The 2018 Alliant Energy Annual Meeting of Shareowners will begin. I'd like to welcome Patricia Kampling, Chairman and CEO. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Alliant Energy's 2018 Annual Meeting of Shareowners. I'm Pat Kampling, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Thank you for joining us this morning for our 1st virtual annual meeting. I'm excited that this platform allows our shareowners to attend the meeting from anywhere in the world. We expect that this annual meeting will have much greater attendance than those in the recent past, and I look forward to providing an update on the company and answering your questions.
I'm hosting today's meeting in our corporate headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin. Sitting next to me is Robert Durian, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. He will help facilitate today's question and answer session. This virtual meeting will be run just like our prior in person meetings. The only difference is that you will submit your questions electronically.
Click on the Ask a Question box on your screen and type your question. If you haven't submitted a question yet, feel free to do so now. Please refer to our rules of conduct with some simple guidelines on questions. I will answer your questions later in the meeting. At Alliance Energy, we begin each meeting with the safety share.
I am pleased that Tony Bartles, the Business Manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 965 is providing this morning's safety share.
Thanks, Pat. Today, I'd like to talk about safety on the job and at home. When each of our technicians come to work each day, before they perform any of the tasks that they need to, they start with a job briefing. In that job briefing, they're talking about the work to be done, the hazards that may exist and the safety steps that they need to make sure that they take in order to do the work safely. No different than each of us should do at home.
As an example, at home, when you're going to go out and do some weed eating around your yard, do you walk in the garage, grab the weed eater and go out and start doing the work? Or should you take the time to make sure that you've identified the hazards and made sure that you put on the appropriate personal protective can do the job and make sure that you and everyone around you are safe, just like the technicians do each and every day here at Alliant Energy. Back to you, Pat.
Thank you, Tony. I would like to also thank the other IBEW leaders who collectively represent 2,200 Alliant Energy employees. I truly appreciate the unique partnership that we have, your dedication to training a top quality workforce and your focus on the safety of all of our employees. Thank you. This morning's meeting is comprised of 3 sections.
First is the business portion, where I will report the voting results on the 4 proposals listed in the proxy. Then I will provide a brief company update. And finally, I will answer your questions. Now, I would like to officially call the Alliant Energy Annual Meeting of Shareowners to order. When you received your proxy statement and ballot, you were asked to vote on 4 proposals.
Information on each of the proposals is outlined in the proxy statement. Shareowners of record as of March 23, 2018 are eligible to vote. Voting will close in the next few minutes. So if you have not yet voted or would like to change your vote, you may do so now online. If you've already voted, your vote has been counted.
I'd like to take a moment and make a few introductions while we are waiting for any last minute votes. First, it is my privilege to acknowledge the members of your Board of Directors, all of whom are attending this meeting. They are Dean Strix, Lead Independent Director Patrick Allen Deb Dunne Darrell Hazel Singleton McAllister Thomas O'Toole Carol Sanders and Susan Whiting. I would also like to recognize the members of my executive team and thank them for their leadership. They are all here today in Madison as well.
Also present is the Inspector of Elections from Broadridge Financial Solutions, as well as representatives from our independent registered public accounting firm, Deloitte and Touche. We received one share on a proposal from the New York City Comptroller's Office. I will now introduce Rhonda Brauer.
Ms. Brauer, you will have 4 minutes to present your proposal. Please proceed.
Thank you. I'm Rhonda Brower, Director of Corporate Engagement in the Office of New York City Comptroller, Scott Stringer. I'm here to present Proposal 4 on behalf of the city's 5 pension funds to call on Alliant to provide full transparency and board oversight of its political spending activities. To be clear, we're not requesting that Alliant refrain from political activity. As a heavily regulated business, it can be an Alliant's long term business interest to engage in public policy making.
But participation in the political process entails reputational and financial risks such as violating contribution rules and exerting political influence in ways that harm Alliance long term interests. In a seemingly innocent case that ultimately resulted in severe public criticism, Target made political donations to a candidate opposed to gay rights, even though Target had been positively recognized for its support of gay rights and diversity. In the egregious case of Duke Energy, with its significant coal ash spill in 2014, subsequent criminal investigations focused on the extensive participation that Duke had its state political processes and the years before the spill. Duke had directed its resources to political activity that significantly weakened the environmental regulatory environment in which it operated rather than actually using those resources to implement measures to prevent such spills. Alliant holds itself out as a corporate leader practices in its annual sustainability report.
We therefore can't understand why Alliance Board remains resistant to the same high level of transparency and accountability in the political arena. It begs the question of whether its political activity is consistent with the same commendable positions. Alliance should follow the lead of its utility peers such as AES, AGL Resources, American Electric Power, Edison International, Exelon and PPL to provide actual political spending disclosures on its own website beyond insufficient references to publicly available data on state and federal sites. These sites are so confusing as to make it nearly impossible to know what Alliance is doing. They provide no disclosure beyond what's legally required, which includes potentially significant spending that may be channeled anonymously to 501c4 groups and trade associations, so called dark money.
Since applicable laws prohibit Alliant from making direct contributions to political candidates, nearly all of its political spending is to such dark money groups and 527 Super PACs. Politicalmoneyline.com reports that Alliant contributed as well as its contributions to 501c4s and trade associations. Alliance sites the burden and theoretical business risks of such disclosure. As we have repeatedly explained to your management team, many other companies have addressed these concerns using minimum disclosure thresholds, while still providing meaningful disclosure. Without transparency, share owners have no insight into whether Alliant gets any real return on contributed company assets nor into whether such contributions are consistent with Alliant's values in business interests.
We therefore urge a vote for Proposal 4. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Brower. This proposal was discussed in the proxy statement and your Board recommended a vote against this proposal, the reasons outlined on Page 61 of the proxy statement. I now declare the voting closed and we'll report on the results. 1st, I have been informed that a quorum of shares has been voted.
I will vote the shares as you indicated on your ballots. If a vote was not marked, then I will vote as recommended by the Board of Directors. Now let me share the preliminary voting results. First, each of the nominees to the Board of Directors has been elected. 2nd, the executive compensation proposal was approved.
3rd, Deloitte and Touche has been ratified as our independent registered accounting firm. And 4th, the shareowner proposal was not approved. These are preliminary results until all votes are verified by Broadridge. The final results will be detailed in an 8 ks filing with the SEC in a few days. The snap concludes the business portion of today's annual meeting.
I declare the meeting adjourned. Now we move into the next section of the meeting, where I'll provide a brief company update. But first, I need to remind you that what I share today includes forward looking statements as noted on this slide. I want to begin by thanking our talented and dedicated employees along with our strong management team for delivering another year of solid financial results. Our total shareholder return, which includes our stock performance and dividends paid, shows that your Alliant Energy investment had a high return of both the S and P 500 and our peer utilities in the EEI Stock Index during the past 5 years.
In fact, we've outperformed our peer utilities each year for the past 8 years. Now that's a great track record. And with increased earnings came an increase to your common stock dividend. Late last year, our Board of Directors approved a 6% increase in our expected annual common stock dividend for this year. The target for 2018 is set as $1.34 per share.
This is a 31% increase over the 2014 dividend level. We are proud to offer you this consistent increase to your dividend. And Light Energy reached an important milestone last month. In April, several of us rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the formation of Alliant Energy. Of course, our predecessor companies have been serving customers for over a century, but it is hard to believe that it's been 20 years since they merged to form Alliant Energy.
We've seen a lot of change in our company and our industry during the past 20 years, and there's no doubt that the next 20 will be even more exciting. It's been a great 2 decades of growth, transformation and opportunity for the company. Don't have to go back too far to see the evidence of our success, including our stock split, the invitation to join the S and P 500 and achieving a market value of over $9,000,000,000 But our industry is changing and our customers are changing and so are we. Our company is evolving to meet our customers' needs for both today and beyond. We are building on our success and are continuing to lay the groundwork for even brighter future for our company and our customers.
We are transitioning to a more balanced economic energy mix by combining renewable resources with traditional ones. We've also had to make some tough decisions during the past decade on our coal generation. By the end of last year, we removed almost 40% of our coal fired generation capacity. These plants served our customers well for decades and our landmarks and their communities. Our decision to retire older coal units and replace them with highly efficient and cleaner alternatives makes sense for our company and customers.
We are taking great care and safely removing these structures and restoring the land to green space for marketing the site for new industrial development. During the past several years, we made significant investments to better serve our customers, including some impressive additions to our energy mix and environmental profile. We now operate 1 of the nation's most efficient generating stations located in Marshalltown, Iowa. It has been in operation for a little over a year and emits 60% less carbon and uses 90% less water than the units it replaced. Construction of a similar facility is 30% complete in Beloit, Wisconsin.
More than 500 contractors were busy working there right now and we expect that our West Riverside facility to be in service by early 2020. These recent additions of highly efficient natural gas generation complement our growing investments in renewable energy. Our wind investments are critical in building an economic and diversified portfolio of energy resources designed to serve our customers well into the future. Our plans include more than doubling our existing wind resources and we will remain a utility leader in providing renewable energy to our customers. Our Iowa customers will see the benefits of 1,000 megawatts of new wind energy being constructed.
That's about 500 new wind structures across the Iowa countryside. Construction is already underway at 2 sites that will be finished next year. We will also begin at several other locations later this year, and we anticipate completion of those in 2020. These investments will provide customers with cleaner energy at no fuel cost. In Wisconsin, we recently obtained ownership of a 55 Megawatt wind farm.
And later this month, we'll begin filing for construction authorization to add another 150 megawatts of wind to further expand renewable power for our Wisconsin customers. Solar energy is a more recent addition to our energy mix. In 2017, we energized Iowa's largest solar garden in Dubuque. It was the 1st solar project to receive the Envision Platinum Award. This award recognizes the environmental, social and economic impacts of the project.
This is in addition to having 1 of Wisconsin's largest solar gardens located on a repurposed landfill in Rock County. And we also installed a variety of solar technologies at our Learning Center at our Madison headquarters. Information on how the solar is performing is available to everyone online. Understanding the different solar options has helped us develop innovative solutions for customers exploring solar and energy storage. Another one of our solar partnerships is with the Indian Creek Nature Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Last month, we were proud to join them in celebrating their goal of achieving net zero energy, producing all of their own solar power for the center's use. The electric and gas distribution systems, which are the backbone on how we serve customers, will continue to be an area of growing investment. Last year, we invested more than $600,000,000 and plan to invest nearly $2,500,000,000 over the next 4 years as we make our systems more resilient, secure and automated. We are also working hard to attract new businesses to the communities we serve. Our big Cedar Industrial Center outside Cedar Rapids, Iowa is a 1300 acre site that offers potential customers access to rail, interstate highway and an airport.
We are in the final stages of having it certified as a mega site, one of only a handful of such sites in the Midwest. It's the largest illustration of our economic development activity, but it's not the only one. We are marketing nearly 3,500 acres of shovel ready land across Wisconsin and Iowa. By the end of 2018, we'll add at least another 500 acres to that. Our customers care about the world we live in just as we do.
We are proud to support their environmental goals, including emission reductions, renewable energy and electrification. We are working with our customers to plug in the right solution for their needs. From electric vehicles, the battery powered forklift, to truck refrigeration, we provide the expertise to advance their operations in a way that makes sense environmentally and economically to them. Alliant Energy employees and retirees have always felt a strong commitment to the communities we have the privilege to serve. In 2017, our community contributions totaled over $7,000,000 This includes contributions from our employees and retirees who also donated their time more than 88,000 volunteer hours to help our neighbors and make our community stronger.
I am so proud of their tireless efforts to give back and make a difference. As I said earlier, our industry and our customers are changing and technology has played a big part in changing how we serve customers in a more convenient way for them. Our new mobile friendly website gives customers quick and easy access to information. We've also introduced an app and created other digital tools to help customers make smart energy decisions. This annual meeting itself is another example how we are open to exploring new technologies and ways to do business.
I received a question about whether we will continue with this annual meeting format. I can say that we've been very pleased with how today's meeting worked and our ability to reach many more shareowners than in the recent past. As always though, we will continue to focus on thoughtful decisions and choices that will help us increase shareowner engagement and participation. Also when you get a minute, I encourage you to visit our website atalliantenergy.com to watch a short video that highlights some of the ways we strive to go beyond the traditional, beyond the expected to deliver the service our customers expect and the returns our investors deserve. On behalf of our 4,000 employees on a monitored lead, Thank you for your investment and support of our company.
Now I am pleased to open the meeting to questions from our shareowners. I ask that you adhere to the guidelines I shared earlier today. Now I will ask Robert to let us know if we've received any questions.
That we have received no additional questions.
Thank you, Robert. So this concludes our presentation. At any time you have questions, feel free to reach out to the company. The easiest way is to email shareownerservicesalliegenergy.com. Your questions will be promptly answered.
We look forward to hearing from you. Again, thank you for attending our annual meeting. I appreciate your continued interest and support. Have a wonderful and safe day. Thank you.
This concludes Alliant Energy's 2018 Annual Meeting.