Thank you, Jennifer, and good morning, everyone. It is now 9:00 A.M. and time to begin the annual meeting of shareholders of Brookfield Renewable Corporation. My name is Jeffrey Blidner, and as Chair of the Board, it is my distinct pleasure to chair today's meeting. On behalf of the Board and its management team, I would like to extend a warm welcome to everybody joining us today. As a first order of business, I would like to ask Jennifer Mazin, our General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, and today's moderator, to set out the voting procedure for the meeting.
Thank you. Voting during the meeting will take place on our virtual meeting platform. I will now explain this process. For each matter being voted on, every holder of Class A exchangeable subordinate voting shares, which we will refer to at this meeting as the Class A shares, is entitled to one vote in respect of each share held. The Class A shares as a class collectively hold 25% of the outstanding votes, and the Class B multiple voting shares, which we will refer to at this meeting as the Class B shares, all of which are held by a subsidiary of Brookfield Renewable Partners L.P., holds 75% of the outstanding votes. Adoption of a proposed motion requires a majority of the votes cast at the meeting by the holders of the Class A shares and the Class B shares voting together as a single class.
Voting will be open for all resolutions throughout the formal portion of the meeting. This will allow you to choose to vote on each resolution immediately or to wait until the conclusion of discussion on each resolution prior to casting your vote. If you voted in advance of the meeting and do not wish to change your vote, then you do not need to do anything. By voting at the virtual meeting on any matter, all of your previously submitted votes in respect of all matters to be voted upon at this meeting will be automatically revoked. Excuse me. Accordingly, if you do vote on any matter during this virtual meeting, please ensure you vote on all matters for which you are entitled to vote.
We welcome questions from our shareholders which may be submitted by typing the question into the virtual meeting platform using the messaging icon on the top of the page. Please indicate whether your question is of a general nature or if it relates to a motion being considered as part of the meeting's formal business. Please click the submit button once you have finished typing your question. I will read out the question and ask a member of management to respond to it. If we receive many questions that are similar, we will read one of the questions and indicate that we have received many similar questions. Only registered shareholders or proxy holders are able to submit questions at this meeting. We will endeavor to answer all questions submitted during the allotted time.
We recommend that you submit any questions relating to the motions being tabled as soon as possible, as it may take time for the virtual meeting platform to process them.
Thank you, Jennifer. I now call the meeting to order and ask Computershare Investor Services Inc. by its representative, Paul Allen, to act as scrutineer. I also ask Jennifer to act as secretary of the meeting. In the unlikely event of a technological failure disconnecting my audio from the meeting, I've designated Jennifer to step in as Chair of the meeting. In the unlikely event of a serious technological failure that prevents the meeting from continuing, the meeting will be rescheduled, and you will be appropriately notified. It is now my pleasure to introduce the other members of management with us today, starting with Connor Teskey, our Chief Executive Officer.
Thank you, Jeff, and thank you everyone for joining our annual general meeting. I am pleased to be here and also to introduce Wyatt Hartley, our Chief Financial Officer. Once we get through the formal part of the meeting, Wyatt and I will give a brief presentation and then would be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
There are three items of business to be considered today as part of the formal meeting, and I will ask Jennifer to outline them for you.
First, to receive the consolidated financial statements of the corporation for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, including the external auditor's report. Second, to elect directors who will serve until the next annual meeting of shareholders. Third, to appoint the external auditor and authorize the directors to set their remuneration. As mentioned, in connection with the business to be dealt with today, all voting will be conducted online through the virtual meeting platform. Voting is now open on all resolutions. In order to expedite the formal part of today's meeting, the Chair has asked a certain proxy holder to move various resolutions. Although this procedure will assist in the handling of the formal matters, it is not intended to discourage anyone from submitting questions in reference to any resolution after it has been proposed.
Mr. Chair, please be advised that the notice calling this meeting and the management information circular were disseminated to voting shareholders in accordance with all applicable laws. As secretary of the meeting, I will keep a copy of the notice and proof of mailing with the minutes of this meeting. Based on the scrutineer's preliminary report on attendance, I can confirm that there is a quorum at the meeting.
Thanks, Jennifer. I therefore declare the meeting properly constituted for the transaction of the business for which it has been called. Turning now to the first item of formal business. I will now table the corporation's consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, together with the external auditor's report. Copies of our annual financial statements have also been mailed to shareholders who have requested them and are also available on our website.
Mr. Chair, we have not received any questions or comments submitted in connection with the financial statements.
The second item of business at our meeting today is to elect directors who will serve until the next annual meeting of shareholders. Jennifer, would you please read the names of the proposed nominees?
The 10 proposed nominees for election by holders of the corporation's Class A shares and Class B shares are Jeffrey Blidner, Scott Cutler, Sarah Deasley, Nancy Dorn, Eleazar de Carvalho Filho, Randy MacEwen, David Mann, Lou Maroun, Stephen Westwell, and Patricia Zuccotti. Information on all ten director nominees is set out in our management information circular, which was posted on our website and is available from the company upon request. Mr. Chair, we have not received any questions or comments with respect to the nomination of directors.
We invite shareholders and proxy holders to submit their vote online if they have not already done so. As a reminder, if you have already voted or sent in your proxy, there's no need to do anything unless you wish to change your vote.
Mr. Chair, I nominate for election as directors the 10 nominees named in the Management Information Circular dated May 6, 2022.
Thank you, Wyatt. I declare the nominations closed. Management has received proxies representing a majority of the corporation's Class A shares and 100% of the Class B shares. These proxies direct management to vote a majority of the Class A shares and all of the Class B shares in favor of the resolution. As such, I now declare that those nominated have been duly elected as directors of the corporation. The third and last item of business today is the appointment of the corporation's external auditor and authorize any directors to set their remuneration. As stated in the Management Information Circular, the Audit Committee of our Board of Directors has recommended that Ernst & Young LLP be reappointed as the corporation's external auditor.
Mr. Chair, I move that Ernst & Young LLP be appointed the external auditor of the corporation until the next annual meeting, and that the directors be authorized to set their remuneration.
Thank you, Wyatt. The resolution has been moved, and the motion is now before the meeting for discussion.
Mr. Chair, we have not received any questions or comments submitted in connection with the appointment of the auditors.
Management has received proxies representing a majority of the corporation's Class A shares and 100% of the Class B shares. These proxies direct management to vote a majority of the Class A shares and all of the Class B shares in favor of the resolution. Voting is now closed on all resolutions. I'm advised that we have the results of the resolutions based on the tabulation of votes cast in advance of the meeting. Jennifer.
Thank you, Jeff. I am pleased to declare that those nominated have been duly elected as directors of the corporation. On the appointment of the corporation's external auditor and the authorization of directors to set their remuneration, I am pleased to declare the motion carried. The final voting results will be available after the meeting and posted to SEDAR at www.sedar.com.
That completes the formal business of today's meeting. Since there's no other business, this concludes our formal meeting. Now that this part of the meeting has been concluded, our CEO, Connor, and our CFO, Wyatt, will be making a presentation on behalf of the management team. At the end of the presentation, they will both be available to respond to any questions or comments you may have submitted. Please note that in responding to questions and in talking about our new initiatives and our financial and operating performance, we may make forward-looking financial statements. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks, and future results may differ materially. Finally, we would like to ensure that all shareholders who are interested in asking a question have the opportunity to do so. We will make every effort to address questions during the allotted question and answer period.
Over to you, Wyatt and Connor.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. 2021 was another very strong year for our business. We achieved record FFO per unit, continuing our track record of double-digit annual growth for over a decade. We agreed to deploy capital in line with our targets, growing in every major market we operate, and had a record year for development. Other highlights for the year include. We generated FFO of $934 million or $1.45 per share, a 10% increase from the prior year, or 17% on a normalized basis. We advanced key commercial priorities in securing contracts to deliver 11,000 GWh of clean energy annually, including 6,000 GWh to corporate offtakers. We commissioned approximately 1,000 MW of new capacity and progressed over 15,000 MW through construction and advanced stage development.
Finally, we maintained our robust investment-grade balance sheet with over $4 billion of available liquidity, no material near-term maturities, and limited floating rate exposure. Over the last 12 months, we committed or deployed over $1 billion net to Brookfield Renewable of equity capital across various transactions in every major market and technology we operate in. We further diversified our business, making our first investment in offshore wind through our investment in Polenergia, Poland's largest clean energy business with over 3 GW of offshore development. We also made our first investment in carbon capture and sequestration with our investment in Entropy, which comes with a high quality pipeline with the potential to capture 2.7 million tons of carbon annually.
We have expanded our distributed generation business both organically in the U.S. and Asia through the further build-out of our development pipeline, as well as M&A activity that expanded our footprint into Europe and Latin America. Finally, we continued to add to our solar business with our investment in Urban Grid, a leading utility scale developer in the United States, as well as we make additional investments in our hydro and storage businesses. All of this has translated into very strong performance, with BEPC delivering an annualized total return of 37% since inception, outperforming the broader market. With that, I will hand the call over to Connor to take you through the remainder of the presentation.
Thanks, Wyatt. We'd like to take the next couple minutes to talk about the current environment and the outlook for the business. The tailwinds for our platform, we feel are very strong today and perhaps stronger than they've ever been before. In the past, we've talked about two macro drivers of our business, both of which only are increasing as we move forward. First, decarbonization and the focus on achieving net zero continues to accelerate on a global basis. Second, renewables continue to be the lowest cost form of bulk electricity production around the world, a position that continues to enhance and be further cemented as the global renewables industry continues to grow and supply chains scale up, driving improved technology and even lower production costs of energy.
Today, those two core tailwinds have the support of a third tailwind, which is the increasing global focus on energy security. Very simply, the sun and the wind do not need to be imported, and the input costs to our power generation facilities are the same today at zero as they were six or nine months ago. In the Venn diagram of global objectives of decarbonization, low cost energy, and energy security, renewables represents that favorable shaded area in the middle. In turning to the next slide, we feel that we are very well-positioned to thrive in this environment. Today, Brookfield Renewable is one of the only large scale pure play renewable power and decarbonization companies that has both leading platforms in all major technologies and is diversified on a geographic basis.
Further, we have leading, operating, and development platforms in every region around the world in which we operate, and we also continue to focus on our balance sheet. We continue to maintain a strong investment-grade credit rating, and further have supported our balance sheet with record levels of liquidity to take on the significant growth opportunity we see ahead for the business. All of this culminates in that we see multiple levers to continue to deliver strong double-digit FFO per unit growth into the future. The buckets that drive this continued growth are the exact same buckets that we have referenced in the past. Yet today, all four of our key value drivers continue to lean in our favor. In the current environment, over 70% of our contracts have inflation escalation embedded in them, which benefit in the current, macroeconomic, environment.
Secondly, we continue to drive margin enhancements both within our existing businesses and in new assets that we acquire. Then we get to our growth levers. Today, we have greater amounts of development activity than we have at any point in the past. In fact, we'll look to bring on 10 GW of renewable power capacity over the next three years, and that only includes projects that are either under construction or are contracted to be built out in that time frame. Those numbers will continue to go up as we execute our business plan. Lastly, today, we continue to rely on M&A activities as our largest lever for growth, something that we are very confident in given our differentiated approach that leverages our scale, our global reach, and our operating capabilities. That concludes the formal presentation.
We would like to finish by announcing that Brookfield Renewable will host its Investor Day on Thursday, September 29th, 2022. We look forward to updating you on our business and our strategy at that point. That concludes our prepared remarks, and we would now be pleased to answer any questions. Jennifer, would you please announce our first question?
Connor, there are no questions to be addressed today.
Let's just give it a second, see if anyone else has any questions. Now is the time. Anybody, any questions at all? If not, I'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to join with us today. The meeting is now concluded.