All right. I want to welcome you to Dominion's ESG session, where we know that this is the first of its kind in the history of the utility industry.
And I talked to somebody at the Exchange this morning who said, as far as they're aware, it's the 1st NYSE listed company that's had an ESG only session for analysts. We're very pleased to be here today. It's either and we hope it sets a template for others to follow. This morning, we focused on our shift from big projects to big programs, outlined our 5 year capital investment plan as well as other drivers for financial growth. We also discussed Dominion's capital structure and our upcoming dividend strategy.
This afternoon, we're going to review our short- and long term plans regarding environmental, social responsibility and governance matters. So over the next 90 minutes or so, you'll be hearing from a number of our leadership team, some of whom you know, others you may be less familiar with. I'm going to ask them to put their hand up when I call their name. Bob Blue is CEO of the Power Delivery Group Paul Kuntz, CEO of the Power Generation Group Diane Leopold, Gas Infrastructure Group Carter Reed is our Chief Administrative Officer, runs the Services Company Mark Webb is Senior Vice President, Chief Innovation Officer Monica Miles is Vice President, Governance and Compliance. Where's Monica?
Over here. And Mandy Tornaby, Vice President, Environmental Services. We also have Rodney Blevins is here. He runs our Dominion Energy Southeast Business Unit, all 10 weeks in. So we thought we'd give him a little rest from getting involved in ESG matters right at this time until we get a complete handle on that part of the company.
1st, because safety is always our first priority in case of an emergency, there is an exit here and there is an exit in the back of the room as well and there are staircases immediately outside that you should follow. When it comes to ESG and sustainability, it has long been our belief that being transparent, a trusted community partner, helping those in need and developing a workforce reflecting those we serve, while at the same time providing affordable and reliable service, minimizing our impact on the environment were enough to meet our customers' expectations. It's quite a lot, especially one sentence. But those are what was we thought was necessary to meet expectations. And here's just a handful of examples to highlight the point.
We began Energy Share in 1982 to help low income customers pay their energy bills. Today, the program annually helps tens of thousands of elderly, low income, veterans, disabled customers in 3 states with heating and cooling assistance and weatherization. Dominion has invested over $110,000,000 in this program over the last 3 decades. We are committed to increasing that spend to over $13,000,000 annually over at least the next decade. We created a scholarship to honor 3 students with close ties to the company who were killed in the tragic mass shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007.
We donated water and supplies to victims of 20 fifteen's massive flooding in South Carolina. We disclosed what we spent in the political sphere on lobbying and for membership and trade associations, including the National Association of Manufacturers, Edison Electric Institute, the American Gas Association, to name a few. We have been recognized as one of the most transparent companies in this regard in the United States. Our electric customers have service 99.97 percent of the time. Our rates are significantly below state, regional and national averages across all customer classes.
So Dominion does all of the things that are expected of a public service company, and we have for a very long time. But we do more, actually a lot more. We have not told the story in a comprehensive way before. That is why we are here today. Many companies at different times in their history face a choice, whether they stay with a tried and true approach or they strike out in a new direction while continuing to embrace their roots in core values.
History is full of examples that chose the former path, Kodak and Blackberry and those that chose the latter path, Fuji and Apple. Last fall, Dominion chose its path when we added a new core value. In addition to our long standing values of safety, ethics, excellence and 1 Dominion Energy, we adopted a 5th value, embrace change. This new value captures our recognition that a distinguished past cannot guarantee a prosperous future. Doing the same thing, even if you do it better, will not suffice.
But of course, embracing change does not tell you what kind of change to embrace. So we have developed a clean energy and sustainability blueprint that will guide us over the next several decades. We are beginning to roll out some of the details of this transformational change here with you today. Literally scores and scores of others are presently in development. This vision has started us in a new direction that will mean better things for our customers, for our shareholders, for the communities in which we live and work and for the environment we all share.
Our touchstone as we embark on this effort is that actions speak louder. That's who we are as a company. We say what we mean and we mean what we say. We deliver on our commitments. Our commitment on sustainability is to deliver results, that actions are what matter, not simply good intention.
Our commitment that action speaks louder is consistent with both our core values and our core mission, providing reliable energy at reasonable cost. That can and will never change. So what does action speak louder mean in the context of sustainability? 1st, to be a sustainable company means you must succeed financially. You must be able to attract investment capital.
Without that, all of your plans to benefit customers, your communities and the environment will fail. So it means growing shareholder value through clean energy investments, including solar and wind and storage and nuclear and natural gas infrastructure that replaces higher carbon sources. We must do so without compromising our regulatory compact, provide reliable and affordable energy. It means protecting the environment, reducing our carbon and methane emissions while helping customers reduce theirs and by also partnering with transportation companies to expedite cleaner operations on land and at sea. It means a greater focus on our customers, providing them better and more energy efficiency options and stronger access to renewable energy and digital tools to manage their energy use.
It means being a valued and trusted community partner, one that supports community sustainability initiatives, provides tools to reduce carbon emissions at home and at work or on the road, and aid sustainable economic development and charitable programs. And it demeans Dominion as an employer of choice, attracting and retaining workers through workforce diversity and inclusion, development and engagement and building workplaces of the future. As we embrace all of these advancements, we cannot and will not lose sight of safety, our number one priority, safety of our customers and safety of our employees. In 2,005, we had an OSHA recordable incident rate of 2.40 in more than 400 recordable injuries. Those were actually pretty good numbers for our industry.
Nearly 15 years, thousands of daily safety briefings and safety messages and PPE do's and don'ts later, we are at the top of our sector. Last year, we had a recordable injury rate of 0.55, a new company record in 89 injuries, 70% reduction, which is still 89 too many. Of this, I am certain. When safety is the cornerstone of a corporate culture, a company performs better operationally, financially and environmentally. It sends a message to employees, customers and owners that we care first about how we do things, not just the results that we achieve.
So Dominion is embracing change in everything we do. We can be better in everything, even in safety. Our industry and our company are transforming. A key driver is innovation. We are driving innovation to show that actions speak louder.
We welcome and value all employees and customers regardless of race, religion, gender, disability or sexual orientation. We are very transparent in our corporate filings. We will become more so. This transformation will require change throughout the company and buy in from all of us. We have been embracing change for more than a century since our early days making ice, oh knows why, and digging canals.
Innovation is in our DNA, and we know that Dominion will not succeed by simply making our fossil fuel operations more efficient. Let me be clear about one thing, though. We have made tremendous progress on that score more than almost anyone else in our sector. You will hear more about that from Mandy Tornaby in greater detail in just a few minutes. Since 2,005, we have cut carbon emissions dioxide emissions from our power generation facilities in half or by 27,000,000 metric tons.
That is twice the industry average. Since 2010, we have lowered our methane emissions from our gas infrastructure substantially, reducing carbon equivalent emissions by 4,500,000 metric tons. Only a small handful of companies have accomplished what we have over the last decade, but we know there is a lot more to do. According to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, greenhouse gas emissions worldwide must fall 45% from 2010 levels by 2,030 to keep global warming at under 1.5 degrees Celsius. Net emissions worldwide must fall to 0 by 2,050.
To achieve those goals, technology will have to evolve beyond where we are today, but we have set ambitious targets at Dominion and we are going to do more than our part. We will cut carbon emissions from our power stations by 55% between 2,005 and 2,030 and by at least 80% between 2,005 and 2,050. We will reduce methane emissions from our natural gas businesses 50% between 2010 and 2030. For now, the carbon targets apply to our power generation group and the methane targets to our gas infrastructure group. These two operating segments account for more than 80% of our generating capacity and 85% of our gas transmission miles, 55% of our distribution miles.
We have to integrate the SCANA businesses and get to know them better, and we will update those targets when we take that into account later this year. In addition, our plans include investing at least 95% of all our planned generation growth capital in low and no carbon energy, ensuring that our gas infrastructure system is the cleanest in the United States, partnering to help customers and businesses reduce carbon at home, at work and on the road. For example, we just launched an electric vehicle app on our website. It includes a calculator for customers to compare the carbon emissions produced by combustion engine cars with various electric vehicle models when those EVs are powered by Dominion's clean electricity. The app also incorporates our electric rates to calculate the cost savings when you switch from gas to electric.
Want to help our customers recognize they can reduce their carbon footprint dramatically by using us as their fuel source. We don't believe anybody else has done anything like this. We will add more vehicles to our fleet that are fueled by electricity or compressed natural gas, and we are transforming the business without compromising safety, reliability, affordability, efficiency or the value to our owners. We have made a very strong start. In the past 5 years, we have built our solar portfolio for virtually nothing, 2,600 Megawatts, which places us 4th in the country among investor owned utilities.
We launched an offshore wind project, only the 2nd such project in the United States and the only one owned and operated by an electric utility. We have committed to having enough new solar and wind in operation or under development over the next 3 years to power 750,000 homes and businesses. We are partnering with Smithfield Foods to capture methane from hog farms and convert it into natural gas, a process that takes more carbon out of the atmosphere than it contributes, and that sends that gas into distribution lines to fuel industrial operations and heat homes. Our Board is deeply involved in setting our goals and moderating our progress through our Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility Committee. Carter Reed will give you more detail on their charter in just a few minutes.
Dominion is shaping the future of energy in America, while delivering sustainable long term growth to our owners, Doing so in the face of a rapidly changing landscape of technology, regulation and public policy requires that we meet the needs of multiple stakeholders, our investors, customers, employees, communities and many, many more. We are enhancing our disclosures, unveiling new reports like our climate report and seeking new opportunities to engage with our communities. These matters are a priority for our Board. We've also created an Innovation, Sustainability and Technology Council at the senior management level, which I will discuss near the end of the following presentation. Because sustainability encompasses more than corporate responsibility and environment, we are also committed to attracting a diverse workforce and helping all of our employees reach their full potential.
This includes refreshing our Board. The Board is actively seeking quality men, quality women and minority candidates we don't have any quality men seeking all of them, quality men, women and minority candidates for consideration. Our current Board consists of 4 directors who are women and or people of color, including 25% of committee chairs, reflecting a Board that is more than 30% diverse in those areas. Dominion supports the effort of the Global 30% Club to improve gender balance on public company boards. We will also increase our community engagement to make sure every voice is not just heard, but listened to.
We have adopted an environmental justice policy to ensure that our major projects take into account all potential impacts on all affected communities. Only 2 other utilities have done so. Many try to pit profits against sustainability as if there was an inverse relationship between the 2. More of 1 requires less of the other. That is not only false, it is backwards.
Abundant research has proven it repeatedly. Companies that score well on measures of sustainability and corporate responsibility return higher earnings that companies that do not. Sustainability does not compete against the bottom line. Sustainability bolsters the bottom line. That's why we have confidence in our vision.
Becoming a more sustainable company will also ensure that we remain one of the most successful. We know this presentation this afternoon will inspire skeptics. Some people don't trust our industry. I also understand that most people, skeptical or not, would rather see a sermon than hear a sermon. I'm one of those individuals myself.
Actions speak louder. So if you're skeptical of our goals and our ability to achieve them or question whether we're just launching a public relations campaign, I have a suggestion for you. Watch. Now before I turn the program over to Carter Reed to start with governance, a few minutes on our 5 values, if I can find a clicker. This is mandatory that you read this.
We can give you 10 minutes to read this or we can ask you to read it at the conclusion of the meeting when you get back to your office. Which way would you like to go? Okay. We'll go ahead. Okay.
I'm just going to talk for a minute about our now five values. All of these values to us are inside characteristics and outside characteristics. 1st and foremost, safety. You heard me talk about our employee OSHA recordable rates, among the very, very best in the United States, but 89 injuries is too many. But this also applies to the way we deal with this company that these assets we operate.
High pressure pipelines and electric transmission lines, these can be dangerous products assets if they're not handled properly. We take our responsibility to our community's safety very, very seriously. Ethics. This is I'm going through the first of the 4, and I'll come to the 5th. Ethics for us is both internal and external.
External has a variety of constituents to it. First is we have this panoply of regulations, rules, laws that we have to comply with. Oftentimes, they are competing with each other. Our job is to comply with both the spirit and letter of them. It also means though how we interact with our communities.
And a lot of what you're going to hear this afternoon falls into this category as far as we're concerned. You can maybe thinking about it as sustainability in our environmental record, social responsibility, it's all true. For us, it's an ethical responsibility that we owe the communities and our customers. The other side of this for us is internal, how we treat our fellow employees. What are we doing about the changing workforce?
So you see that captured here and you'll see it in our Embrace Change value. This is something we take very seriously and we it's simple. It's all you got to do. I say this to our employees all the time. You don't have to go read our employee mail.
The General Counsel probably squirms. Just follow the golden rule. Treat your fellow employees the way you want to be treated. You'll comply with the employee manual, the spirit of it at least. Excellence, best in class performance, best in class ESG performance as well.
We operate very good assets at very high levels. We have worked and worked and worked at this. We say to employees, if you're interested in working for a company that wants to be average in what they do, don't work here. We strive for excellence in everything we do. You're going to work harder, but you're going to be part of people who are reaching for something.
In our traditional 4th last value, teamwork, all this is done with the support of one another, eliminate silos across the company. We have a very aggressive program in moving people around our company, so they see all different parts of it. And then finally, in the fall, we embraced a 5th value, embrace change. I talked about this a little bit this morning. This has internal characteristics and external characteristics.
The external characteristics are what you will hear a lot about today, but you're also going to hear about the internal. External is we have a fast moving environment, policy changing, rules are changing, customer expectations are changing. We can't hold it off. We don't want to hold it off. We want to accept it.
We don't and not just accept it. I spent a lot of time working on these two words. I was trying to get it to one word because other things are one word on here. And then I said, but I wrote down the first time I wrote this down, I was in a management, I wrote down embrace change. And I could never come up with a better 2 words.
I looked in the dictionary. Who here remembers what a dictionary is? Oh, good.
It's a couple of people.
I know now you look it up online. So it wasn't tolerate change, accept change. It's embrace it, bring it in, enjoy it, celebrate it. But it also means for us internal, not just all the external forces, but our workforce. We have to we need to embrace all the changes in our workforce because it makes us more vibrant.
It will help us carry out the rest of our mission. So everything you're going to see that follows in all these next slides comes out of these five values. This is how we manage the company. We don't you don't see on this value shareholder returns, returns on equity, what's our financial goal, what do we need for our balance sheet. That will all take care of itself if we live up to these five values.
This isn't put together for this afternoon's presentation. These have been our values for over 10 years, closer to 15 years, those first four, and embrace change comes late came in later. So everything you see flows out of this. Most of it would fall into the category of ethics in Embrace Change. And so with that, I'll turn
it over to Carter Reid.
Thank you, sir. All right. Good afternoon. You heard from Tom his perspective overall for our program. So we there we go.
We now want to highlight a few areas for you from the 3 components of an ESG program: environmental, social responsibility and governance. Now I do realize that we're in the wrong order here. This is GSE instead of ESG. But we really do believe that governance is 1st and foremost what's most important for an effective overall ESG program. And that, of course, starts 1st and foremost with the culture and that comes from the top and our Board of Directors.
So I wanted to start off by spending a few minutes talking to you about our Board of Directors and our governance overall at the company. And then we're going to have 2 panel discussions, 1 for the social responsibility segment and another for the environmental segment. So on our Board, Tom already talked a little bit about the diversity of our Board of Directors. I wanted to share with you the charts on the upper left of the slide. You'll see our age mix and Board tenure.
We believe our CGN committee importantly believes is a very well balanced Board with respect to both age and tenure. If you look at age, we have almost 50 percent of our Board members under the age of 60, and then we take it up to the category of 60 I think it's 66 to 71. On tenure, we also have tenures that range from just a few months on our Board to over 11 years of Board service. We also believe and the CGN committee believes that appropriate mix of tenure is important as well, with fresh ideas, new perspectives coming with new Board members, but then Board members who have had longer tenure with the company having had the experience of working on probably every committee of the company, but also having been through multiple planning strategic sessions cycles with the company and bringing a deeper perspective on the Board. We do have some investors that talk to us about Board tenure, and there are those out there that like to have a hard line where a Board member shouldn't stay on the Board for more than 10 years.
But again, our CGN committee finds that there's a lot of value in the balance on the Board tenure front. And I think we've had that well represented now. One other thing I wanted to note on this slide, you'll see that our Board members do have significant stock ownership, but it's on the robust Board and committee evaluation process. That's another area that I think is getting increased attention from investors, and rightly so. It's a very important process that the Board goes through.
So we have our Board is, other than Tom, made up of entirely independent Board members. We have an independent Lead Director, Johnny Harris. Johnny leads executive sessions of non management directors at every Board meeting, and each of our committee chairs, also each independent, will hold an executive session of nonmanagement committee members at the end of each committee member meeting, excuse me. So during those sessions, our Board members are very open and willing to share their feedback with us, but we do have a very formal process as well to make sure we solicit comprehensively feedback. So every Board member first does a self assessment on their own performance as a Board member.
They don't share that with anyone. That's just for them to reflect before they go through the rest of the process. Then they fill out evaluations for every committee that they're on and for the Board itself. After that, our Lead Director has a conversation with each board member individually to solicit their feedback on the effectiveness of our board, what attributes we should be looking for in the future, how any suggestions they may have. And then every committee discusses their assessments, sends those assessments up to the CGN committee, which looks at committee and Board assessment, and the whole process culminates with a non management discussion, at a Board member at a board meeting, excuse me.
So this takes place over several months. Then again, throughout the year, we're implementing suggestions, discussing them and continue to get feedback. So very robust process, and I think you'll be we'll be looking to talk more about that in our documents going forward. I also should mention before we get much further that we will be filing our proxy statement at the end of today. So you'll have a lot more information on increased disclosures after the markets close today.
Now in addition to having diversity with respect to age and tenure as well as gender and ethnicity, we have a very diverse Board in terms of their expertise and what they collectively individually bring to the table and collectively as a Board. We have 100% of our Board members have experience with corporate leadership, corporate governance, over financial matters or financial reporting and with risk oversight and management along with human capital and talent management. We'll talk about those a little bit more in a few minutes. But in addition to these generally held attributes, we have Board members who are particularly well versed in innovation and technology, obviously, key to navigating the evolving threats and long term sustainability of our company. We have a Board member who has extensive experience with nuclear.
We have those with customer centric leadership experience. Again, if you were with us this morning and you'll hear later today, we're becoming increasingly customer focused. We've always been customer focused, but in a broader sense now as an industry. So that experience has been very critical for us. And then we have those with deep utility experience, also very beneficial in navigating evolving threats.
And we're in a very, very complicated business, a very heavily regulated business. And again, having directors with that type of experience is incredibly beneficial to the Board as a whole. Focusing more on ESG specifically, our entire Board really oversees our ESG strategy risk management. We have 2 retreats a year, strategic retreats a year, where we have deep dive sessions with our Board on these matters. In addition to that, every committee plays some role in ESG oversight at Dominion Energy.
Our FRAC committee has oversight of corporate risk, and that includes the physical risks of climate change. The Audit Committee has oversight over our ethics and compliance program, very tied in to the values Tom just talked about. And then our CGN committee is responsible for governance overall with the exception of the governance has been carved out for our Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility Committee. But the CGN committee has oversight over board recruitment, the board assessment process, the self evaluation process I just talked about, succession planning and over executive compensation. But we do want to spend a little bit more time talking about our Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility Committee since that has the most direct oversight over what we're talking about this afternoon.
So our SCR committee is comprised of 5 independent Board members. It's chaired by Helen Dragas. The committee meets 3 times or at least 3 times, I should say, annually, but that doesn't mean that's the only time that they're engaging with us on these matters. And this presentation today is a great example. This went out to the committee ahead of time.
It reflects a lot of the discussions that we've had with them and the focus areas that they have on matters related to ESG and had an opportunity to get feedback from them. They also conduct, as every committee does, an annual performance evaluation and actively engage with us also when they're developing industry matters, anything we want to send out to them in terms of informational updates. It's been a it's a very engaging engaged committee. Their scope is to provide oversight over the company's policies and our EMS policy, in particular, our program over protection and improvement of the environment. They have oversight over our diversity, inclusion, talent manager supplier engagement programs, community and stakeholder engagement and charitable programs and community service.
And then their key responsibilities are to review our performance against all the ESG targets that we set, receive updates if we have shareholder proposals on ESG specific matters. They oversee our reporting effort, and you're going to hear a lot more about our ESG reporting this afternoon. And then they monitor our ratings and our scores. But to be clear, we're not doing this for the ratings and scores. We know they're important, and it's something we want to participate in.
At the end of the day, we're doing this because it's the right thing to do for our communities, our investors and our employees. And this committee has been very engaged on those matters with us. Another area we hear about from time to time, and we have investor calls during the year with various special interest groups, investors and others, really focus on our executive compensation policy and programs. For those of you that have been long term holders of Dominion or
who have followed us for
a while, you probably know from our proxy statements that our overall program hasn't changed much over the course of a number of years. We've made 2 changes recently that I would think are worth noting. We changed our long term performance program from a 2 to 3 year program in response to investor feedback. That long term program is focused on ROIC, return on invested capital, and then relative TSR performance. And then the second, I think more relevant for today as well or this afternoon's session, I should say, is that we have increasingly increased the weight of our performance payouts under our annual incentive plans to safety, diversity and environmental targets.
So every single plan participant in our annual incentive plan has at least 30% of their payout dependent on meeting certain safety, supplier diversity, employee diversity and inclusion and environmental goals. Many employees have even higher percentages attached to their annual incentive plan. And then you'll see here a number of other governance guidelines that we've had in place for quite some time, such as clawback provisions, prohibition on hedging or pledging of stock, strong stay on pay votes in the past. So that gets us through the governance section. A lot more that we can talk about.
But again, if you look at our website and our proxy, you'll see much more information on there about other aspects of our governance program. So we're going to move on to social responsibility, and I'm going to ask Monica Miles and Mark Webb to join me for this portion of the program. And I'm going to kick this off and then turn it over to them. So corporate culture. The corporate culture supports effective human capital management.
This is something that the new Sustainability Committee focuses on, but something our Board focuses on. I've actually reported now, I think, 4 times to our Board in the last year on different issues around our workforce planning, our diversity efforts, our diversity inclusion and engagement survey results and a number of other topics. So not just the committee, but the full Board is very engaged and focused on the corporate culture and on our employee and human capital management. Our employees are our best asset. We say it all the time, and we mean it.
The corporate culture at Dominion Energy is formed around the 5 core values. You've heard Tom talk about them. Guided by the robust assets and compliance program. I mentioned that, that's governed by our audit committee, fully independent committee. And then we're committed to innovation and embracing change.
And Mark Webb is going to talk to you a little bit more on some initiatives around those areas in particular. But 2 areas I did want to mention before we move on to that. Training and development, we've heard a lot that every 2 years, we have an engagement survey. Every employee at the company is encouraged to respond. We used a new survey this time, but had very strong response and got a lot of great feedback.
Our employees understand our values, believe in our values, but they continue to be interested in training and development. So we have we're continuing some great programs we have on education assistance. We have a new emerging leaders program. We came up with a crazy idea about starting to prepare people to be a leader before they're a leader, not seeing them train after they become a leader. So this has been a big hit, and we're trying to get as many employees as we can through this program along with a lot of supplemental training opportunities, many of which could be employee directed.
That's one of the things that we're trying to really encourage employees as well. We can give you a lot of opportunities. Your leaders can provide opportunities, but own your career. We're going to give you a lot of tools, a lot of training opportunities that you can use train yourself and to do it when you when the time is right for you to do so. So these online training tools have been very well received.
And we're also expanding our career center to be much broader, and this is where employees can come and speak with counselors and learn about other opportunities. On the engagement side, I already talked about the survey, but we did create a new Vice President position over Engagement and Development so that we have significant focus on this outside of the typical HR team or HR program. So on workforce diversity, our mission here is to create a diverse and inclusive workplace that reflects the communities that we serve. Several awards are referenced here on the right, the Forbes Best Employers for Women and Best Employer for Diversity and in the Military Times, named us one of the best for vets. So we get a lot of awards.
Again, it's great to get awards, wonderful to be recognized. But at the end of the day, what matters to us is what our employees are feeling and telling us about their experience with the company. We've been very focused on recruiting and, in particular, have had a lot of success around recruiting veterans and having very diverse intern classes. And it's just we've grown our intern classes substantially over the last few years. We give about 50 diverse scholarships to diverse interns, dollars 5,000 apiece.
And then this last one under the recruiting has become very important for us. We've done a lot of diversity and inclusion training overall, but we're targeting training managers and our hiring staff with unconscious bias training and other training to ensure that they are aware of how they may be viewing applications and applicants without even realizing it. And those have all been well received. We've sponsored a number of employee resource groups. And Tom Perrell signed the CEO Action Pledge, which is closely aligned with our own core values and our diversity and inclusion mission at the company.
So we can do better here. There's no question that this is an area that we continue to have to push ourselves on. We have been very focused on recruiting in, but you also have to retain your employees, and it's an area that we're going to continue to work on. We've also expanded and are looking to hire more disabled employees as well as part of our overall diversity program and have seen some early successes there. And then the last thing I want to talk to you about is our supplier diversity program.
This is another one that we've seen a steady success in. If you'll see in the bottom left hand side, our diverse spend has been increasing year over year. We do it because it's the right thing to do. We do it because it's great for our communities. It helps us with pricing.
It helps us bring in more innovation. Not only do we go to diverse suppliers as a primary suppliers, but for our large contracts, they contain provisions that they have to reach out and find a certain level of subs that are diverse suppliers. And that also provides a lot of great experiences for those diverse firms to learn from larger firms and be part of a larger project than they could do on their own. So again, a big focus of ours, we're going to have about 40 supplier outreach events this year. We work with a lot of advocacy organizations.
And finally and importantly, again, diverse spending performance is linked to our annual incentive plan goals for the 2019 annual incentive plan. And you'll see here the supplier diversity classifications that we use. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Monica to talk a little bit about oops, sorry, this one slide for you. I apologize. There you go.
There's the supplier diversity slide. I'll turn it over, and we will talk a little bit about our program overall.
Great. Thank you, Carter, and good afternoon. So you've heard from both Tom and Carter about our Board's focus on ESG matters, but of course, that focus doesn't end with the Board. The interest in ESG is embedded deeply within the company. At the leadership level, we've developed organizational structures and new roles to help embed that interest.
And examples include the Innovation Technology and Sustainability Council as well as an ESG working group, whose mission is really to ensure that these ESG priorities are reflected in our strategic plans, as well as that we're validating our performance against existing targets and ensuring data reliability. Employees are aligned and are doing their part as well, from volunteering to participate in community events to joining ERGs. And Dominion Energy's commitment to environmental sustainability, in particular, is also becoming a physical reality for many of our employees as we are lead certifying all of our new workplace projects. And as Tom mentioned earlier, we've adopted a new environmental justice policy to redouble our effort and our focus on community engagement on projects. We at Dominion Energy have a 100 plus tradition of understanding and engaging with our communities as we site and develop infrastructure projects.
And this policy is a logical extension of that tradition and also responds to lessons learned. It was developed by a team across our footprint and across our business units. And the major tenets of environmental justice, fair treatment and meaningful involvement are, of course, ones that the company already embraces. But formalizing these concepts by expanding our EJ reviews and our processes to better inform our outreach and siting and also by developing screens to apply to projects that don't require EJ reviews really help to ensure that the company solicits a variety and a diversity of viewpoints as we're moving forward with projects and that we remain in touch with our stakeholders' expectations because, of course, those expectations are dynamic. And this is now a day to day part of how we do business.
Turning slightly to our focus on transparency and engagement. We're, of course, very pleased to be with you this afternoon to discuss our ESG performance. But sharing our story here today is really just part of our broader commitment to transparency and to more enhanced disclosures. And to that end, in December, we published an updated sustainability and corporate responsibility report in a web first format with robust targets and a new depth of disclosures. And our intent is not just to provide more data and more information, but to provide it in a way that's accessible and meaningful.
And our reporting has been informed in many ways by the conversations that we've had with the investor community. For example, in response to investor feedback, in 2018, we resumed our participation in the Climate CDP after taking a hiatus of several years. And we did that because there was so much reporting that we were proactively doing in that space already. We had stopped participating, but we heard very clearly from our investors that they wanted us to reengage, and we saw that there was merit in that. So we resumed our participation.
And also for the first time, participated in, all three CDP surveys in the globally recognized CDP surveys. As we have engaged with investors on ESG topics over the past months, we've also received great feedback on how investors are incorporating ESG ratings into their own analyses. And we, of course, try to ensure that these ratings are based accurate information and current information, which is at times not without its challenges. So we encourage investors in their regular dialogue with ESG rating agencies to advocate for more direct engagement between the rating agencies and issuers. We see this as a best practice and one that could lead to more accurate reporting and more meaningful ratings and analysis.
And with that, I will turn it over to Mark for discussion on innovation.
Good afternoon. I'm Mark Webb, Chief Innovation Officer. I just want to talk a little bit about our innovation efforts at Dominion Energy and how that relates to our overall sustainability efforts. First, the innovation team is tasked with leading our efforts at innovation at Dominion and putting the company on a new path that's focused on growing a culture of innovation, as well as advancing this in order to advance Dominion into a cleaner, more sustainable energy future. We look at new technologies and emerging business opportunities that benefit shareholders, that may benefit customers and transform our customer relationships, opportunities that may transform and better the communities where we serve and opportunities that are closely linked to the interlock between energy and sustainability that defines the energy future.
We've taken a 3 pronged approach to innovation. First, we're looking at opportunities to grow the business and earnings. We're looking at adjacent ex potential markets, customer opportunities, opportunities within the communities that we serve, and again in energy and sustainability. We're looking at growing the culture. It's very important to create a culture from the bottom up of innovation.
We've created a whole series of innovation challenges using new tools, new software techniques to change the culture so that we innovate from the bottom up. And finally, our 3rd prong is to enhance performance. We look at new technologies, the right new technologies that may improve our operational performances at the our operational performance at the company, including the way we operate and improving our environmental performance, our environmental compliance. So examples of what we're doing. It's a broad term innovation.
So what are some examples of what we do? When we look at growing the culture, this is very important to us. So we've launched efforts across our footprint, across all of our operating areas in all 18 states to engage our employees. We're teaching them how to innovate to solve problems and also to identify opportunities. Last year, we launched 15 crowdsourcing challenges targeted at specific problems.
This year, we expect to double that to more than 30. We held our 1st Innovation Expo and we invited more than 600 employees across the company to come for a full day of innovation to see employee innovation exhibits, listen to employee pitch competitions, hear outside speakers and we presented innovation awards and generally began to build excitement about an openness to innovation in our culture at the company. We've also launched a program to train up to 50 innovation accelerators from each business unit at the company, where we'll teach them all the basics of innovation, ideation and design thinking. Those innovation accelerators will then go back to their business units and lead challenges and innovation efforts on specific projects within the business units. And finally, we've embedded the concept of sprint teams within the business units in our organization.
And it's these sprint teams, these focused sprint teams that have led to our recent initiatives on renewable natural gas, methane emissions reductions and transportation decarbonization. Under enhancing performance, we're focused on finding new technologies that make the operations more efficient and more sustainable. Many new technologies do both. Examples include using crowdsourcing, internal knowledge network tools to solve business sustainability challenges and using predictive analytics to and big data or data analytics to improve environmental performance. We're piloting the use of autonomous electric lawnmowers in large solar farms to both reduce operating costs, but also to reduce emissions.
We're evaluating new types of solar tracking systems that are aimed at reducing the environmental disturbances that occur during construction on 100, if not thousands of acres of land during the construction of large solar farms. And as Tom mentioned earlier and this morning and later today, we put a carbon calculator on our website now where customers can easily go and find out exactly how much carbon they can reduce, if they switch their current combustion engine car to an all electric vehicle powered by our power grid. The innovative use of new technologies in our operations is an essential part of building a sustainable future.
We are missing a slide.
In the area of growing the business and earnings, we're focused on near and future term opportunities, opportunities that may be small now, but they're large in the future. And we're heavily focused on delivering sustainable solutions for customers and communities in energy and beyond. As our already low carbon electric grid becomes even lower carbon, and as we introduce renewable natural gas and lower the methane emissions on our gas system, we have the ability to use the products that we deliver to offer community solutions so that they can advance their decarbonization efforts by using our assets to convert higher carbon energy uses sources to our lower carbon sources. It's a very important component of our innovation efforts. We're also looking at distributed energy sources at all levels, and we're looking forward in other areas as well.
For example, we're partnering with Fairfax County, Virginia on an autonomous electric shuttle that would be a solution for last mile public transportation. We're also exploring the potential for blockchain to settle renewable energy transactions in ways that fairly value both the clean energy delivered as well as the grid that transports it. Energy is for our innovation team, our focus is that energy is at the intersection of decarbonization and sustainability in all areas from transportation to smart communities to agriculture and water usage. The innovation team is focused on identifying and pursuing opportunities that build a sustainable future for others as we are increasing the sustainability of our own operations. And that's all I have.
All right. Thanks, Mark. Good morning. Again, now we're going to invite up Paul Kuntz, Bob Lew, Diane Leopold, our 3 business unit heads. As we mentioned, we're going to give Rodney a couple more weeks before he has to finalize all of his plans.
And Mandy Torneby, who's our Vice President of Environmental.
We're committed to transforming the way that we do business to build a more sustainable future. Part of that is to ensure that we are a national leader in providing clean energy. One way to demonstrate that leadership is by establishing targets to reduce emissions from the operation of our generation and gas infrastructure assets. Hopefully, many of you saw that we announced emissions intensity reduction targets in our December 2018 Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility Report. As Tom mentioned earlier, we are proud to announce that we are challenging ourselves to do more by announcing additional reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
We will pursue a diverse mix of cleaner, more efficient and lower emitting methods of generating and delivering energy, while advancing aggressive voluntary measures to continue dramatically reducing emissions. And just a note for those of you in the room, these new commitments are not reflected in the trifold that you have at your table. We cut our carbon intensity by half from 2,000 to the end of 2017 from our power generating fleet, in large part by relying less on coal burning power plants and more on gas fired, nuclear and renewable generation. We intend to achieve a 60% carbon intensity reduction by 2,030. In addition, from 2000 to 2017, we reduced emissions of nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and mercury each by over 90%.
During the same period of time, Dominion Energy increased the amount of electricity that it provides by 43%. We are committed to do more and therefore have established additional carbon reduction targets based on total carbon emissions to demonstrate this commitment. Today, we announced a 55% reduction in carbon emissions by 2,030 based on a 2,005 baseline and an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2,050, also based on a 2,005 baseline. Later in this panel, Paul Coons will go into greater detail on our strategy to achieve the 55% 80% reduction goal. Dominion Energy is a national leader in voluntary methane reduction.
Over the last decade, we have been a founding member or leading participant in several landmark methane reduction initiatives. By implementing these initiatives, we have prevented more than 180,000 metric tons of methane from entering the atmosphere since 2010. Sorry, I forgot to switch the slide. That's equivalent to taking almost 1,000,000 cars off the road or planting 75,000,000 new trees. In addition to these initiatives, Diane Leopold challenged her team to identify additional opportunities to reduce methane.
Last month, we announced that the company will reduce methane emissions from its natural gas infrastructure by 50% over the next decade based on 2010 levels. This new target will lead to the prevention of more than 430,000 metric tonnes of methane from entering the atmosphere, which is the equivalent of taking 2,300,000 cars off the road for a year or planting nearly 180,000,000 new trees. Diane will discuss some of the steps her group is taking to accomplish this goal later in the panel. One of the ways that we expanded our corporate disclosure of greenhouse gases in 2018, including methane and carbon dioxide, was by participating in the CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project. We also participated in the water and forest CDPs.
Dominion Energy's climate score of B was higher than both the sector average and North America regional average. Drivers of Dominion Energy's climate score include: Board level oversight on climate related issues numerous environmental sustainability initiatives and the reduction of our carbon intensity as well as previously mentioned our significant reductions of nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and mercury emissions. For the water CDP, Dominion Energy score of B was higher than the worldwide electric utilities average and the North American regional average. Our strength of our water CDP included that we directly measure or use engineered estimates to determine withdrawal and usage volumes and that we disclose site specific data for our major water users instead of just listing a corporate total. We will participate in the CDP this year, and the floor CDP was not graded.
All right. Additional 2018 greenhouse gas disclosure efforts include our work with the Edison Electric Institute and the American Gas Association to provide investors with a common set of information to assist with the review of our ESG metrics. This template provides a brief overview of energy strategy, ESG governance and a consistent set of metrics across peers in our industry. In 2018, we posted this template and went a step further by being the only company to post metrics for our gas transmission and storage businesses. In addition to the EEI and AGA efforts and in furtherance of our commitment to transparency, we prepared and published our climate report in November of 2018.
The report provides an overview of our climate strategy, sustainability and climate governance, 2 degree scenario, business risks and business opportunities related to the reduction of carbon. We disclosed our methane emissions in our May 2018 methane report. We began publishing annual methane reports in 2015, building on more than a decade of voluntary reporting on greenhouse gas emissions. We are currently working with investor groups to augment this information and the next version will be coming out soon. We believe that there needs to be a convergence on ESG metrics and disclosure.
Industry is trying to lead the way. However, we are looking for feedback from investors as their needs change. We want to be responsive and transparent. And with that, I will turn it over to Diane.
Okay. Thank you. So for the last several years in the Gas Infrastructure Group, we've thought about what does a sustainable natural gas business mean in this context. And one of the most important outcomes of that work was what Mandy just talked about and an actual commitment to reduce methane by 50% by 2,030 off of 2010 baseline and really taking the programs that we had started and had in place since 2010 and looking how we could drastically expand them to be able to make that commitment. What I'd like to spend my few minutes talking about is other things that we're doing to become the most sustainable natural gas business that we could be through focus on a few examples in reducing our carbon footprint, looking at ourselves, our customers and our communities.
So first was a challenge for ourselves. And just last month in Salt Lake City, there was a sponsorship of what was called a Clean the Air Challenge. And this was to reduce carbon, but it was also because there's quite poor air quality in Salt Lake City, if those of you who are familiar with the area, especially in the winter time. So this was a single month challenge, 875 different companies or team networks joined this challenge. We came in 8th place, saved about over 17 tons of carbon emissions just in this single month by looking at mass transit, walking, carpooling or just eliminating unnecessary trips.
And on top of racking up about 64,000 public transit miles, we also happen to have saved $19,000 in fuel costs and burned over 20,000 calories through extra health of not driving everywhere. So it was an exciting thing for the people there to see that we finished right in the top of these almost 900 different companies that participated. So we looked at ourselves and said what else can we do to lower our carbon footprint? Just thought I'd give you that example. So now we started looking at our customers.
And I'll give you two examples of what we're trying to do to help our customers lower their carbon footprints. First is in the energy efficiency and conservation side. We have invested about $300,000,000 over the past decade either through offering rebate programs or through home energy efficiency audits within our natural gas distribution territories. So we had a great program already in place. But what we said is, is what can we do to go even further to help our customers lower their carbon footprints.
And so what you see in the bottom right of this slide are certain examples that we're using. We already have approval for most of these programs right now and are beginning to pilot and ramp up significantly, such as putting smart thermostats in low income homes. We are partnering with homebuilders to look at funding for net zero homes and we already have one underway and to look at development of sustainable communities. And through the process of all of these initiatives and new tariffs underway to expand our energy efficiency programs, we are looking to increase the amount of savings, which would mean customers using less of our product by 50% by the middle of next decade through these incremental programs. Another way that we're looking to help our customers lower their carbon footprint is through renewable natural gas.
So renewable natural gas is a biogas. It is the outcome of several processes as a natural part of the process of dairy farms, hog farms, food waste, landfills, wastewater treatment facilities. Methane is escaping into the atmosphere. If it can be captured and put into the natural gas pipeline and used as an end use fuel, the carbon benefit instead of it just being carbon neutral, it's actually carbon negative to the tune of about 25 times to 1. So what can we do about that as a gas company?
We can encourage such development onto our system. So we've actually developed a target to have our throughput in our natural gas distribution system of our customers 4% of their demand coming from renewable natural gas by 2,040. We understand it does take some time to get there, but we've already been starting to attract RNG or renewable natural gas developers onto our system. We have an approved brand new tariff to have renewable natural gas offered at our compressed natural gas fueling stations in Utah, So the customers that are interested in fueling with CNG have an option for renewable gas in their fueling. And we are very shortly going to be filing what we're calling a green thumb tariff also in Utah to start the pilot to allow commercial and residential customers to have the choice to use renewable energy as they're purchasing their natural gas.
And then finally, we've actually installed key account representatives to what I call cut through the red tape within the different companies, so that developers of renewable natural gas and customers with questions about using renewable natural gas have a one stop shop within our company to be able to make sure that we can maximize the use of this. And then finally, looking at helping our communities. And Tom discussed a little bit about our partnership with Smithfield Foods and it is $250,000,000 fifty-fifty joint venture, focusing on hog farms and capturing the methane that is naturally escaping and being able to clean the communities by using that renewable natural gas for the customers. So we're trying to attract it onto our system, but we're also looking to invest specifically here as we look to clean the communities. And it really is a win win win situation.
The farmers actually get a new revenue source and they get a long term contract for this renewable natural gas such as they can put on these covered lagoons. The environment certainly gets cleaned and customers have more choice to use renewable energy. And RNG is and So we have announced our first four projects, 2 in North Carolina, 1 in Virginia and 1 in Utah. And just those 4 projects alone will be the equivalent in carbon reduction of taking about 120 1,000 cars off the road or planting 14,000,000 new trees. And this is just the beginning.
We see this partnership having many other projects as we go down the line. With that, I will turn it over to Bob.
Thanks, Diane. I'm going to
touch on 3 initiatives at the Power Delivery Group, 2 of which would probably be best classified in the social responsibility category, but all three of them emphasize the commitment of our colleagues to our communities, something that Tom referred to has existed since the company was founded. The first one is our initiative to provide broadband into parts of Virginia that are not currently served. The digital divide is real. It is challenging for communities who do not have access to broadband. It makes economic development more difficult.
It hinders educational opportunity, can even cause some challenges in the healthcare system in areas that are not as connected, don't have the ability to do telemedicine or have doctors communicate with each other. This has been a problem that has plagued Virginia and other states for some time. And in 2018, our company was directed by the Virginia General Assembly to do a study on how we might use our infrastructure to try to address this problem. And what that study concluded was that we could serve the utilities could serve as a middle mile provider, not the final Internet service provider, but on our existing infrastructure as part of our program to extend broadband to our own substations and modernize the grid. With a modest additional investment, there would be capacity for Internet service providers to then take advantage of that broadband to end use customers.
And so this year's general assembly passed legislation authorizing a pilot program for investor owned utilities in Virginia to do exactly that. And so the legislation was signed by Governor Northam on Friday. It will become law the 1st July. And it authorizes us to undertake a program with an Internet service provider partner to try to address this problem. 3 years, dollars 60,000,000 a year that we will be able to invest in this and recover.
And we think this gives us a great opportunity to finally solve a problem that has been very difficult to solve in communities across the country and particularly where we do business. We're very excited about that. We will issue an RFI for interested Internet service providers in the coming months and move forward as quickly as we can. Tom mentioned this in his opening remarks. Energy Share is a program that started quite some time ago, 1982, initially designed to help customers who are having trouble paying their heating bills.
Over the years, it has expanded to include cooling as well, largely funded by customer contributions until recent years when our company stepped in, in a much bigger way. And you can see the statistics that have been achieved over the years. Most recently, the Grid Transformation and Security Act passed in 2018 requires us, a requirement that we were more than happy to sign up for, to spend $130,000,000 over the next 10 years on energy assistance, also focusing on weatherization and energy efficiency measures for customers. So not just helping them pay their bills, but actually help them find ways to reduce consumption and reduce their bills going forward. So we're very excited to participate in that.
And then I'll finish with electric vehicles, which is obviously something that many companies in our industry are looking at. We put together a Sprint team to tell us give some thought to how we should approach our participation to hit 3,000,000,000 electric vehicle miles driven by 2,000,000 to hit 3,000,000,000 electric vehicle miles driven by 2,030. That will, based on our generation mix and what we expect to happen over time, reduce annually when we hit that goal carbon emissions by 1,000,000 tons. That's obviously an ambitious goal. There are 16,000 roughly 16,500 electric vehicles that have been purchased in Virginia between 2011 2018.
So if they're all still on the road, that's about 16,000 cars. We've got to get to quite a bit bigger number in order to hit 3,000,000,000 EV miles driven. And I'll talk a little bit about some of the things that we think we can do to help. We need to help our customers, and their interest in buying electric cars and our own employees. Our grid, especially as it will be configured after we modernize it, we'll certainly be able to accommodate this kind of consumption from electric vehicles.
And the impact will be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as people are using our generation fleet rather than a combustion engine. We have to acknowledge that that's a challenge for customers to switch from what they're used to, to something new. And there are some things we can do to make that easier. We can make it a lot easier to install chargers, figure out how to install home charging. We can electrify our own fleet.
We can give customers rate incentives for their cars, and we can support the necessary infrastructure on our distribution system. So here's what we're talking about doing. We can't expect our customers to adopt electric vehicles if we don't do it ourselves. So by 2021, we'll have work place charging at every one of our offices in Virginia and North Carolina. We'll provide an incentive for our employees to purchase electric vehicles or get a discounted charger for their home.
We will within the next couple of weeks begin to operate 1 of Virginia's first electric shuttles that moves employees around between our downtown Richmond offices. By 2025, 25% of our light duty fleet will be plug in will be battery electric or a plug in electric vehicle. And we're going to continue to look at adoption of off road and heavy duty vehicles on the electric side. And then by the end of this summer, we're going to make our first significant to have an online electric vehicle customer education tool. I'll show you in just a second what that looks like.
We will propose to offer customer rebates on charging equipment and we'll put rate structures in place that incent people to charge and to charge off peak, maximizing the use of the existing distribution grid. On the infrastructure side, we will emphasize make ready work, the things that we need to do in order to get fast charging and other kind of charging in place. We'll focus on streamlining the interconnection process for companies that are installing fast charging. We intend to look at a pilot on combining battery storage with electric vehicle chargers to address some of the issues with demand charges. And we believe we should be partnering with universities and local school systems on electrifying their vehicle fleet as well.
And then I'll end with this, which is the education tool that you have heard about from Tom and from Mark. So this is an example of what will happen if you go on our website right now. And this example comparing a Subaru Forester to a Nissan Leaf, plug in the number of miles that you expect to drive. And based on our current generation mix, you reduce your carbon emissions by £7,300 over the course of a year. There are similar you can see on the left side, customers will be able to see how much they save on fuel.
They'll be able to look at models that are available to them and they'll be able to find public charging in their area. So we're very excited about the opportunities that electrification of transportation bring to our customers in our industry and we intend to move forward quickly. With that, I'll turn it over to Paul.
Thank you. And before I turn the program back over to Tom for questions and answers, I'd like to review with you what we're going to be doing with our generation fleet between now and 2,030. I believe what we have planned is the most significant change in the environmental footprint of our fleet since probably 1970 when we made the decision to move forward with North Anna and Surry, our 0 carbon nuclear power stations. So what I'll show you here is the 2017 Integrated Resource Plan projected out to 2,030. Now what you see are the capacity makeup of our fleet as we expect it to occur at that time.
And so you can see 5,000 megawatts of steam generation from coal, gas and oil, our combined cycle fleet, all down to the bottom where you can see that we expect to have a capacity portfolio of about 25,000 megawatts or a carbon reduction of about 27% off of our 2,005 target. Now with the implementation of the Grid Transformation Security Act, it gave us a terrific opportunity to really change the carbon footprint of how we produce electricity for the next decade. With the Grid Transformation and Security Act finding that 5,000 Megawatts of solar is in the public interest, with solar 30 Megawatts battery pilot in the public interest, our 12 megawatts of offshore wind pilot project in the public interest, you can see a very significant shift in how we believe we will be generating electricity for the next 10 years. Just calling out a couple of very notable changes in just 1 year from our 2017 Integrated Resource Plan to our 2018 Integrated Resource Plan, again projecting out to 2,030, you can see that we project a 57% reduction in generation from our steam units, coal, gas and oil. Today, we are making the announcement that we are going to retire the coal reserve units that we put into coal reserve this time last year.
Those are 10 coal units. We announced last year that we're going to maintain the environmental permits until 2021, while we conducted the evaluation. We also said that we would continue to pay the local property taxes until that time. We are moving now to retire or surrender the environmental permits at these facilities, but we have said we're going to continue to pay the property taxes until 2021 so that we give our communities an opportunity to adjust to this decision that we're making today. We are also announcing today the planned closure of our Possum Point 5 oil fired power station.
That is a 7 90 Megawatt oil fired unit in Northern Virginia. That will be part of how we see ourselves lessening our dependence on steam based generation. We also see through the next decade, the potential retirement of other units on our system that will lead to this generation makeup at that time. Now if you compare that to the day or twelvethirty onetwenty 18, we actually have 6,500 megawatts of steam based generation. So it's a 57% reduction from the integrated resource plan.
It's a 65% reduction from what we have in place today. How are we going to do that? With a very significant investment in solar, 5,000 or 5,300 Megawatts of Solar, a $6,000,000,000 to $7,000,000,000 commitment to solar base generation in Virginia. This is something that we are very proud of. We now see that solar is competitive on a dispatch basis with other resource types.
And if you let our integrated resource model just pick the generation based on lease cost, it's LEC Solar. This plan reflects that. What it also reflects is a significant increase in our simple cycle generation. We see simple cycle generation today based on today's technology as the renewable integrator. Now the year over year plan change from 2017 to 2018 is a reduction in our combined cycle generation expectation.
We have pulled out of the Integrated Resource Plan an expected combined cycle unit in the 2020s, and we have replaced that with simple cycle generation so that we have the energy we need to integrate renewables. And what you see when you crank through this generation mix, you see a 52% reduction in our carbon footprint by 2,030. Our target, our goal is 55%. We believe with what we have filed to date, we can get to a 52% carbon reduction. This excludes offshore wind potential.
Earlier today, we talked about investment in offshore wind. When we filed this integrated resource plan, we did not have that capital in that plan at that time. We believe with investments in offshore wind, with reinvestments in renewables, we believe that the 52% carbon reduction target is achievable or the 55% carbon reduction target is achievable. This is a huge step change in how we think about generation from a 27% carbon reduction last year to what we believe is a 55% carbon reduction this year.
So with that, well, let me
just point out a couple of things. We're doing big things, but we're also doing small things. And a couple of quick I'd like to highlight. We talk about 5,300 megawatts of solar. We want to try to find ways to get out of the grass mowing business.
So we're going to do a pollinator pilot at one of our sites where we put in greenery that self seeds, but doesn't need mowing. This is something that we're really looking forward to, finding ways to even green up our solar facilities in a way that requires less manpower, less machines, less lawn mowing. And we're also looking at how we recondition pipes and valves in our power stations with labor ablation. This is something that we're doing at Surrey Nuclear Power Station. And what this does is eliminate solvents, it eliminates rags, it reduces radiological exposure for our employees and reduces radiological waste.
So we're changing the mix of the fleet, but we're also changing how we maintain that fleet going forward, both at solar and at nuclear, which are our 0 carbon resources. So with that, I'll turn it back over to Tom.
Thanks, Paul. Let me grab that. So In conclusion, just a handful of slides and then we'll take your questions. Over the last about 10 years, these are just some of the things that we've done that we would say qualify under these are handful of examples of things that qualify under our ethics value, how we interact with community. During the course of that time, 1,500,000 volunteer hours, a third of a $1,000,000,000 in philanthropy through our energy including our Energy Share program.
We adopted an environmental justice policy last year, only 2 other utilities in the nation have done so. We set a new record for OSHA recordable injury reductions over the last decade, 70% over the last 12 years, 14 years, 50% reduction in carbon emissions and 10 Bcf reduction in methane emissions. That's just the beginning for us. So we have a goal this year of 130,000 volunteer hours. Let me just say that this is hours where we give employees time off, which counts doesn't count for vacation or sick time.
We use it they use it to volunteer. This is primarily in company sponsored events. I'm highly confident that our employee base does at least 50% more volunteer time than this, probably 200% more volunteer time than this in their churches and other things that it's part of the ethos of our company. It's one of the reasons why people choose to work in our company. We have our Innovation Technology Sustainability Council, which I'll show you just a minute, 55% reduction in carbon by 2,030, 80% by 2,050 and 50% reduction in our methane emissions as Diane took you through by 2,030.
Now this is just an example. Mark mentioned this Innovation Council. His innovation team is staffs it. We have and are recruiting outside technical advisors working with our senior management team, reporting to our Board to work on a variety of new work streams in the innovation space. You heard about some of them here.
You can see 15 on this chart. Only the top 5 are populated what they actually are. The others aren't placeholders. Those are actual projects. We have Sprint teams working on all of them.
We haven't put them all in here because we're doing a lot of very interesting things that we just don't want to really share with all of our colleagues in the industry right yet. As these mature, some of them may fall off and others will then if they mature, they will then work themselves into one of the business segments into operations. There are far more than you see on this chart. Behind the meter, you heard Bob talk about that. Paul and his group and with along with our Bob's group are looking at all kinds of solar: community solar, utility sized solar and rooftop solar, and not just necessarily where we have electric service territory.
Offshore wind, you'll see lots more about that. You've heard about electric vehicles in the RNG. Marine LNG is really interesting. The thing we're looking at, most of the ships, freighters in the world burn diesel oil and bunker fuel with no controls. They're going to have that's going to change over time.
How those ships are going to get refueled, it's not we're not going to have refueling ships across the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. But we do know how to refuel ships. We do it at Cove Point every day. We're actually the only LNG facility in the world that has taken an offload and loaded the ship at the same time, the same day. So lots more to hear on this, these Sprint teams going forward.
We have a lot of accomplishments in this area. We're not really big on patting ourselves on the back, and we try not to look back. As I said earlier, just because you were good in the past, we're apparently really good at ice making. It's not a great business today. So we got to we always consistently move forward.
And while this is wonderful that we have these accolades for folks, this is not why we do this. We will report them, but we do this because it's part of our core values. That's why we do them, and that's what our customers want. It's what our policymakers want. That's what our employees want.
So with that, we'll answer your questions. We're supposed to go to 3 We're a little over time. We've been given permission not to be thrown out. If we can stand take a few more questions from folks, and I'll distribute them around. Yes, sir.
Here's a microphone coming. Thank you.
I applaud the effort to you guys for having this ESG session. Very forward thinking and being the industry leaders that you are. I also want to offer up, I'd be more than happy to test the autonomous lawnmowers. So provide you other feedback. Me too.
Happy to do that for you all. If you kind of look at kind of the social aspect of closing a coal plant, often those communities are left without a tax base, a rusting facility and often coal ponds or ash ponds. Is there any transition that you may be able to do to those some of those communities kind of help with the PR of that in terms of maybe solar or instead of leaving just a broadening facility, a renewable facility? One question. And then the second one, if you look at storage versus kind of simple cycle, you're building so much of the solar out there.
What price for solar is kind of your breakeven where it may make more sense for you to do storage instead of the Cymbal cycle?
Sure. Paul, why don't you take the first question on the closing of plants and the social responsibility to the communities? Yes.
I think it's a great question and something that we're very, very focused on. In terms of our communities, we are in where we have made these decisions, as we just said before, we're going to continue to pay the local property taxes at least until 2021. With respect to the workers who have been at those stations, working with power delivery, working with the other parts of Dominion, we are able to create pathways for all of those individuals either well, those that did not retire to move into other positions at the company. So for the 9 coal reserve units, we had about 400 employees affected. After retirements, after transition, we had about 4 individuals that were displaced.
But by and large, we were able to keep everyone employed. In terms of the use of the land, we're looking at those sites to be repurposed potentially into combined cycle sites. And then we have had others come and look at serious and one that we want to make sure that we treat that community respectfully as we exit that community. But it's our hope that we will find another purpose for that site in that area.
I would say we don't leave rotting facilities behind. That's not in our DNA. Now with respect to storage vis a vis peaking units, I guess, is what you're referring to. If existing technology would allow us to store electricity at bulk in any reasonable form or cost efficient form, we would embrace that. It does not exist.
It exists with pump storage. We have the world's largest pump storage facility. We're looking at building another one, welcomed by the folks in Southwest Virginia, looking for jobs and tax revenues. We're looking at adding there. But this is a very difficult issue for policymakers.
And today, technology does not exist to store electricity in bulk in a way other than natural gas peakers, which is storage of the energy, getting ready to replace the intermittent renewables or pump storage. As storage becomes capable of it, we will embrace it. But we will not stray from our core mission of reliable electricity at energy, whether it's gas or electric at affordable rates. 1 here and there's one over here.
Tom, certainly anybody that's been in this industry always here. There's too many investor owned utilities, too many public utilities. And in meeting with some smaller more than one small utility alliance talked about the burden implementing some of these E.
The burden could you hold the mic? I'm sorry.
The burden of initiating some of these ESG reporting methods in the burden, not necessarily investment, but management time, people time. And that's certainly I knew that was a burden. I knew that it was complex. You certainly in this presentation today have drilled that in. This is not simple.
Does this give you a strategic opportunity? In other words, you're acquisitive, you bought 2 utilities in the last 4 years, I think it is. Does this give you another tool to talk about your ESG capabilities as far as acquiring a smaller utility?
Of course, we don't talk about M and A transactions with folks. But so I'll answer it in a different way, if that's okay. As we said this morning in parts of the presentation, there this is a very complex business. I know you all know this. There's lots of people in this country think utility business is pretty simple.
All you got to do is like hit the flip, hit the switch. So what's hard? And it's not just the engineering, how you produce it, transport it, deliver it. Public policy mix that embraces or overcomes, in some cases, overcomes smaller utilities is a very difficult thing. There are lots of competing stakeholders from elected politicians to regulators to the environmental community, all of which have a perfectly valid viewpoint.
We have to take all of that in, remembering that we have to produce reliable electricity and produce and deliver gas reliably at an affordable cost. And it's not as simple as everybody not everybody. I know you all know it's complex. Many people think, oh, it's simple. They're impatient.
They want you to do it now because, I mean, they can go on their iPhone and look up Wikipedia and they got the answer, or at least they tell me that. So part of our mission is to help educate the public that this is very complicated. We share your vision. We want to get where you want to get, but you have to be patient. These are big transformations that are going to take a long time, and it's going to be expensive, and we can't do it without you.
Unfortunately, we get all sorts of stakeholders who spin the tail that that's all made up, it's easy, they just don't want to do it, whatever. Completely false. We're fine doing it. We embrace doing it. We're doing it.
We will do more of it, but it is complicated. It will take time and everybody needs to help us do it, including our own customers. They need to help us. We can't go into their house and turn down their thermostat. We actually could, but it doesn't we didn't the vibes are not good when you do that.
So our customer we need to help educate them. That's one of the reasons why we have this new app. We got to do other things to try to so our customers are used to everything being right in front of them. What can I do on my carbon footprint? Well, you can get rid of that car and adopt our carbon footprint, which is a lot lower than yours actually and will be lower over years to come.
I know that doesn't answer your question, but like Ronald Reagan, I answered the question I wanted to hear. We can't I can't answer M and A questions, I apologize.
But with the complexity of this, just in general, let's just talk generic, not just Dominion Energy, drive additional consolidation in the industry?
I think there's lots of factors that are going to drive additional consolidation. It's going to be we talked earlier this morning also about how more and more utilities are going to have to rely on natural gas as their fuel to produce electricity. They're going to do lots of renewables? Absolutely. But you're going to have to for now until the technology comes that we can store it at large scale in some other method.
And it's very difficult for policymakers to accept, but it's the chemistry doesn't lie. So there's a lot of reasons why there's going to be more and more pressure, cost pressures on smaller utilities. Larger utilities, they can spread it out across their much larger customer base, much marginal the incremental cost to the customer is much lower. That's why Jim Chapman was able to tell people this morning that we're going to spend $26,000,000,000 in regulated businesses over 5 years, and we're going to keep customer rates at or below inflation over that period of time. Part of it is simply scale.
Hi. Travis Antonio, Investment Officer at CalSTRS. Two quick questions. 1, if you could provide a status update on the installation of smart meters? And then the second question is understanding that price mechanisms affect consumer behavior.
A gentleman before spoke about rate structures. How is the company becoming an advocate of differentiating rate structures going forward, ultimately, if you ever see a future of time of use?
Bob, both of those years.
We have installed about 400,000 AMI meters. We have about 2,600,000 meters total. Part of the grid modernization plan that we initially filed with the State Corporation Commission last year included full deployment of AMI. The commission asked us for a little more work on cost and benefits associated with that, which we intend to give them in a refiling later this year. But we fully expect to deploy fully deploy AMI in the coming years.
And then as the time of use rates, obviously, as your question implies, without AMI infrastructure time of use rates don't work. But as we expand and one of the things that we're going to look at in the filing on the revised grid mod filing will be expanded time of use rate options for customers who want to take advantage of those.
Any other questions? I think we're about we're actually out of time, but they gave us a few extra minutes here, if there are any more questions. We appreciate very much you all joining us for the first of its kind ESG meeting, and I'm sure or I expect you'll see many more of them from our colleagues in years days and years to come. Thank you all very much.