Okay. It is the appointed hour. We're going to go ahead and get this annual meeting started. First of all, welcome. I hope you all had an opportunity as you came in and had a chance to see some of the electric vehicles that were sitting out on the plaza today. A new addition to our fleet is that Hyster out there. I know some of you wanted to get out there and get on that thing. For safety reasons, we probably aren't going to do that today. Just the notion that you saw the Hyster out there, you saw the hybrid pickup truck out there. Again, we use a lot of pickup trucks in our business. This is a hybrid.
As soon as you get that 100% all-electric EV in a couple of years, that may be an opportunity for our folks to continue to enhance at least some of those light-duty trucks. A lot of progress on the EV front. I hope you got a chance to see some of those out there. The other thing I would just acknowledge, if you looked across the parking lot, one of our directors came in his EV today, which was great to see. The other thing that you might have seen as you came in, this is May in Motion Month. It's where we participate with other folks around the Treasure Valley to encourage people to look at alternative ways to transport themselves here.
I'm hoping all of you either walked or rode your bikes or those types of modes of transportation where you could, that would allow you to get here as we continue to look at different ways to move people around the valley. In any event, my name is Darrel Anderson, and I am the President and Chief Executive Officer of Idacorp and Idaho Power, and a director of both companies. On behalf of the directors, the officers, and employees of the Idacorp family of companies, I would like to welcome you all to the 21st annual meeting of the shareholders of Idacorp. If we were to be holding a meeting for Idaho Power today, officially, it would be its 104th annual meeting. I know some of you have been to most of those.
It is a pleasure to have this opportunity to discuss with you our performance and the opportunities that we see as we look forward. I think it's important always to start off with a safety message, whether it's an internal meeting or an external meeting for us. If there's an emergency that requires us to evacuate this room, there are two primary exits that you should familiarize yourself with. The first one is the door you came in here in the back. There's also this door here to my left. Both doors provide a direct exit from this building. After you leave this building, if you would relocate over across the way to the south parking lot until we're allowed to reenter the building.
Our safety and security personnel, who you will see kind of roaming around in red shirts, would be able to help you and assist you. The other thing I'd like to acknowledge from a safety perspective is as you came into the building, we just put up a board just outside the entrance to this room that acknowledges our President's Award for Safety recipients. We just put that up there. We started this program a few years ago, and it's an opportunity for us to recognize individuals that have gone above and beyond as it relates to safety. In some cases, it's saving lives. In some cases, it's encouraging people to not do unsafe things that could put themselves in harm. It's a whole series of things, but it's really a neat way to acknowledge safety, not only within our own employees, but sometimes people on the outside.
If you get a minute as you leave the room, if you get a chance to see it, I'd love you to take a look at that and see some of the names that are up on that board. I would now like to recognize the Directors of our company who are all in attendance today, and they are seated up in the front of the room. You can find information about them, about our Directors, in the proxy, so I'm not going to go through their biographies this morning. As I call your name, would you please stand? Tom Carlile, Richard Dahl, Annette Elg, Ron Jibson, Judy Johansen, Dennis Johnson, Christine King, and Rick Navarro. These Directors are our outside independent Directors, and I am also a Director as Chief Executive Officer of Idacorp and Idaho Power.
Please join me in giving our Board of Directors a round of applause. I would also like to thank our retiring Board Chair, Bob Tinstman, for his service on the Idacorp and Idaho Power boards. Bob retired from the board prior to today's annual meeting under our mandatory retirement rules, and he's not in attendance today. He joined the board in 1999 and has been Chairman of the Board since 2013. He has provided invaluable service to the board through his strong leadership skills and construction and operations background and has been an important contributor to our success. His insight and experience will be missed, and we thank him for his contributions to Idacorp and Idaho Power, and I hope he's listening to this call this morning. Please join me in thanking Bob with a round of applause.
I wouldn't be up here if it wasn't for the great team that I have to work with. I'd like to also now to recognize our Officers. I'll ask them to stand as I call their name. Lisa Grow, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Steve Keen, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. Jeff Malmen, Senior Vice President of Public Affairs. Brian Buckham, our Senior Vice President and General Counsel. Tess Park, our Vice President of Power Supply. Vern Porter, who has the longest title we have, Vice President of Transmission and Distribution, Engineering and Construction, as well as our Chief Safety Officer. Adam Richins, our Vice President of Customer Operations and Business Development. Ken Petersen, Vice President, Controller, and Chief Accounting Officer. Jeff Glenn, Vice President of Corporate Services and Chief Information Officer. Tim Tatum, Vice President of Regulatory Affairs.
Last but not least, Pat Harrington, our Corporate Secretary. We have an outstanding leadership team, one that is excited about our business and is committed to serving you, our owners, as well as our customers and employees. This combined group has close to 250 years of experience serving Idaho Power. Please join me in giving your senior leadership team a round of applause. When you entered the auditorium today, you found on your chair an agenda describing the order of business and procedures for conducting today's meeting. We will first conduct a formal business and then we will adjourn, and then I will provide some additional comments about the company and the direction that we're headed. Following that, I and other officers will be happy to take your questions. Today's presentation is being recorded and webcast live.
A complete replay will be available at the end of the day for the next 12 months on our website. I would also like to remind everyone that the presentation today does contain forward-looking statements, which are statements that relate to future events or expectations. It is important to note that the company's future results could differ materially from those discussed at this meeting. A discussion of factors could cause future results to differ materially can be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly our annual report on Form 10-K. I encourage you to review those documents as well as other documents we file with the SEC and our various press releases. Now it's my pleasure to officially call the 2019 annual meeting of Idacorp shareholders to order.
This annual meeting is being held first to elect each of the nine directors nominated by the board of directors for a one-year term. Second, to address an advisory resolution to approve executive compensation. Then third, to ratify the appointment of the independent registered public accounting firm for 2019. Fourth, to transact such other business as may properly come before the meeting. Idacorp has almost 46,000 shareholders located throughout the U.S. and beyond. The results of shareholder voting for the annual meeting are typically determined by the return of proxies from shareholders who are not present, and those results are known to us today. All shareholders or proxy holders who attend the meeting in person are entitled to cast their ballots at the meeting and revoke any previously granted proxy if they choose to do so.
Before moving to the business matters to be considered at this annual meeting, there are a couple of administrative matters that need to be taken care of before conducting the meeting. I have been advised that a majority of the shareholders' voting power outstanding is represented at this meeting by proxy. Therefore, a quorum exists for the transaction of business. Second, in accordance with Idacorp's bylaws, no matters other than those stated in the proxy statement or properly raised by a shareholder in accordance with the advance notice provisions of the bylaws can be considered at this meeting. We will now proceed with the formal business of Idacorp's 2019 annual meeting. The first item for action by shareholders is the election of directors. Nine director nominees are up for election at this time. The nine director nominees, as set forth in their proxy statement are Thomas E.
Carlile, Richard J. Dahl, Annette G. Elg, Ronald W. Jibson, Judith A. Johansen, Dennis L. Johnson, Christine King, Richard J. Navarro, and myself, Darrel T. Anderson. These nine directors have been nominated for one-year terms to expire at the 2020 annual meeting. The Idacorp Board of Directors has unanimously recommended a vote for the nominees. The second order of business is the advisory resolution to approve executive compensation. This advisory resolution is commonly referred to as the say-on-pay vote. The Idacorp Board of Directors has unanimously recommended a vote for this proposal. The third order of business is the ratification of the appointment of Idacorp's independent registered public accounting firm, Deloitte & Touche LLP, for 2019. The Idacorp Board of Directors has unanimously recommended a vote for this proposal. I now declare the polls open, and we will proceed to vote on the three matters presented at this meeting.
Shareholders that are present at this meeting who have already submitted proxies do not need to vote by ballot. If you have revoked your proxy or if you have not voted your proxy and you own common stock as of the March 26th record date, you can vote your shares at today's meeting by completing a voting ballot and submitting it to our annual meeting staff. If you received a voting ballot when you signed in at the front desk for today's meeting and have completed the ballot, please raise your hand and we will collect your ballots now. If you did not receive a ballot at the front desk and wish to vote your shares now, please raise your hand and we will provide a ballot for your vote. Do we have anybody that fits any of those descriptions? Everybody voted and they're good and Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Theresa. Seeing none, the Idacorp proxy committee has voted all shares represented by proxy in accordance with the instructions in each proxy on all three matters. Based on the proxies received prior to the start of this meeting, the preliminary results of the voting are as follows. Each of the nine director nominees named in the proxy statement have been elected to serve on the Board of Directors for a one-year term. The advisory resolution on executive compensation has passed. Third, the ratification of the appointment of the independent registered public accounting firm for the year 2019 has also passed. With the voting of the approval of the directors being official now, the new appointment of the Board Chair is now Richard Dahl, who was appointed subject to this election. Richard, congratulations. To the board members, congratulations on your appointments.
We do have Mr. David Hazlett, a partner at Deloitte & Touche. Our independent auditor is now invited to make any statement he desires regarding the independent auditor's audit of the books and records of Idacorp. Mr. Hazlett, do you have any statements you wish to make?
Thank you. I have no statements at this time, but would be happy to answer any questions. Thank you.
Thank you, David. Thank you for your comments. We appreciate that. This concludes all the items scheduled for action at this annual meeting of shareholders. The business portion of this meeting is now adjourned, and we will now move to the informal portion of the meeting. Before we move on to my comments, we want to share with you, it's about a five-minute video that does a nice job of summarizing the activities of 2018. It's a piece that was put together by our internal corporate communications team, and I think it's great. It's upbeat, and there's a lot of really cool things that happened in 2018. I hope you do also. Let's roll that video.
As the energy industry evolves, Idacorp continues to adapt and thrive. In 2018, Idacorp achieved an earnings record while its primary subsidiary, Idaho Power, set records for customer satisfaction and reliability. As our service area grows, Idaho Power continues to innovate and adapt while providing clean, reliable, affordable energy for more customers than ever. 2018 marked Idacorp's 11th consecutive year of earnings growth, a feat that is unprecedented for our company and unique among investor-owned utilities during that period. The year ended with earnings of $4.49 per diluted share. Net income increased $14 million for the year. Once again, we've reserved all of the additional Accumulated Deferred Investment Tax Credits, or ADITCs, that are available for use under our Idaho regulatory situation. Importantly, we were able to extend the earnings support and revenue-sharing mechanism indefinitely. The full $45 million of ADITCs remains available for future earnings support.
For the second time in three years, Idacorp received the EEI Electric Utilities Index Award for the best total shareholder return performance over the past five years among utilities with a market capitalization of less than $5 billion. A clean, diverse energy mix remains a defining characteristic of our company. In 2018, more than 46% of Idaho Power's energy came from clean hydroelectricity, while another 19% came from long-term purchases of wind, solar, and other clean energy sources. With coal generation declining, Idaho Power continues to outperform its carbon intensity reduction goals, with 2018 levels 46% lower than our 2005 baseline. Coal-fired generation has decreased by 55% since that same year. Idaho Power also joined the Western Energy Imbalance Market in 2018.
We expect our participation in the Western EIM to enhance reliability and bring additional clean energy to our service area. Idaho Power continues to work towards renewing a long-term federal license for the three-dam Hells Canyon Complex, the company's largest generation resource. The State of Idaho and Oregon agreed to a proposed settlement over reintroduction of steelhead and spring Chinook salmon into the Snake River above Oxbow Dam. This settlement is an important step toward relicensing the Hells Canyon Complex. The company also reached key milestones on the Boardman to Hemingway and Gateway West 500 kilovolt transmission line projects in 2018. The Oregon Department of Energy is expected to issue a draft proposed order on Boardman to Hemingway in 2019, while our partners have begun construction on the easternmost segment of the Gateway West line. It was another year of growth across southern Idaho and eastern Oregon.
Idaho Power saw a 2.3% customer growth as clean energy and competitive prices attract new customers to our service area. Idaho remains the fastest-growing state in the nation, and Idaho Power's customer base has grown to more than 560,000. We expect this growth to continue into the near future. Idaho Power customers continue to enjoy some of the lowest energy prices in the nation. Our diverse energy mix and clean hydropower helped keep residential rates 20% lower than the national average in 2018, while business rates were nearly 30% lower. Safety and reliability remain core values for Idaho Power. Our employees incurred a record low number of OSHA-recordable injuries in 2018, and the severity of injuries also decreased substantially.
Eight employees earned the President's Award for Safety in 2018, demonstrating our workforce's commitment to the safety of their colleagues and the public. Reliability also improved last year. On average, our customers only experienced one outage longer than five minutes. This success helped Idaho Power earn the highest customer satisfaction scores in its history, ranking near the top for investor-owned utilities nationwide. Our employees continue to make a positive difference in the environment and their communities. Company giving topped $1 million in 2018, with employees generously donating to the communities we serve. Idaho Power remains committed to protecting our natural resources and ecosystems.
Examples include habitat restoration work happening at Bayha Island and Bailey Creek, installing additional diverters and nesting platforms to protect raptors and other birds, and ongoing fish programs that boost steelhead and chinook salmon populations, study native sturgeon in the Snake River, and stock thousands of rainbow trout for anglers. Idacorp had a momentous year of growth and success in 2018. Thanks to the contributions of our nearly 2,000 employees, Idaho Power continued to thrive. As we look forward, Idaho Power is well-positioned to meet the challenges ahead. With a clean energy mix, purposeful regulatory strategy, and dedicated employees, we will continue to adapt to a changing energy landscape with a focus on enhancing financial success for our share owners and creating a positive experience for our customers. Thank you for your continued investment in Idacorp.
Hopefully you guys all agree we had a great 2018. Your company, I think really did perform at a high level in 2018, just in that last image, your board can have a little fun from time to time. They were, as you can notice on there. What I want to do is spend the next 10 minutes or so talking a little bit about as we look forward a little bit. I will reinforce some of the things you saw in that video, but really talking about the direction that we are headed. We remain focused on our long-term business strategy, which has really four key components. Growing revenues, improving the core business, enhancing our brand, a focus on safety and employee engagement. We believe that strategy is working. As you saw in the video, 2018 was a year of records.
We achieved our highest-ever and 11th consecutive year of earnings growth, the longest in the history of the company, probably matched by few, if any, other electric utilities. These results allowed us to increase our dividend again in 2018, now a cumulative increase of 110% since 2011. We know that dividend is very important to our shareholders. We also achieved record customer satisfaction scores, record reliability of our system, as well as record safety results. I am most proud of our continued improvement in our safety culture, while continuing to provide enhanced shareholder value. During 2018, we took a new look at what we as a company view as our mission and our core values. I mentioned that exercise at this meeting last year, we have now completed our work in that area.
For a long time now, our core values at Idacorp have been safety, integrity, and respect. We all expect one another to act with integrity, treat one another with respect, and emphasize safety in everything that we do. As we examined our mission and values, we put a lot of thought into how we operate our business and our expectations of all employees. Ultimately, we determined that those three words still embody our expectations and core values. I'm not surprised that we stayed consistent with these values as they have been ingrained in our culture over the last 100 years. We also reviewed our mission and vision in 2018, we decided to combine them into one statement that embodies our direction, which we now refer to as our purpose.
We believe the clarity of having one purpose will better guide us as we work together for our customers, communities, employees, shareholders. I want to share with you what that statement is. We are passionate about powering lives with clean, reliable, affordable energy while developing innovative solutions every day. Serving those who depend on us is at the center of everything that we do. We all prosper by committing to the needs, safety, and success of our customers, communities, employees, shareholders. I believe that this statement is easy for our employees, our customers, you, our shareholders, to support. Our aim in redeveloping our purpose statement is to make it more inspirational and meaningful. We think it does just that, we hope you do as well.
I want to spend today talking about the three primary parts of that purpose statement, which relate to clean energy, innovation, and prosperity. Some of this dovetails with what I spoke about last year, our long-term strategy and the various initiatives aimed at supporting that strategy and growing long-term value for you, our shareholders. I want to address the clean, reliable, affordable energy component of our purpose statement. When this company was organized in 1916, it delivered 100% clean hydropower. It was not until 1974 that the company finished construction of its first thermal plant. As we look ahead, we see ourselves headed back to our roots of a portfolio with an increasing amount of clean energy, while at the same time working to ensure we provide reliable, affordable energy as well. In late March, we announced our goal of providing 100% clean energy by 2045.
We refer to it as Clean Today, Cleaner Tomorrow goal. Some of you may have seen the website we set up for it, but if not, it's worth a look. You can access it at cleantoday.com. Pretty simple. Our Clean Today, Cleaner Tomorrow effort will build on the company's 100-year history as a clean energy leader. We are among the first publicly owned utilities to set a goal for reaching 100% clean energy. Many of our customers have shared with us that clean energy is important to them, and we listened. To achieve our ambitious goal, we will rely in part on our strong low-cost hydropower backbone. We also plan to continue our transition away from coal and invest in additional clean energy sources like wind and solar. Future grid upgrades and battery storage technology should help maintain Idaho Power's reliability while moving the company closer to its clean energy goal.
Continued energy efficiency efforts will also help achieving our target. Just speaking about that, I did want to acknowledge that I think I have it here. Nope. Maybe, maybe not. There it is. I did want to note, we did issue, it's available today, our 2019 sustainability report. If you get a chance to take a look at this online, it captures a lot of the essence of things that we're doing on the energy efficiency side, but also captures the essence of what we're doing as it relates to beginnings on climate adaptation and a whole lot of other things out there. It's a good read. If you get a chance, you want to take a look at this. It's well done.
John Bernardo, who is in the audience today, was key to helping get that put together and working with our leaders to do that. It's a nice read. A clean energy goal is not new to this company. In 2009, we adopted a goal to reduce carbon emissions, and we have exceeded and extended that goal. The Clean Today, Cleaner Tomorrow effort takes our goal to the next level. One benefit we have is that we voluntarily adopted a clean energy goal. While reaction was overwhelmingly positive, some asked, "Why would we voluntarily adopt such a goal?" Well, we believe it's the right thing to do, and we think we have the resources, planning, and commitment to make it work. Better than anyone, we know the value and flexibility of the hydropower system in grid dispatch and reliability.
We choose our own future under this goal, we will make the decisions on technology, investments, and dispatch of our system that makes sense at the right time and at a fair price. We believe this goal represents the best path forward for our company, our customers, and our shareholders. As I said last year, we know that the services we deliver have to be more than just reliable and fair-priced, they also must represent a responsible use of the resources we share with our communities. Our goal is ambitious, it will take significant effort and innovation to achieve. We made a step forward towards this goal, in late March, when we announced that Idaho Power signed an agreement to buy the output from 120-megawatt solar facility south of Twin Falls. Just to put that in perspective, think about 1,000 acres of solar panels.
That's what you're looking at when you think about what 120 megawatts of solar looks like. Reliability and affordability were key in this decision. The price we will pay for this energy is among the lowest on record. The facility will be near an existing transmission line that delivers power from the North Valmy coal-fired plant, that line delivers energy when our customers need it most, sunny summer days. With us getting out of our share of North Valmy units in 2019 and 2025, the output from the solar facility can help fill some of the resulting gap. I would be remiss to talk about our clean energy goal without addressing our current energy mix. The slide on the screen shows that in addition to the hydropower we generate, we also buy a significant amount of wind and solar energy.
As a reminder, we sell the Renewable Energy Credits that come with those purchases per our regulatory directive, we cannot claim that we deliver that energy to customers. However, we do purchase it, and it is part of the energy mix today. That means that for our 100% clean energy goal, we are starting from a very good starting point. If you look at our portfolio on a nameplate basis or from a total generation versus total load perspective, it can look even better. Aside from clean energy, we are focused on environmental stewardship in other ways. Idaho Power has reduced its carbon emissions intensity, measured in pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour, by almost 50% since 2005. The company has entered into agreements to end participation in two coal plants and is exploring its ownership in the Jim Bridger facilities.
In addition, we are working on habitat improvement projects in Hells Canyon and in other parts of the Snake River, while efforts are ongoing to protect birds of prey and boost populations of anadromous steelhead and Chinook salmon through hatchery programs. I want to end this part of our discussion today by reminding everyone that we are charged with keeping the lights on and the system running 24/7, 365 days a year. The laws of physics still apply, federal regulations require reliability and resilience. As Idaho Power continues to move forward towards clean energy, we will be looking at a number of resources, as well as new technologies and energy storage. We will also be examining how we construct, operate, and manage the grid. We do not have all the answers today.
Our 2019 integrated resource plan should be released in June. I expect it will include the need for enhanced transmission capabilities in the future to ensure reliability and the ability to integrate intermittent energy resources. The ability to import energy on our proposed Boardman to Hemingway transmission line rather than build new generation facilities could save our customers money and provide a way to share existing regional resources and decrease carbon emissions. We expect some significant milestones on B2H this year. We are hoping parties interested in clean energy will join us in advancing the permitting process for the project. Next, I want to talk about innovative solutions, the second part of our purpose statement. The energy industry is not one where you might immediately think innovation is rampant. Some people have noted that our industry is sometimes like steering an aircraft carrier. It moves a bit slowly.
We do not believe that this company's experience and its 100-plus year history tells you that. I think now in particular, we would certainly say that innovation is regularly taking place. Our industry is rapidly evolving as we are too. At Idaho Power, we think of innovation in two ways. We are innovative in the way we do business. We are innovative in the way we meet our customers' changing preferences. First, let's look at the ways we are innovating in how we do business. We have a successful model of finding opportunities to be efficient, to do more with less. A case in point, since 2003, our customer count has grown from 426,000 customers to over 560,000 today, an increase of over 30% over those 15 years. Yet our employee count has remained at about the same level, 2,000 people.
We are relentless about looking for efficiencies, new ways of doing things, or things we can stop doing because they are no longer adding value. Like many companies, we're increasingly tech-heavy as we look for software and systems that help us do our work better and for less. One new piece of technology, which is actually one enormous machine running together, is a Western Energy Imbalance Market, which we joined right before last year's annual meeting. Our participation in that real-time energy market has provided savings for customers and has afforded us and others more access to lower cost and often cleaner resources in the region. Another example of innovation in the way we do business comes from the regulatory solutions we have in place.
Perhaps most notable is our revenue sharing and tax credit mechanism, which has allowed us to share over $125 million in revenues with customers since 2011, while at the same time helping to support our company earning a specified minimum return. We work hard towards constructive and innovative outcomes with our state regulatory commissions. I think our transparent, collaborative approach with the commissions and with stakeholders has benefited our company, our shareholders, and our customers. The second area we focus on in terms of innovation is how we serve our customers' ever-evolving preferences. Many customers want energy from clean sources. I think all customers want energy that is reliable and affordable. I discussed last year how we were working on meeting customer expectations. We have made progress throughout the year.
Many of our customers want mobile apps and more choices, and we have been working on and rolling out solutions in those areas. In other developments in our industry, we are seeing electrification of vehicles and commercial fleets. We are seeing increased renewable energy penetration and resulting reliability and intermittency issues that need to be resolved. We are also seeing new technology to enhance the grid and reliability or, in some cases, simply to make the grid function with significant decentralized generation. All of these things offer opportunities for innovation and, in the case of electrification, growth in the use of our services and in the value of the grid. Turning a blind eye to these challenges we face is not an option.
Instead, we view each of these items as an opportunity to improve the service we provide to our customers and to promote choices and preferences, while at the same time contributing to the communities we serve and working to enhance long-term shareholder value. We do not view our new purpose statement as re-envisioning ourselves. Rather, it is a continuation of what we have already been doing to respond to the changing preferences of all of our constituents. Third and finally, I want to talk about prosperity for customers and shareholders. The third piece of our new purpose statement. I want to talk about something that benefits both customers and shareholders as much of the time benefits to those parties are inextricably linked. I had that word down at one point.
By customers, I mean both existing and new customers who move to our service area, to those who expand here. We power businesses at a cost that is nearly 30% lower than the national average. About half our energy comes from clean, reliable hydropower, while we continue to maintain high system reliability and a steady focus on system performance. A portion of everyone's compensation at this company is tied to the satisfaction of our customers as well as the reliability of our system. As I noted previously and you saw in the video, we reached records in 2018 in both of those areas. Fair prices are also important for our customers. Many of our customers were pleasantly surprised by our significant rate decrease in 2018, as well as our proposed decrease for this year. What results from that effort?
Well, it affords us the opportunity to market our Idaho and Oregon service areas to help create a welcoming environment for new businesses and a good climate for new businesses to grow and expand. Add that to an already attractive business environment in our service area, and the result has been notable growth in customer count and in energy usage as the new business customers and the people they employ in our service area help to stimulate our economy and the vibrancy of our communities. Our customer service and business development teams work towards sustainable growth every day for the benefit of our existing customers, who benefit from the spreading of costs across a wider customer group.
This growth also benefits our shareholders. At the same time, it has helped delay the need to file a general rate case despite some normal growth in costs. Through sustainable growth in our service area comes the opportunity for prosperity, and we all benefit from it. Our customer service and business development teams will continue working tirelessly to benefit both our customers and our shareholders. We believe in our strategy. I want to thank you for your continued confidence in our company as we move forward in an exciting, changing energy industry. While I am the one standing up here to deliver this message today, I want to acknowledge the company's approximately 2,000 employees who work around the clock to bring affordable, reliable, responsible energy to our customers. I am proud to be part of this company and work with such an outstanding group of people every day.
I want to thank you for your continued support and belief in the direction that we are headed. With that, what we'd like to do now is hear your comments and respond to your questions. For those of you that have questions, we ask that you line up in the back where we have a microphone set up. Please provide your name, then your question or comment. In the interest of time and in fairness to others, I ask that you please limit your comment or questions to two or three minutes. Seeing that we have a line up in the back right now, we'll go ahead and roll right into it.
Good morning, Mr. Anderson and board of directors. My name is Alan Houserath. I live here in Boise. I'm a shareholder, obviously, a ratepayer, and a grandfather. What I would like to do is thank you all for the 2045 commitment. I believe from all three of those perspectives, it's a very good thing. As a shareholder, I believe you're adding value to the company because you're selling people a product they want to buy, clean electricity. As a ratepayer, you're selling me a product I want to buy, clean electricity. From the point of view of my grandchildren's world, what you're doing is a wonderful thing. I believe if we make the right decisions right now that our children and grandchildren's world can be a great place to live.
Energy there can be abundant, it can be clean, it can be fairly priced. It's going to be fun. I think an electric vehicle is probably a lot more fun than a combustion engine. I think from the point of view of the future, nobody is going to look back and say, "Gee, I wish we were still burning fossil fuels." It's just not going to happen. Nobody's going to say that. My grandchildren are not going to be saying, "I remember when Granddad told us about driving past the North Valmy plant and seeing the coal ash piles." They're not going to say that. Nobody's going to remember the Yellowstone oil spill happily. Nobody's going to remember happily those wells that got wrecked by fracking in Colorado. I don't have a question, just thank you for this commitment. I think it's leading to a better world.
Thank you for your comment. Thanks. You have been diligent in these meetings in the past, so thank you for your return visit, and thank you for your positive comments. We appreciate that. Thank you.
Hello. This is Dr. Eric Young of Las Vegas, Nevada.
Welcome back.
Glad to be back again, and congratulations on a good year. I noticed the stock price is $104 this morning, so I'm pretty happy.
Thanks for acknowledging that.
I'm pretty happy about that as well.
Thank you.
Well, I have tried. Actually, I can give you a copy. This is a statute that I tried to get the Nevada legislature to pass, and they haven't done it. The Nevada legislature did pass a clean energy goal of 50% by 2030. This is a statute to close the North Valmy Power Station by Independence Day 2021. They didn't want to pass it. NV Energy says maybe 2025. My question is, what is the status of the redeployment of the one unit? I'm happy to hear that. We need to move more quickly on the other units. I will continue to work in Nevada and here as much as possible. Kind of continuing on, I think Bridger is supposed to be 2022. What's up with redeploying Bridger in terms of details too? I don't know if anybody wants a copy of this.
I can just hand it off.
Doctor, First of all, thank you for your comments. I'll comment on where we're at with our thermal units. As I think as you know, we have announced that we are going to be getting out of our share of both Valmy units in 2019 and 2025. We're on track for both of those. We don't necessarily control what happens on the other side of that. We can control what we do, which is our piece of that. As it relates to the Bridger piece, we are working with our partner and determining what makes sense over the long term. There are scenarios that are in our current integrated resource plan, as you stay tuned for the integrated resource plan that'll come out in June.
It is fair to say that worst-case scenario, as I look at this, we think it's the mid-2030s that we will be out of Bridger by then is a likely scenario. That's still a work in progress with our partners, and that's sort of the estimated useful life in any event, for that plant. I appreciate your passion for your efforts, we are doing what's best in totality for our customers and also for our shareholders. I think we're on the right path. Thank you for your comments.
Hi, my name is Lisa Hecht. I would like to add my congratulations to the board and the officers of Idaho Power and Idacorp for their 2045 commitment to clean energy. I speak as, of course, a mother, a retired engineer, a shareholder, and an ESG investor, since this is, after all, a shareholders meeting. I noted in your biz strategy on page six of the shareholders meeting materials that your business strategy includes enhancing Idaho Power's brand, that includes continuing the environmental stewardship and emissions reductions. Given that that's your business strategy and you've made this 2045 commitment to clean energy, will Idacorp be willing to tie executive compensation to that goal?
I think that's a great question. It's something that we can put up for consideration. Part of, I think, the challenge with that, as it relates to a 2045 goal, is that it's 20-some odd years out there. How do you sync that up with the near term? I will just tell you, people also bring safety up, for instance. Why is safety not an incentive goal? I would suggest that the benefits far exceed any compensation. The notion there is our goal around why we don't use safety as a compensation target is because you're going home the way you came. It should be incentive enough. I would just make the case that we are going to make our best efforts, and that's what we have said, to work towards the 2045 goal. We don't have all the answers today.
We are going to rely on continued technology development and evolution. We think we are starting from a very strong spot. Depending on which measure you want to look at, we have seen a significant decline in our carbon emissions already and without any incentive compensation tied to it. I think it's really doing the right thing from a corporate perspective. We have a target out there. We're going to work towards that. I think if you have a 25-year target and try to tie executive compensation to that, try to getting that synced up, I think might be difficult. I think we have our comp chair here today, and she, I think, will listen to that, and we will take a look at it and have the debate.
I think it might be difficult to really sync that up from a line of sight on a 25-year target.
I just want to mention that I would suggest looking at interim goals. Thank you very much.
No, I appreciate it. Thank you, Lisa, and welcome back from your cross-country Tesla trip.
I just want to mention, as I drove my Tesla across the United States from Boise to Wisconsin, in four days, I saw an incredible number of wind turbines and, of course, in Idaho, a lot of solar. It's out there, and it's happening faster than we know.
Thanks, Lisa. Thank you.
Hi, Darrel. Thanks for having me back again.
Zach.
Congratulations on a fantastic year.
Zack, will you introduce yourself?
For those of you who don't know me, my name's Zack Waterman, and I'm the state director for the Sierra Club, and I'm also a personal shareholder. I've been working with the company on IRPs and PUC-related matters since 2013. Over the course of those years, I think the company has made significant progress in multiple areas. We have not always seen eye to eye. That would come as no surprise to anyone. Kudos to Darrel and his team for being open and transparent and always willing to sit down, share perspectives, and talk about things over coffee. Want to also say that some folks on your staff, who in particular I appreciate working with, Tim Tatum, Adam Richins, and then Tom Harvey and Mitch Colburn, IRP team. Thanks to you guys for always being willing to exchange ideas and listen to us.
Some of the significant progress underway that Sierra Club is very satisfied with is you guys are really, in a meaningful way, putting content to your glide path away from coal and showing how the company's going to get away from your coal-fired resources. Kudos to you guys on that front. Then, of course, Idaho Power stepping out there with 100% clean energy goal is something that we're super excited about, and we think that it's strategic for the company and is also right for our communities and our environment. We look forward to working together with the company to electrify everything and decarbonize the electric sector. Thank you.
Zach, thank you for that. I just want to comment just generally what you said there. Over the years now, we've had numerous conversations with you, Zach, and other organizations. We appreciate having the opportunity to also have that dialogue. It's really important to have it. We learn stuff. I think others learn things, and I think we end up in a good spot. Not everybody gets everything they want, and we know that. The company doesn't necessarily do that either. Thank you for that, and thanks for having the opportunity to have that discussion. Our team, the team you mentioned, and there's many others that participate now, they do an outstanding job. Again, thanks for that, Zach. I appreciate that. Thanks for the feedback. We might need to lower that mic a little.
Hi, my name is Emily Herr. I'm here with Zach today and the Sierra Club. For the past couple years, I've been talking with different students from around Idaho and Boise, and we've been talking a lot about climate change. I'm here today to just thank Idaho Power for its 2045 clean energy goal because we, as students and as young people, are really excited to see that. Because we know that climate change impacts our future, and we're just really thankful that Idaho Power is being a leader and being really accountable and really taking these bold steps towards clean, renewable energy because we, as young people, know that that's what we need to ensure that we are able to inhabit a livable future. Thank you.
Emily, thank you. Thank you for being here today, and thank you for bringing that perspective to us and the shareholders that are listening in today, because I think it's really good to hear. I think you come from a different age demographic, I think, just looking at you, which is, I think, really helpful for us. I'm going to characterize you as in the millennial class. I think it's really important for us as a company too because you are the customers. You will grow into the customers of the future, and it's really important to hear from you. Thank you. Thanks for stepping up and sharing that thought. I appreciate that.
Thank you.
Do we have any other questions? Seeing none at the mic. I just want to close again by thanking everyone for being here today. We had just a tremendous 2018. As you saw the first quarter results, we've also started out 2019 in a really good spot also. Again, we have plenty of challenges. You heard just a few of those today. I think we are on the right track. We absolutely appreciate all of your support, and we wish you have a great rest of your day. If you get, check out the Hyster out there. That is pretty cool. The notion of electrifying everything, that is a step in that direction, is to how do we electrify as many things as we can? We'd love to be the supplier of that service for those that decide to electrify.
That's what we're going to do. Again, thank you. Thank you all for being here. We appreciate it. Thank you.