fluence and Uplight. Chris?
Thank you, Ahmed.
I'm excited to share for the first time a little more detail on some new business platforms in AES. AES has a process where we take the strategic insights of our core business and we combine it with the passion and the innovation of startups. We call this AES Next, and I'm going to share more about it today. And this delivers value in a couple of different ways for AES. One, it drives the competitiveness of our core products by bringing those innovations in and integrating them. And two, it actually drives value because we own shares or portions of these startup platforms, and they grow in their own right over time. So those are the two ways we see value.
We're going to talk about AES Next, which I already mentioned, and then we're going to dive into three of these platforms, and then we're going to talk about the announcement that Andrés made about green hydrogen this morning. We'll share a little bit more detail of our insights around that. First, let's talk about AES Next. AES Next focuses on driving technology platforms for the energy transition, and we want to do this in a way that drives the long-term competitiveness of AES. We do that by making sure that we use AES's core business to drive strategic collaboration with these new businesses. The result and the goal is a highly scalable platform that, in many cases, can be capital-light and transform the industry. We have some progress in this. Many of you may have already heard about Fluence.
Fluence is a grid battery business that has grown rapidly over the past few years. Uplight is a customer and demand-side technology platform based on a cloud business model. 5B is a technology business that transforms the way we build solar, and Motor is a way to engage customers around EVs that increases the adoption of electric vehicles for utilities. Two of these have already seen their value being recognized through some recent transactions that we've announced. Fluence had a transaction at the end of last year that valued Fluence at over $1 billion, and Andrés mentioned this morning that Schneider Electric and other investors have come into Uplight in a transaction that valued Uplight at $1.5 billion. Lisa already talked about Motor, so we're not going to tackle that one here, but we are going to talk about Fluence, Uplight, and 5B.
So let's dive in and talk about Fluence. Fluence is a technology and services platform for grid-scale energy storage, essentially batteries for the grid. And they serve AES, but they also serve our industry peers. You can see some of their marquee customers on the right. And they can provide this technology package and services globally through this joint venture that we have with Siemens. So the business model is focused on hardware, software, and digital services. And the value proposition here is a highly evolved sixth-generation technology stack that has built on top of it through a recent acquisition of AMS, an artificial intelligence platform that allows the owners of the batteries to get more value by the way they bid them into the market with the artificial intelligence. Over time, we expect this to drive significant additional margin for Fluence and more value for Fluence customers.
Fluence has had incredible growth over the last year with over 400% year-over-year revenue growth. This is built on an amazing track record of over 2,400 MW that they've built or sold, and as I said, they've recently added the capability to do the AI dispatch and bidding through a software-as-a-service model for 2,800 megawatts that they have under contract, so these are exciting prospects, and Fluence has been recognized for this position by Navigant and Guidehouse, so Navigant started tracking the best grid storage platform integrators in 2015. Fluence has been in the top spot every year that they've issued this report, and they were just listed at the top, and you can see in the upper right-hand corner in the top spot for 2020, so let's dig in a little bit more on the technology platform.
You can see on the left this technology stack, as Fluence calls it. At the base layer, you have the batteries in these cubes, and then on top of that, you have controls and other software and all the packaging that makes a grid-scale battery. And on the right, you have the AI bidding platform that I mentioned that's offered from Fluence Digital that allows the owners of these batteries to get more value out of power markets. And for the first time, Fluence Digital now is offering that solution on the right that you could see in this announcement. It's for a different battery technology. It's not built by Fluence, but built by others. And so this is a way to scale with this model that drives value for the future and, as I said, can drive additional margin for Fluence over time.
So this positions Fluence very well for a rapid market expansion where we expect 37% combined annual growth rate through 2025 and over 200 gigawatts of storage in many different applications in a robust market through 2030. So that's Fluence. So let's now talk about Uplight. Uplight is focused on the customer side of the industry and engaging the customer in new ways to support the energy transition and to drive outcomes for utilities and their customers. Uplight is building what they call a Customer Energy Action Platform. This is a single platform that spans many utility companies, and it's shared by utility companies, including AES, which is one of the Uplight customers. So this platform drives outcomes in three ways. One, it allows the utilities to engage their customers about their energy usage and make them more aware.
Once they're more aware, it allows them to take actions around technology and energy in new ways using a digital platform. And then after they take those actions with those technologies, it allows the utility to orchestrate all those technologies together for an aggregate outcome for the utility. This is a very exciting recurring revenue cloud software-as-a-service revenue model that scales very rapidly. And over the last few years, Uplight has established relationships with over 85 large North American utilities that have behind them over 110 million end customers. So this is a massive digital platform on top of all those relationships. And this customer reach and the fact that it's in a cloud platform attracts a lot of interest from players who can integrate once into this one platform and reach the utilities and their customers in one integration. So there's exciting prospects for the future there.
And they've seen significant growth over the last few years. So sharing more about their growth opportunity, they have an exciting built-in growth potential. So Uplight today already engages 20 million customers on a monthly basis through their utility relationships. And these are both households and businesses. And you can see that at the bottom here on the chart. But as we said, in their relationships, there are behind those utilities 110 million end customers. So there's another 90 million customers that are not as actively engaged as yet. And then there's the rest of the market. So what this sets up is a great opportunity for Uplight to grow in three ways. One, they can grow by taking the engaged customers and bringing new products to them. Two, they can take the existing products and expand them to the other 90 million customers within their relationships.
And the third way is by making new relationships with new utilities and then repeating step one and step two. So this is a built-in growth potential that is very exciting, and we're excited to see where this goes now with the relationships with Schneider Electric. So AES is engaged and collaborating with Uplight in many ways. And Lisa talked about two of these, and we have many others, but Lisa talked about Motor and Plus. So you can see these advanced ways to interact with customers that utilities can take and that AES utilities are taking. This collaboration structure is key to AES Next and how AES develops these innovations. It's through that collaboration between the core and the new. So now let's switch gears to talk about solar. Solar is a dominant choice in the industry for renewable energy and solar PV.
But as demand continues to grow, we need to find additional innovations to maintain competitiveness. 5B does that by transforming the way we build solar. So they make prefabricated solar PV solutions that can be rapidly deployed, and they deliver more energy in the same land. So they're solving two issues, which is time to market and the efficient use of land. And we think there may be other innovations around resilience that could come for resilience to storms and other hazards. So there's going to be more and continual innovation from 5B, and we're excited about this. And again, tying it back to AES, there's a specific collaboration plan with 5B where AES is helping to bring them international. This is the first international project in the photo here of a 5B project. It's two MW in Panama. It's on an existing industrial site.
It was built in 10 days by a team of eight. This is an example of how that energy density and time to market is valuable in a C&I application. Now we're going to talk about this exciting announcement from Andrés around green hydrogen and synthetic fuels. What I want to do first is talk about the market context. AES Gener is one of the largest producers of energy in Chile, and the Chilean government has one of the most aggressive green hydrogen strategies in the world. You can see on the chart here their roadmap from 2025 to 2030. A key part of this is they expect to have five GW of hydrogen production. That equates to up to nine GW of new renewable energy demand in Chile.
The reason Chile is so excited about this is they're in a fundamentally great position around the cost of producing because they have so much solar energy and that solar energy and wind energy that they have a proximity to the coastline, which allows them to export the hydrogen. You can see they're less than $1.50 per kilogram expected by 2030. You can see on the left that this is among the most competitive in the world. The study from the Chilean government and McKinsey shows Chile as actually the least cost producer of hydrogen on the left. On the right, you can see the same is expected in relation to green ammonia. Green ammonia is essentially a carrier of hydrogen.
So once you make the green hydrogen, you can combine it with nitrogen and turn it into a fuel that can be moved around. And so you can see in this photo or in this graphic on the left, the production of green hydrogen from renewable energy like wind and solar and water. And then you separate nitrogen from the air and combine it to make ammonia. And that allows you to use it in some combustion processes as a fuel or to transport it across through vessels to other markets. And then you can use it in many different applications in those markets: the U.S., Europe, or Asia. So let's talk about this announcement. It's with a large industrial player with an international footprint that already is one of the largest providers of hydrogen in the world. And they're very committed to this green hydrogen strategy.
The announcement is just about a memorandum of understanding to do a feasibility study within that Chilean context. If it came to fruition, we would expect 800 MW of demand just from the first projects. It's very exciting. Why do we think this might make sense? First, it's that Chilean market context. It's quite relevant to the hydrogen opportunity because of the fundamentals of the market and the commitment of the government. You have the low cost, you have the proximity to the ports. In the case of AES Gener and AES, we have the relationships with the mining clients who are among the largest industrial users of energy in Chile. They also have international reach. They're interested in the transportation application, for instance, for the maritime application of ammonia.
So there are many different ways this can go. It's a memorandum of understanding. It's a feasibility study, but all very practical, focused, exciting opportunities that may allow us to decarbonize mining even more than we talked about already this morning. So more to come on this as it grows. So I'd like to finish up by reiterating AES takes a very systematic approach to these things. And we're very focused on a select few meaningful outcomes that drive the energy transition, that build on the strategic collaboration of AES's core business, are highly scalable, and as we said, in many cases, capital light. So thank you for this opportunity to share these things with you at a deeper level for the first time.
Thank you, Chris. Our next speaker is our CFO, Gustavo Pimenta. He will help us translate what all these exciting opportunities mean for our shareholders. Gustavo?
Thank you, Ahmed, and good morning, everyone. Our key focus continues to be on delivering superior returns to our shareholders. To that end, today we are extending our outlook of 7%-9% average annual growth in earnings and free cash flow through 2025. This extension is a reflection of the highly contracted nature of our portfolio, combined with the greater visibility we now have on the growth side, giving AES its unique position in the energy transition. We expect it to achieve our growth targets while maintaining our disciplined approach to capital allocation, supported by a strong balance sheet and credit profile. At the same time, we expect our portfolio to further evolve as we focus on carbon-free energy, mainly renewables and our U.S. utilities. Now, I will walk you through the key assumptions embedded in our long-term outlook.
As Andrés mentioned, we are accelerating our renewables growth by 40% and now expected to add three to four GW of new contracted renewable capacity per year through 2025. Over the same period at our U.S. utilities, we expect it to grow the rate base by 9% per year. We also plan to invest in LNG infrastructure growth in Vietnam and MCAC and in new technologies. At our existing platforms, we will benefit from annual run rate cost savings of approximately $100 million and annual interest savings of more than $65 million from recent refinances. Our long-term expectations also incorporate the impact from contract roll-offs through 2025, the announced asset sales, and additional retirements in order to achieve our 2025 decarbonization goals. Finally, we expect to fund 60% of our equity commitments for investments in our subsidiaries from internally generated cash and proceeds from announced asset sales.
And the other 40% from external sources, which I'll discuss in more detail later. Now, moving to our capital allocation priorities. First, we will continue to invest in value-accretive growth opportunities to deliver on our financial and strategic objectives, including renewables with long-term U.S. dollar-denominated contracts, rate-based growth at our U.S. utilities and LNG infrastructure. Second, we will maintain an attractive dividend growth profile. We appreciate that dividend is an important element of total return for our shareholders. And to that end, we expect it to grow the dividend at 4% to 6% annually, subject to board approval. Last, maintaining a strong balance sheet. We expect it to further enhance our credit metrics as we continue to deliver strong growth in our Parent Free Cash Flow.
In fact, we anticipate achieving and maintaining a Parent Free Cash Flow to net debt ratio of more than 24% through 2025, putting us in line with BBB credit metrics for our forecasted business risk profile. Turning to our capital allocation from 2021 through 2025, our three capital allocation priorities are expected to require $7.3 billion of capital through 2025. Roughly one-third of this capital will be allocated to shareholder dividends. The remaining two-thirds of $4.8 billion will be invested in highly visible development pipeline, contributing to our growth through 2025 and beyond. Of this planned $4.8 billion of investments in our subsidiaries, roughly 90% will be for renewables, U.S. utilities, and LNG infrastructure. At the same time, more than 60% of these investments will be in the U.S. Now to our financing strategy for the five-year capital allocation plan I just discussed.
Our key priority is to use the most optimal source of funding to deliver on our financial and strategic goals. Of our planned $7.3 billion to be allocated, $5.3 billion is expected to be generated through a combination of Parent Free Cash Flow and already announced asset sales. We plan to source the remaining $2 billion through external financing, which includes issuing $1 billion of equity-linked securities in 2021, mostly to fund our accelerated growth plan this year. The remaining $1 billion will be funded through a future issuance of parent debt between 2023 and 2025, as our leverage ratios benefit from a growing Parent Free Cash Flow. We view both issuances as value-accretive to our shareholders as we tap into competitive external sources of financing while preserving a solid capital structure.
Our growing free cash flow and reduced business risk will also help to further improve our Parent Free Cash Flow to net debt ratio to the required 24% threshold for our targeted BBB rating. This is an upgrade from our previous target of 20% for a BBB- rating. In summary, even though we will be adding $1 billion in parent debt, our credit metrics will continue to improve, enabling us to achieve and maintain BBB flat credit metrics. With the capital allocation plan I just discussed, we expect our adjusted EPS to grow 7%-9% through 2025, which is higher than the industry average. Now, I'd like to provide a little more color on the building blocks of the 7%-9% targeted growth rate. We expect our current portfolio as is to generate annual growth in adjusted EPS of roughly 3%-4%.
This includes cost savings, utilizing available capacity at our LNG terminals in Central America, and a modest contribution from new business such as Fluence. Additionally, the $4.8 billion of equity investments in new projects we expect it to make over the next five years should contribute with 9%-10% annual adjusted EPS growth. Roughly two-thirds of this growth is maturely derisked, given our seven GW of renewables backlog, as well as clearly identified utilities and LNG infrastructure projects. At the same time, we are incorporating the impact from the potential roll-off of contracts such as the Southland Legacy facilities and the RSC at AES Ohio, and the dilution from announced asset sales and additional retirements in order to achieve our 2025 decarbonization goals.
We also factor the incremental financing costs associated with the $2 billion external capital raise, getting us then to the expected average annual growth of 7%-9%. We also expect our Parent Free Cash Flow to grow in line with adjusted EPS at 7%-9% annually. Our strong and growing free cash flow is a significant source of funds for our capital allocation plan that I discussed earlier. In summary, as we accelerate our growth in renewables and U.S. utilities, we expect two-thirds of our earnings and cash flow to be generated from carbon-free businesses by 2025. This also means that our U.S.-based portfolio will be generating the majority of our earnings. We believe that achieving this optimal business mix will create substantial value to our shareholders. Now to 2021 capital allocation plan.
Sources reflect approximately $2 billion of total discretionary cash, including $800 million of Parent Free Cash Flow, $100 million of proceeds from the pending sale of Itabo in the Dominican Republic, and $1 billion from the issuance of the equity-linked security. Now to uses. Including the 5% dividend increase we announced in December, and the expected coupon of the planned equity-linked security, we'll be returning $447 million to shareholders this year, and we plan to invest approximately $1.5 billion in our subsidiaries, which is substantially higher than 2020. This primarily reflects the funding for greater renewables additions in 2019 and 2020, and the expected acceleration of both renewables deployment and rate-based growth at our U.S. utilities in 2021. These investments will help us to lock in future growth, as I'll discuss in more detail next. Approximately $600-$700 million of these investments are in our renewables backlog.
This is the result of our record PPA originations over the last two years, with the megawatts signed at the top end of our targeted range. Also, based on our success and combining with an attractive market outlook, we have increased our annual renewables growth target by 40% to 3 to 4 GW. Next, as you saw in today's presentation, at our U.S. utilities, we are accelerating our growth with a continued focus on grid and fleet modernization, as well as renewables deployment. To that end, we will be investing roughly $350 million this year to fund these growth investments, representing roughly half of our expected equity commitments at our U.S. utilities through 2025. Finally, we plan to use the remaining $250 million to fund LNG infrastructure in Vietnam and MCAC, as well as other investment opportunities in new technologies that are core to the energy transition.
In total, more than two-thirds of our investments in 2021 are in the U.S., contributing to our goal of increasing the proportion of earnings from the U.S. to more than half by 2025. Before I'll turn it over to Andrés for closing remarks, I will summarize the key takeaways from my presentation. With our achievements to date and the positive outlook for the sector, we are very well positioned to deliver attractive long-term growth of 7%-9% annually through 2025 by increasing our portfolio of renewables and investing in our U.S. utilities and LNG infrastructure. We will have a business mix with a substantially greater share of earnings from our U.S. and carbon-free business. Additionally, the plan I discussed today will fully finance our growth, with no additional external funding needed to achieve this target.
At the same time, we will continue to strengthen our balance sheet to reach and maintain BBB credit metrics. With that, I'll turn it back over to Andrés.
Before we open up our session to questions, I'd like to summarize today's presentations. We think we have a compelling total shareholder return proposition: the growth of 7%-9% on average of our adjusted EPS and Parent Free Cash Flow, and the growth of 4%-6% on average of our dividend. We also are aiming for an improved credit profile, achieving and maintaining BBB credit metrics, and having an optimal business mix. This means we're investing in growing renewables and our utilities such that their 65% of our earnings increase the proportion of earnings coming from the U.S. to more than half, and finally, reduce the proportion of gigawatt hours generated from coal to less than 10% pro forma.
So we remain focused on creating superior value for our shareholders, and we think that this transition of our sector and AES's position put us optimally placed to provide that. So thank you very much, and let's go to questions. Embedded in this? We have the retirements embedded in this. We have any necessary financing embedded in this.
Okay. And my second question about financing needs and your credit ratings. So I appreciate the converts, and that you're trying to get to the BBB rating. But how about getting investment grade at Moody's first?
Can you guys hear me? This is Gustavo.
Yes, we can.
Are you both on mute? Yes. Hello? Can people hear me?
Yes.
Yes.
Okay. All right, Angie, thank you for your question. And sorry about the technical glitches here. Look, to answer your question, look, we've given guidance for 2021 regarding Vietnam in 2025.
Really, that would be coming online outside the five-year period. So this incorporates the retirement of coal. This incorporates our growth. Next year is going to be a very important growth. This year is going to be a very important growth year with four GW of renewables coming online. So we expect a relatively smooth path of this growth.
Thank you.
Yeah. If I can add—this is Gustavo, Angie—if I can add to Andrés' point, I think you should assume it's fairly stable throughout the cycle. And the LNG project in Vietnam is coming in stages. So we have three 750 MW assets coming online through different times, but all of them expected to come within the 2025 year. So it's impacting positively the guidance window.
Good. Thank you. And I'm actually not sure if you heard my question about the Moody's investment grade rating.
What are your expectations when that could be achieved?
Regarding Moody's?
Yes.
Yeah. So I think I mentioned that last week. I think Moody's, they came early this year with a positive reveal on our credit in the sense that they've gave us a lower threshold for FFO to Debt, now at 14%. We see ourselves there. So we think we are in a good momentum with the agents. Hopefully, we'll have some action this year as we continue to improve our credit metrics.
Great. Thank you.
Our next question today comes from Durgesh Chopra with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys. I just want to make sure you can hear me.
Hear you.
Okay. Perfect. Big picture question to start with for you, Andrew.
So you kind of talked about hydrogen-related investments in Chile and other investments sort of outside of the U.S., right, which may be incremental here, not included in the plan. How are you thinking about international investments versus your goal of getting sort of 50% earnings from the U.S.? I want to hear how you're thinking about balancing the high returns on those investments internationally versus sort of meeting your 50% earnings goal in the U.S.
Okay. So it's going to be about balancing that. And so we clearly have significant growth of utilities in the U.S. We have a significant pipeline of renewables in the U.S. that Leo talked about. So that will be the sort of bedrock of our growth. We always have international projects. We talked about Chile doing continued green blend and extend. We have other projects of LNG projects outside the U.S.
So it's going to be a balance. But we do want to be 50% US. We have the projects to achieve that. And we want to be 65% renewables. So it's going to be a balancing act. But we think it's—we feel very comfortable with achieving those goals.
Understood. Thanks. And then maybe just can you talk about sort of the end game for Fluence and Uplight here? Do you ultimately think that those companies you may sort of bring them to the public market, i.e., IPO, in a few years' time to get sort of a better valuation marker? And what does that time frame look like?
Okay. Well, there are two different cases. Fluence has, in a sense, been more advanced than this.
We brought on a partner, the Qatar Investment Authority, through a capital raise to really help accelerate the fantastic growth opportunities that we see in Fluence. Down the road, it's very likely we would do some kind of IPO or other operation to get an even better marker on the value of that company. But right now, what we see with both Fluence and Uplight is that the relationship with AES is creating a lot of value in both aspects. It's creating value for them as we co-create new applications. So it's creating value for us, but it's also creating value for all the shareholders in those companies. So right now, it's a situation where we're creating value for both shareholders in it. And sure, down the road, I'm sure there will be opportunities for getting other markers on both of these.
Got it. Okay. That's super helpful.
Just maybe one last quick one for Gustavo, and I'll jump back to the queue. How are you thinking about the 4%-6% prospective dividend growth that's lower than historically your 7%, I believe, is historically your dividend growth run rate? Is that back to a payout ratio? Just any thoughts on why 4%-6%?
Yeah. We've been actually doing 4%-6%, if I recall, in the last two years. So it's where we like to be, especially given the opportunity set we have. So payout is around 40%-ish. And that's where we've been the last couple of years. We like it, and we think it's the right number. It allows us to be competitive on dividend, but also preserves capital for us to continue to pursue the investment opportunities that we see in our space.
Got it. Thanks, guys. Appreciate the color today.
Our next question today comes from Richard Sunderland with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Great. Thank you. So starting off at a high level, just curious if you could speak to the characteristics of your remaining coal post-2025 and kind of how that fits in with your broader decarbonization goals.
Sure. Last year, we accomplished the decarbonization, I would say, of Asia between Vietnam and India. Prior, we had left the Philippines. So right now, a lot of the decarbonization that is occurring is in Chile. And so in Chile, what we've done is we're shutting down the older coal plants. We're exiting some of the other coal plants because we've managed to shift our contracts from physical contracts to financial contracts. And we've been replacing the energy from those coal plants with renewable energy.
So if we look at the remainder of our fleet, a lot of them have an expiration date, if you will, for their existing PPAs, like what happened in Hawaii. So if we look at that, we will have continued expirations of those PPAs. And we have announced some retirements in the U.S. as well. So it's really the bulk of the action this year will be in Chile, some in the U.S. And then after that, it's going to be as those roll off in time.
Got it.
Thanks. And then switching gears to the three to four gigawatts of renewables you're targeting now, I'm curious what bridges to the higher four to five GW rate for 2025 and kind of where you see that across your operations.
Look, a good part of that is in the U.S. in terms of the gigawatts we have signed already and the opportunities that we see. So really, there's a part of the improvement from putting together AES Distributed Energy with sPower, the PPAs that we've signed in prior years coming online. So we just see a continued momentum for this to happen. And also, we're seeing the same thing, the effects of green blend and extend negotiations, for example, in Chile. So what we're seeing, as I discussed, is that the speed of adoption of renewables is increasing. We're well-positioned. We have a pipeline, potential projects that we can then react to the demands of the market. So this reflects a lot of hard work that we've been doing over the last couple of years to firm up that pipeline.
About half of that pipeline is in the U.S.
Great. Appreciate the color. I'll leave it there.
Thank you.
Our next question today comes from Charles Fishman with Morningstar. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Just the growth or the PPAs signed last year were about 40% U.S., 60% non-U.S. You stated going forward over the next five years, we should expect maybe 60%-65% U.S. So it's almost flips. Obviously, there's growth in the U.S. But some of what's going on, also the winding down of the Gener Green Blend and Extend program, which was very successful, but it sounds like you maybe just completed all those opportunities at Gener. Is that a fair assessment?
Well, what I'd say is, again, we have a good pipeline in the U.S. We see demand increasing in the U.S.
In the case of Gener, the Green Blend and Extend still has some legs, and we still have some very good permitted projects in Chile. So it really is less of a sort of international decrease and somewhat of an acceleration in the U.S.
Okay. And then my second question, I think, is directed towards Lisa and the U.S. utilities. Lisa, I think I'm repeating correctly what I heard. She said 9% rate-based growth over the next five years, and earnings roughly following that. I guess my question is, AES Ohio certainly got hit last year or was pressured by ESP 1, and so the PTC was lower. Does that become the new base for the 9% earnings growth, or should we expect more of a recovery in 2021 in that 2020 was just an outlier?
Gustavo, you can also jump in here as well.
Really, for AES Ohio, we put in place some significant growth mechanisms in terms of our transmission investments that are starting to grow. The $400 million that we're growing over time are our smart grid investments. So we are growing at a significant rate in our rate base in over 9% over this period through 2025.
Yeah. Let me ask Gustavo maybe if it's more appropriate to ask him. You had $25 million of PTC at AES Ohio last year. Does that become the new base? It was a lot lower because of ESP 1.
That's right. Hi, Charles. Gustavo here. That's right. So with ourselves moving back to ESP 1, we've lost the DMR, some of the DIR. We've got the RSC, which, as Lisa mentioned during the presentation, we're expecting to roll off. So by 2025, it's not in the numbers. So the base is 2020.
And we're going to grow from that base, 9% on average for both utilities. But we're deploying a significant amount of capital in the IPL. So we're expecting the IPL to grow. And also, I think the one point to highlight here, there's a bit of a backlog to be catch up or caught up in the next distribution rate case, right? So we filed late last year in the IPL. We're expecting the new rates to come online or to come and be approved by the beginning of next year. So there's a bit of a backlog there of prior year investments, the DIR that we've lost as we move it back to ESP 1. All of that, plus the investments, will help us get to this 9% growth through 2025.
So it sounds like 2021, a little bit of lag still in AES Ohio.
And then with the rate case, then you'd see more of an increase in 2022 and beyond. Correct?
Yeah, that's correct.
Okay. Thank you. That's all I had.
And our next question today comes from Steve Fleishman with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Great. Can you hear me okay?
Yes, we can.
Oh, great. Thanks. Thanks for all the thorough updates. Maybe just kind of a high-level question of just when you look at the 7%-9% growth, what would be the things that would take you to the high end of that for one thing, or what would take you to the low end of that? In other words, what's the biggest potential upside and maybe, if anything, a risk?
Well, there are always risks, especially nowadays with the global environment. We think we're very well-positioned to be able to respond to any of those.
So I would say taking the downside, we have contingencies. Obviously, if we had some deterioration in the global economy or change in tax policy or rules like that, those could affect us. But again, we think we would keep us within the range. In terms of reaching the higher end of the range, we have a couple of expansions, for example, of LNG sales in Panama, which could be on the higher side. We could have faster growth of renewables, not only in the U.S., in some of our other markets. So what we see is, yeah, there's a number of opportunities there that could be upsides. We have embedded cost savings, and these could be somewhat faster than we have programmed. So on balance, we feel very comfortable with these forecasts. We have contingencies.
And to get us at the upside, it'd basically be, are we signing today more contracts that will come online within this period? Are we selling more LNG? Are we accelerating some of those cost savings?
Great. I think in the presentation, you mentioned that standalone storage credit could be an upside. Is that something that would be significant enough within the context of Fluence to overall AES?
Look, if standalone storage gets ITC treatment, which is, I think, what the market expects, that's going to accelerate the adoption of standalone storage. We think events in terms of recently, for example, Texas, and people are thinking about the resilience of the grid. That will also accelerate the adoption of storage. As more renewables come online, that will also accelerate the adoption of storage.
So overall, this would be a plus not only for AES, but for Fluence in general in terms of accelerating the growth of its adoption in the U.S., which is right now the biggest market. But what I think I would also tend to emphasize is the fact of the digital services with the acquisition of AMS, AI-enabled bidding services. This is very attractive because that has a higher margin than selling the complete kit. We have recently made a very big sale in California that was on other people's hardware. So this is an area of expansion that will allow us, will allow Fluence, I think, to reach break-even more quickly than if it was just selling integrated battery applications.
Okay. And then just any new color on the Google partnership? That was probably the one thing you didn't have an update on. Obviously, a lot on everything else.
To Leo so he gets the opportunity to talk, but that continues to move forward very well.
Thanks, Andrés. Yes, good morning, everyone. We announced last year this RFP in Virginia for one gigawatt of renewables to serve Google and other customers, and that has been progressing well. With that process, we aim to deliver the type of sophisticated products that we talked about in this presentation, combining multiple technologies and batteries to provide these high-value outcomes. Many customers are interested in this type of product. We're in active discussions with many of them, and we hope to have something to announce pretty soon. I think people should be tuned in, but that process is ongoing. We have multiple negotiations with many parties, so we hope to have something soon to talk about.
Okay. Great. Thank you very much.
And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question- and- answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Ahmed Pasha for any final remarks.
We want to thank you again for joining us today. We hope that today's discussion was helpful and it provided you with better understanding of AES and why we are so excited about our future. As always, the IR team will be available to answer any follow-up questions you may have.