Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Kristin Rose, I'm the Director of Investor Relations, and I would like to welcome you to the 2024 NextEra Energy investor conference. Before we begin, I'll remind you that today's presentations contain forward-looking statements and references to certain non-GAAP financial measures. You should refer to the cautionary statements and risk factors, as well as the non-GAAP reconciliations in the appendix of today's materials and our recent SEC filings. On page three, you'll find the agenda for today's conference. After John's remarks and our discussion of FPL, we will take a short 15-minute break. Following the break and the remainder of the presentations, our entire executive team will be available to answer your questions. With that, I would like to welcome our President, CEO, and Chairman, John Ketchum.
All right. Thanks, Kristin. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Let's get right to it. NextEra Energy was built for this moment. Today, you're gonna hear us talk about three things. First, we believe we are at an inflection point for electricity demand in the U.S. Second, we expect much of that demand to be met by renewables and storage because they're low cost, they're fast to deploy, and they're clean. And third, no company is better positioned than NextEra Energy to meet that demand both inside and outside Florida. And you're gonna hear me spend some time on: Why us? And what's in it for you? Nobody has our scale, and scale matters more than ever in this business. Nobody has our experience in siting, developing, building, operating, and financing renewable and storage projects both inside and outside Florida.
Nobody has our supply chain and transmission experience. Nobody has our data set that's two to three decades in the making. Nobody has our technology that's rooted in a supercomputing software company that we bought back in 2006, that has completely revolutionized the way we do business. Nobody has our balance sheet. Nobody has our team. Power demand is expected to increase, and we are ready, both at FPL and Energy Resources, where we've been growing for decades. This is nothing new for us. Customers need a trusted partner with deep expertise in generation and transmission that can lower bills and bring low-cost energy solutions. This is our time. NextEra Energy was built for this moment. Our foundation is in two world-class businesses. FPL, the largest rate-regulated utility in the United States. Energy Resources, the world leader in renewables and storage.
FPL has bills that are 37% lower than the national average, reliability that ranks among the best in the industry, and operating costs that are by far the lowest in the sector. Energy Resources has industry-leading market share of 20% in renewables and storage, and has what I believe is the number one competitive transmission business in the sector. Our platform, which you can see at the bottom, is our secret sauce. It's been built over two decades. It can't be replicated, and it is second to none. The platform was built from the unique combination of these two businesses. Our results speak for themselves. This is what I like to call our two-year report card. Both businesses outperformed against the objectives that we gave you two years ago, and we did it through one of the more difficult macroeconomic environments in recent memory.
You can see NextEra Energy posting adjusted EPS performance of greater than 11%, maintaining the dividend at 10%. FPL, by far, by far, the lowest O&M on $1 per megawatt hour basis, and it got even better over the last couple of years and grew rate-regulated capital employed by roughly 12%. Energy Resources, which not only grew earnings at 12%, but posted two consecutive record years of renewable origination. We are proud of our financial and operating performance, and we believe our company is well-positioned to continue to deliver long-term value for shareholders. We have a long history of outperformance and always work to exceed expectations.... And the power prospects for growth going forward look really, really strong. Power demand has been flat for decades, but that's clearly changing. Our growth opportunity set is now twofold.
It's building new renewables to replace higher cost, less efficient generation, and to meet growing power demand. At FPL and Energy Resources, renewables and storage are the low-cost option to customers, creating long-term growth opportunities for both businesses. At both companies, we are taking a systems approach to provide low-cost solutions to our customers. We're identifying the right projects at the right place, at the right time, leveraging our platform across the board, things we can do that nobody else can. The potential opportunity is big. Forecasts are projecting a tripling in renewables growth over the next seven years compared to what we've seen over the prior seven. At FPL, we're going to pursue opportunities to further reduce the bill through low-cost renewables and storage, and we're going to be smart where we make our investments. At Energy Resources, we're going to be disciplined. It's a seller's market.
Our sites are more valuable than ever. We're not going to chase every opportunity. We're not going to swing for the fences. We're going to manage our risks. We're going to do good deals, not any deal. We're going to do them at superior returns. So let's talk about what's driving this long-term demand. Power and technology are converging. Our new economy is rooted in technology, whether it's supercomputers, robotics, artificial intelligence, digitization, or automation. Wherever you look, industries are leveraging technology to gather intelligence, drive efficiencies, and transform their businesses. Households are doing the same. As new tech- technologies emerge, our industrialized economy is becoming more reliant on electricity to manufacture goods and services, deliver products, analyze data, and make better decisions. Electricity is required to power this new economy, and this demand for power is not limited to just data centers.
Technology is disrupting every industry, and to succeed, companies must successfully deploy technology, which means they need more electricity. It's another industrial revolution of sorts. Some have even referred to it as a fourth industrial revolution, and it's one that will be powered by electricity. Never before have power and technology been so codependent, creating a dynamic that can best be described as a power and technology convergence. What you see behind me are examples of ways NextEra Energy leverages technology across our business to provide low-cost generation and transmission to customers. We're using technology to disrupt ourselves, the way power is generated and delivered across this country. As I said, we started with wind, solar, and then battery storage. Now, we're using technology to change the way the industry sites, markets, develops, constructs, and operates renewables and storage, and the way power is delivered and transmitted.
We have already launched well over 100 artificial intelligence projects across our business and have our own AI app, NEE.ai, that's used throughout our company. We have the data and digital platforms necessary to capitalize on the generative AI. We didn't just start yesterday. The companies in our sector that will outperform in this industry and technology convergence will be those that adapt to the new world economy to find new ways to harness and analyze data and leverage technology to generate and deliver electricity. Technology is the next frontier of power. Here's our value proposition, which is where I plan to spend my time today. First, we're gonna talk more about why we believe electricity demand is at an inflection point. Second, I'm going to explain why NextEra is best positioned to meet this long-term demand.
Third, I'm gonna cover our track record, which is a good one, as we have a resilient business model that's performed very well through different economic environments. Then we'll wrap things up with our financial expectations and our long-term vision. Plain and simple, I have never felt better about our future and would not trade our opportunity set with anyone. Let's talk more about what we believe is an inflection point for electric demand and why we believe that demand will be met largely by renewables and storage. Over the next two decades, U.S. power demand is expected to grow 38%. That is an annual rate 4x higher than what we've seen over the last two decades. That 4x increase is being driven by power demand across multiple sectors. This energy transition is absolutely fundamental to U.S. competitiveness.
While data centers get a lot of attention. This power demand is across industries. First, industrial electrification. Technology is driving electrification of industrial processes. We're seeing this across oil and gas, we're seeing it across chemicals, we're seeing it across steel production, just to name a few. Some of these industries are pivoting to electricity, not only because it's necessary to power new technologies, but also because it's low cost and clean. Second, manufacturing. We're seeing a lot of manufacturing that's reshoring to America. Semiconductor chips, chemicals, medical equipment, electronic equipment are all examples, and low electricity prices will be required for American companies to compete globally, which is why new renewables and storage play such an important role. Third, tech companies are building the new American factory, called data and AI centers, driving an information and intelligence revolution across sectors. This is an American opportunity.
Data is largely being housed here for national security purposes. Over the next 12 months, Alphabet, Meta, Google, Microsoft, they're all expected to spend $200 billion on new data centers. Information and intelligence is transforming the way America does business. Fourth, the home. Technology is changing the way we live our daily lives, driving electrification and increased power demand at home. Across each of these varied industries, you will find complementary drivers: a search for lower power costs, improved processes, faster computing to drive decision-making, and an overall goal to ensure energy, data, and technology security as the country seeks to develop the power needed to grow the U.S. economy for decades to come. Power demand is not only across sectors, it's everywhere across America. You can see it in utility load growth estimates, as shown here. It happened quickly.
Utilities are estimating significant load growth, and they need help now. Utilities need long-term solutions to balance increased load demand against increasing customer bill pressure. They need help identifying sites and transmission solutions. They need someone who thinks like a utility, making NextEra Energy the perfect partner. And relationships with utilities are more important than ever to meeting this new demand, as customers need both behind-the-meter generation and power from the grid, which provides NextEra with a two-pronged opportunity. One, to satisfy that behind-the-meter generation. Two, to work with utilities to provide more power to the grid to accommodate all of that demand. We're the perfect partner because we run a utility that has been managing growth for decades, and we know how utilities are thinking about this new wave of demand. Why? Because we are one, and Florida is no different.
It's one of the fastest-growing states in the U.S. It has four of the five fastest-growing metropolitan areas. We have 1,000 people a day moving to Florida, and if Florida were a country, it would be the fourteenth largest economy in the world. No company is more prepared for this load growth than NextEra, as we've been growing for decades, both at FPL and Energy Resources, and nearly firm renewables are the answer, both inside and outside Florida. This is one of the most important slides that I'll cover today, and this shows different generation sources on a nearly firm basis. You can see it isn't even close. Renewables are by far the lowest-cost generation resource when paired together with battery storage.
While the relative price ranges of different technology have have increased due to inflation, new renewables have been less impacted and are favored by a wide margin. Renewables face few regulatory constraints, unlike other forms of new power generation. But not only are they low cost, they're fast to deploy and they're clean, and they also benefit from declining equipment costs. There's no surprise that demand for new renewables is high, as reflected in a tripling of REC prices over the last three years. Again, our opportunity is is twofold: one, not only to replace higher-cost, less-efficient generation, but now to accommodate the load growth that we see coming forward. The why renewables case is compelling compared against other alternatives.
Look, gas will have its place as a bridge fuel, but it's not ideal as a new build solution for many customers, given its cost and the time required to deploy, all of which favor new renewables and storage on a relative basis. Here are some of the challenges new build gas generation has to overcome. First, they also have to get in a long line, transmission queues. Nine out of every 10 MW in the transmission queue today are renewables. They're expensive. Gas turbines are expensive. Take a look at the right-hand side of the slide, I think it says it all. Long lead times. Get in line. It takes three to four years to even get your hands on a gas turbine. And they face considerable regulatory uncertainty, particularly in light of the new EPA rules that just came out.
And look, even if we all have a view that those regulations ultimately won't succeed from a litigation perspective by around 2026, 2027, it's still gonna take years to play out. It's gonna create a lot of uncertainty as that unfolds, and it won't stop there. There'll be the next thing behind it, the next thing, and the next thing. And then the final point I'll make, and we know this better than anybody with Mountain Valley Pipeline, it's really, really hard to build new gas infrastructure in this country to get the gas to where it needs to be. And I'm proud to say MVP's in service today, but it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy. Three times we had to permit it, it took an act of Congress, but we finally were able to get it done.
Gas pipeline capacity only works in less than a handful of states in this country, so think about that. New nuclear. I hear a lot about new nuclear. We follow new nuclear. It's unproven, it's first of a kind, it's expensive, constant cost overruns, and it's really slow to build. Not really even a viable solution for 10-15 years out, if you're willing to pay for it when it arrives. And for all these reasons, forecasts are projecting that we're going to see a tripling in renewable and storage growth over the next seven years versus what we've seen over the prior seven. The generation mix is expected to shift increasingly towards renewables for all the reasons I just provided. While renewables have never been more advantageous, we stay close to all current and emerging technologies, so if things change, we'll be ready.
As renewables grow, so will the demand for near-firm battery storage, where the opportunity used to just be limited to California, but now it's spreading across the country. We're seeing it in MISO, in SPP, ERCOT, other regions. And that's also why you see that the U.S. energy storage market is expected to grow up to 6x over the next seven years versus the prior seven. Nobody's better positioned to be able to meet that demand than NextEra Energy. We are the U.S. leader in battery storage. We have sites ready to go. We have over 50 GW just in our existing operating portfolio and backlog that can accommodate co-located storage, and we have 34 GW of standalone interconnection queue spots ready to go for storage technology. Nobody is better positioned to meet storage demand than NextEra Energy.
Whether you're trying to site gas, wind, solar, or any other type of new power generation, you need access to the grid, which means you need to get in a long line. Only one company, NextEra Energy, has both the ability to build new transmission and a 300 GW pipeline with 150 GW of interconnection queue-ready sites. And that's amazing. So when you think about that, and you think about what it takes, it takes build capability and it takes sites, and we have both. And we also have the data and the analytics and relationships with multiple system operators and multiple utilities to get the power to where it needs to go. NextEra Energy Transmission is in every RTO in this country, and its current and planned investments have already enabled 41 GW of new renewable generation that can interconnect to the grid.
So when we look at power demand projections, it's clear NextEra Energy has significant long-term competitive advantages with not only the sites, but also with the transmission capabilities that it brings to the table. So now let's switch gears and talk about our competitive advantages. NextEra is uniquely positioned to meet the growing demand for electricity for three main reasons: our scale, our experience, and our technology. Scale matters more than ever before in this industry. No one can match our scale in renewables or storage outside of Florida. No one can match our scale in supply chain, construction, operations, access to capital, or in cost of capital. No one can match our scale in developing sites. And because we capture more market share than anyone else, our scale advantages grow every single day... Experience.
Nothing separates us more from the competition than the experience of our team, which I firmly believe is the best in the industry. We hire top talent. We retain and develop that talent with the right training and the right tools. Our talent gains experience. Why? Because we move them across the organization, and we have experience in transmission and market knowledge that nobody else can match. Technology, which starts with our massive data advantage, which we have used to design tools that nobody else has, including generative AI tools that are transforming the way that we do business. Without the right data, there is no technology to lever, to leverage, and we have decades of data that we use across FPL and Energy Resources to make smart capital investments for our customers. The foundation of our scale, experience, and technology is FPL, the nation's leading electric utility.
We know how to support growth, powering one of the fastest-growing states in the nation. We know how to develop and site projects. We have operating expertise across solar, storage, nuclear, fossil, and transmission. We deploy innovative solutions and technology to lower costs for our customers. We are experts in managing through disruptive events like hurricanes. We are building the utility of the future and have deep relationships and mutual respect across the utility paradigm. At Energy Resources, we bring our scale, experience, and technology in renewables and storage as the world's leader. We know how to leverage our massive datasets, having invested in advanced digital platforms, operating our sites remotely. We are leveraging AI solutions to pick and operate the best sites. We are experts in renewable development, supporting our 300 GW pipeline, which is high quality because of our data-driven site selection process.
We can deliver speed to market from our existing 34 GW operating footprint, and we have strong customer relationships from years of serving not only power, but C&I customers. Our renewable operating portfolio significantly outpaces the U.S. industry, nearly double the next closest operator. This lead is not by accident, but rather as a result of decades of focus on continuous improvement and innovation. You can see all the competitive advantages that we bring to the table on the right. These exist because of the unique combination of our two industry-leading businesses. Both inside and outside of Florida, we are top decile operators. We have experience across the energy value chain, which allows us to provide low-cost, clean energy solutions to our customers. At FPL, we've been able to take billions of dollars out of the fuel bill by prioritizing more efficient generation.
Our competitive advantages apply across our development platform. We are expecting a 20% compound annual growth rate in installed renewables over the next 10 years. So while Energy Resources is growing, FPL is growing at the same time. And with FPL, the renewables today are roughly 5% of our capacity. That's expected to grow to 38% in the next 10 years. Why? Because solar and storage are by far the lowest cost option for customers, driving bills lower every day. And scale experience in technology, it grows as our portfolio grows. We're expecting an 81 GW combined renewable generation portfolio by the end of 2027. If you add that on top of what we already operate, that's 115 GW.
That is massive, and that is massive scale that nobody can catch up with, creating more and more distance between us and our competition, lowering costs of renewables and storage for customers both inside and outside of Florida, and expanding the option value that's embedded in our portfolio. Think about every renewable and wind site that we build. When the wind's not blowing and the sun's not shining, we have a lot of unutilized transmission capacity, which means we can co-locate batteries at those sites. We can co-locate other generation at those sites as well. We can put wind under solar, or we can put wind at solar sites. We also have the ability to repower our existing renewables, whether it's wind, and we'll talk more today about even potentially solar as we move forward.
That option value isn't even considered in the returns when we approve an investment decision. It's all upside that's creating value, not only for our shareholders, but for our customers as well. It's not just the scale that drives our success, it's also our team. It's our experience, which I believe sets us apart. We understand every part of the energy business like no other company in our sector. We have spent decades building the best team in the business and cultivating a culture that fosters efficiency, innovation, and growth. We have deep market knowledge from decades of developing and operating projects across the country. We bring transmission solutions to the table, hardening, undergrounding, automating. FPL was one of the first utilities in the nation to adopt smart meters and smart grid technology. We have experience across power generation technology.
It's not just wind, it's not just solar, it's not just storage. We're one of the top operators in nuclear as well, and understand it as well as anyone, and gas-fired generation. We are experts in operating all that really helps make us a trusted advisor. Doesn't matter if we're working with a C&I customer or a power customer alike. We have a long track record of designing optimal, low-cost, clean power solutions for customers because of this experience. In short, we can offer customers a systems rather than a singular solution, and meet their power decarbonization needs. That is what is required to win today in renewables and in generation. Our team is also helping us to advance our technology advantage, which I firmly believe is the next frontier of power, where we are absolutely cutting edge.
Those of you that attended our Renewable Development Day back in March, you got a chance to see our technology in action and how we leverage it across both of our businesses. Leveraging technology requires data. Nobody has more proprietary data than we do. Our technology has enabled remote operations of renewables fleet, which is extremely scalable. Think about this, think about the scale that goes into having a remotely operated renewable fleet. Every incremental megawatt we add has a 20%-25% reduction in O&M. That's what you call scale. FPL is the only utility in the nation to remotely operate its fossil fleet, the only utility in the country to do that. We are leveraging technology for generative AI across the business as well, across generation, across transmission, across our staff groups. Technology also helps us to identify system solutions for customers.
We're using technology to reshape the way we market to customers today. A lot of you got a chance to see what we call our Discover tool that we use with data center customers, hyperscalers. We go in, and we save them money, right? 45% of their OpEx in operating a hyperscale data center facility is power. But what if you had a tool that could show them where the best wind resource is, best solar resource, highest source of water, right? Because you have to cool those supercomputers. Best fiber connectivity, best place to interconnect into the transmission grid. We have that tool. That blows their socks away every time we show it to them. Nobody else has that type of competitive advantage. And our scale, experience, and technology also helps us successfully manage common industry challenges that have impacted other companies.
Here are some examples of things that I've heard from all of you. We have enormous scale and flexibility with our supply chain, with over 10,000 suppliers. We're able to secure labor up to three years in advance, so we never get caught short. We're able to secure critical equipment, so we never get caught short in our ability to interconnect, whether it's transformers, switch gears, or the like. We have applied advanced analytics to our global supply chain practices, ensuring we're able to obtain the best pricing for our customers, while also managing geopolitical risk, as we have leveraged our scale to secure interconnect spots. As our portfolio grows, so does our scale, experience, and technology, leading to further separation from our competition.
Underpinning all of these competitive advantages is one of the strongest balance sheets in the sector, making us more resilient to whatever the future may hold. We have relationships with over 85 banks, spanning 20 countries and five continents. We have multiple capital recycling avenues. We have an A-minus credit rating at NextEra Energy, ample access to tax equity and the tax transferability. These give us what we believe is a cost of capital and an access to capital advantage. Our strong balance sheet is core to everything we do, and we won't compromise it. These advantages are why we have consistently delivered for customers and shareholders while leading what's possible in power. At FPL, we've always been laser-focused on cost and on productivity. Over the past 30 years, our teams have built a model of operational excellence that benefits our customers.
FPL's relentless focus on efficiency to reduce operational costs, such as non-fuel O&M, have delivered substantial benefits to our customers. Take a look at the chart here. What this chart says is that if FPL were just an average utility, we'd have O&M costs that were 70% higher than they are today. Because we're not an average utility, our O&M costs are 70% lower. That creates $3 billion of savings every single year... for our customers, that they can put back in their pocket, use to pay their bills, use to send their kids to college, use to save for retirement, use to take that much needed vacation. That makes a big impact with the regulator. And while competitors have come and gone, Energy Resources has built a commanding position as a leading renewable energy developer in America over the last 25 years.
Today, Energy Resources has a 20% market share. As we grow, so do our scale advantages, including our buying power, our ability to leverage technology to operate every incremental megawatt cheaper than the one that came before it. We believe that lead has the potential to extend even further, given the opportunity set that we have in front of us. A big driver of our outperformance in both businesses has been our culture, our culture of execution and innovation. I love what you see on the left-hand side: safety. We care about our people. We care about our people and our team more than anything else, and we wanna make sure they're safe every day they come to work. We have doubled down on our safety effort. We have been able to reduce safety incidents by 90% over the last 20 years.
You find a company that's great at safety, you will also find a company that has their eye on the ball on operational execution. So when you look on the right-hand side, you guys have heard us talk about this before. We go to our employees every year, and we say, "Hey, you guys know what the best opportunities are to take cost out of the business. Come to us with your own ideas." And we never, ever stop getting better. And what do I mean by that? $460 million of cost savings opportunities identified in 2024, a record year after doing this since 2014, and a record year in safety in 2023. That's a company that has its eye on the ball.
Also, as part of our cost-saving efforts, we identified a host of generative AI ideas that are now being implemented across the company. This is what I like to call our 20-year report card. You could draw a line directly from these initiatives to our bottom line performance, which has been steady and strong. Our last 20 years, our results speak for themselves. We've consistently been able to grow adjusted earnings, dividends, and cash. How? Growth and execution, delivering shareholder value, which has translated into strong total shareholder return, which you can see on the right. Not swinging for the fences, but quarter after quarter after quarter execution. That history of outperformance flows from a business that generates what we believe are superior risk-adjusted returns, earnings, and dividend growth.
Over the last 10, 5, 10, 15, and as you saw on the last slide, 20 years, pick your time period, we have executed. Through various economic cycles and under different administrations, we have executed. We have a track record of beating consensus estimates, while our peers in the broader market have historically underperformed. Adding our attractive dividend yield together with our low beta, we have offered a compelling risk-adjusted return over any time period that you measure. Take your pick. When you put it all together, we believe NextEra offers a compelling investor value proposition. So we've taken what was a small company 20 years ago, and we've turned it into the industry leader. How have we done it?
Through hard work and transformation and determination, a commitment to a strategy and a vision, growth and execution, a will to win in any environment, a culture that never settles, that says that we can always do better. Going forward, we expect to continue our track record of strong performance. Why? We have the best playbook, and we have our scale, our experience, and our technology. More importantly, we have what I believe is the best team in the industry. In a few minutes, you will hear from Armando, Christopher Chapel, and Scott Bores at FPL. And you'll hear from Rebecca Kujawa, our resident MIT rocket scientist, and Matt Roskot at Energy Resources, and you'll also hear from our new CFO, Brian Bolster.
I couldn't be more confident in all of them and in the 16,000 employees back home who are the smartest, most innovative, most capable people in our industry. When you put it all together, we run a balanced business with strong, rate-regulated, long-term contracted cash flows. Most of our cash flows are generated from our rate-regulated and long-term contracted businesses. We grow earnings and cash flow primarily by making investments in renewables, storage, and transmission that are either rate-regulated or long-term contracted. At Energy Resources-... If you include our backlog, we expect to have 482 power purchase agreements with 194 counterparties that all have an A-minus counterparty credit average on average. Yeah, that's diversification. That's diversification.
For that small part of the business that's not rate-regulated or long-term contracted, some of it's customer-facing, and that customer-facing business is absolutely integral to our origination efforts and to our market knowledge. We could not do what we do in renewables without that capability. Some of it is also gas infrastructure, which we're gonna continue to look to continue to de-emphasize as we move forward, and use to recycle capital back into the core business of renewables and storage. Our vision is simple: Our focus is on investing in renewables, storage, and transmission, both inside and outside of Florida, which is good for customers and good for shareholders. We expect to create significant shareholder value over the next four years, and today we are extending our financial expectations out to 2027.
We expect to grow adjusted earnings per share expectations by 6%-8% off our 2024 adjusted EPS range through 2027, and we will be disappointed if we are not able to deliver financial results at or near the top end of our adjusted EPS expectation ranges in each year through 2027. We also expect to grow dividends per share by 10% off our 2024 expected DPU base through 2026. Finally, we expect our cash flow from operations to grow in line with our adjusted EPS expectations over the same time period. Before I wrap up, I want to say a few things about our adjusted EPS expectations. First, getting to the high end is de-risked. Second, we are heading into a rate case in 2025.
I couldn't feel better having delivered on our outstanding customer value proposition, but we're not taking anything for granted. Third, due to the favorable economics and other tailwinds for renewables and storage, particularly our replacement opportunity that we've seen over the last several years, we already had a pretty darn strong view of demand for 2026 and 2027 at this time last year. This new demand, this new demand that we've been talking about today, as we sit here today, doesn't really start to feather in until 2027, which primarily benefits earnings in 2028 and beyond. But if it comes earlier, and it certainly could, we are ready. And finally, our team has a track record of finding ways to outperform. In closing, our prospects for future growth have never been stronger.
Our vision has been the same for many years, and that is to be the largest, most profitable, most capable clean energy provider. Our vision is to be the best utility franchise at FPL by doubling down on what we do best: low bills, high reliability, smart capital investments. Our vision is to be the best renewables and storage developer in the world at Energy Resources by doubling down on what we do best: wind, solar, storage, and transmission. This is a long-term growth opportunity. We have the playbook and the platform to win in any environment. Our competitive advantages continue to grow every single day, providing industry differentiation that is over two decades in the making and is really hard to catch up with. I firmly believe we will expand that strategic distance, creating value for customers and shareholders.
Nobody is better positioned in the NextEra to serve the clean energy customer of tomorrow. I couldn't be more confident in our team, our ability to execute, our growth prospects, our financial expectations, and our vision as we lead the energy transition. Before I hand things over to Armando, I want to play a short video. Thank you.
As technology disrupts every industry across our economy, power and technology have converged and are now co-dependent on each other, driving productivity and electric demand growth across all sectors. This convergence of power and technology is real. It's at an inflection point, and the opportunity set for our company is unlike anything we have experienced. NextEra Energy was built for just this type of industry inflection point. Our scale, experience, and technology are embedded in our DNA.
That's why we believe we are better positioned than any other company to benefit from all this demand for electricity.
Scale, experience, and technology have made FPL the nation's leading electric utility. We know how to support growth, powering one of the fastest-growing states in the nation.
as we have experience across solar, storage, nuclear, fossil, and transmission. We are in every part of the energy value chain, and we know what every part costs.
Our supply chain relationships are deep and diverse, which allow us to procure and build what makes the most sense for each customer.
Scale, experience, and technology are a huge competitive advantage at NextEra Energy Resources. We are experts in renewables development, supporting our high-quality, 300 GW pipeline with a data-driven site selection process that no one else can match in the industry. We can deliver speed to market from our 150 GW of interconnect queue positions and our existing 34 GW operating footprint, which we expect to grow to more than 70 GW in just three years. We also have strong customer relationships from our years serving more electricity to other power and C&I customers than any other company.
Technology is core to the FPL story. Our superior value proposition, high reliability, and a customer bill that is well below the national average, is a direct result of a multi-decade journey in our embrace and adoption of cutting-edge tools. Smart grid technologies, predictive analytics, robotics, drones, automation, remote operations, and now generative AI, improve efficiency, reduce outages, improve restoration times, and drive out costs. And all of it is focused on delivering reliable and low-cost electricity to our customers every single day.
No one has built more generation than FPL over the last 15 years. No one operates more solar and storage. We have a team that continues to get better: better at restoring power after a storm, better at operations, better at keeping costs as low as possible for our customers.
We're not only the biggest renewable energy developer, but also the broadest across many dimensions, by generation technology, by geography, by data and data analytics, by know-how, by customer class. You'll be hard-pressed to find an energy company that has a better vantage point to see the future unfold and to act on it.
NextEra Energy understands how and where to develop. We plan years in advance to get the best sites and secure permits, while winning the hearts and minds of our local communities and decision-makers.
Technology is a force multiplier at NextEra Energy Resources. We capture more than 560 billion data points every day. This data is utilized in our proprietary AI-driven tools to identify the best development sites and find the optimal access point to the transmission grid. Our advanced digital platforms also allow us to operate our sites remotely, helping us drive O&M costs that are 20%-25% lower than the rest of the industry.
We are unmatched in our ability to plan and build for the long term and invest at scale to help customers reach their cost and sustainability goals successfully and profitably.
While everyone's talking about growth, we've been delivering it for decades, but it's not growth at all costs. There is no one else in the S&P 500 who can deliver growth at our scale, while also providing attractive risk-adjusted returns. We have a formula that works: focus on returns while maintaining our strong balance sheet. As we move forward in this exciting and evolving market, we will continue to remain anchored in those core principles while we seek to deliver value for our shareholders.
Nobody has NextEra Energy's opportunity set or our scale, our experience, our technology. And we're using all three to power a new industrialized economy rooted in technology, while at the same time using technology in our own business to disrupt our own sector. Technology is the next frontier in power. No company is better positioned than NextEra Energy to benefit from and to lead the vast opportunities to electrify the U.S. economy as power and technology converge. And we are ready to capitalize on this tremendous opportunity.
Good morning, everyone. It's great to see everybody here today. Thank you for, for being here with us. So you heard John speak about Florida Power & Light and Energy Resources. A lot of information on, on FPL. At FPL, we continue to do the same thing that we've been doing for a long period of time.
We're prepared for the growth that we expect to see over the next couple of decades. Why are we prepared for the growth? Right, we have been building on that growth at FPL for a long period of time. Context is important. Over the last 10 years, we've added enough gigawatt hours to equal 50% of one of the largest utilities in California, 40% of one of the largest utilities in the Southeast, and 100% of the largest utility in Ohio. We've seen the growth, we've prepared for the growth, and the playbook, which I'll talk about in just a couple of minutes, remains the same.
If you wake up every day and you're gonna do the best thing for your customers, you're gonna focus on the reliability of the customers, you're gonna focus on the capital investment that it takes to make sure your customers are comfortable, and if you keep their customer bills as low as possible, that's a really good place to be in Florida. That's a great place to be in Florida. It's a great story to tell your regulators. It's a great story to tell the legislators. Florida is a great place to invest capital, and we've been doing it for a long period of time.... A couple years ago at this conference, we spoke about, well, what are the commitments that we were willing to make? The same way we've been doing for two decades.
If you go back to the commitments that we talked about in 2002, 2022, you'll see that we had commitments on costs. We met them, we crushed them again. John gave you the numbers. We gave you some commitments on reliability. We did it. We crushed them. We'll do it again. We wake up every day thinking about our customers. It's really important to think about how to make your customers' lives better every day, and during that time, we had to put a lot of capital to work. We saw tremendous growth, some of it related to the pandemic. A lot of people wanted to move into Florida. Anybody here move to Florida during the pandemic, buy a house? One, really? I think you guys are lying. And we continue to see that growth, right?
We continue to see it every day, and we're, we're happy to call Florida our home. The four things that we're gonna talk about today is the demand in Florida. How's that going? You heard John talk about it a little bit. You're gonna hear my perspective on it. You're gonna hear how we're well-positioned to deal with that growth, where our starting point is for that growth in, in Florida. Christopher Chapel will then come up and talk about our set, right? How our scale, how our experience, and how our technology affect what we do every day for our customers in Florida. Then Scott Bores will come out and talk to you about our capital plan for the next several years and what we've done and what we're focusing about. Florida's growing. Here are some GDP forecast numbers for Florida over the next 20 or so years.
For some of you, that's not much of a surprise. You're seeing it in the media every day. People are talking about how folks are moving into Florida. Some of the largest financial businesses right here from New York have moved into Florida. Some of the largest financial businesses from California have moved into Florida. There are a lot of employees that are moving, a lot of residences that are being picked up in Florida. That growth, which continues the two-decade growth that we've seen in Florida, we expect to continue. That population growth, why? 'Cause we have great weather. Yeah, we get a storm every now and then, but we still have great weather. We have no income taxes. It's one of the best states in the nation to do business in.
Florida has a lot going for it, and if you're the largest utility in Florida like we are, and you focus on your customers, how to make your customers' lives better every day by investing capital, you've got a lot to work with. You've got a great legislative environment, you've got a constructive regulatory environment, and you've got the growth that you need in order to deploy capital in the state. It's not just the residential sector. We're also seeing in the commercial sector, the industrial sector. This is a picture of a rendering of Port of Miami, where we are in the final stages of electrifying their port. We're also going up a little north, and we're going to electrify the port in Fort Lauderdale.
Just those two projects will add 150 megawatts to our system by the end of the decade, and there are many other examples. So it's the residents that are moving in, using all of their equipment. It's the C&I businesses that are moving in and wanting to electrify that is adding to our growth. If you look at FPL over the last 20 years, we have built a brand-new utility. We've been able to build a brand-new utility again because of all of the growth. No one has put more capital to work than FPL over the last 2 decades. You heard it in Scott Bores's comment in the video. No one has built more generation, no one operates more solar and storage than we do here in Florida.
Nobody has added more grid technology than we have added in Florida because we have had the opportunity to do that. If you have the growth in Florida, you have the opportunity to do all of those things, and you need to execute on all of those things, just like FPL has executed over the last couple of decades. In a few minutes, Scott Bores will be up here, and he'll talk about 2023 to 2033, and you will see again that we will create a brand-new utility over the next 10 years. As we've been doing that, we have focused on emissions, and we've focused on emissions because it's the right thing to do.
And you can look at some of the numbers that you have up here on this slide, and we are cleaner, absolutely cleaner than just about anybody in the United States. Look how we've improved over the last 20 years. You heard some of the bill information earlier. Our customer bill is 37% lower than the average customer bill across the nation. This just proves that you can be clean and low cost at the same time. The FPL Playbook. How many of us have heard about the FPL Playbook? It's something that we talk to our employees about all the time. It's something that we talk to our regulators about all the time. It's something that we talk to you about all the time. In four simple charts, it shows how we have executed on the FPL Playbook.
We focus on reducing costs while improving reliability. It's something we do. Why? Because of all of the things that were mentioned earlier. Why should we be high cost? We're providing customers electricity. Why shouldn't we have the lowest cost possible? Why shouldn't every year we go in and try to reduce the cost and increase the reliability? And by doing so, that, in and of itself, lowers the customer bill. What's the other thing we've done? Fuel savings. Over two decades, we have made sure that we can invest in assets that provide our customers fuel savings, whether it was all of the combined cycle generation that we built over the last couple of decades that replaced older fossil technology, or whether it's now all of the solar and all of the storage that we are putting into the system.
Almost $16 billion in cumulative fuel savings over the last two decades for our customers. Reduce O&M, reduce fuel, so that you can employ capital to make your customer lives better. Employ capital to improve reliability. That in and of itself, those three slides are the FPL story. FPL—every FPL employee knows it, we live it, we tell the story, we execute it, but all of that would be meaningless without the fourth slide. That fourth chart shows that all of the things that we have done over the last two decades make sense for our customer. The bill is relatively flat over the last 20, 10 years, and that's the FPL story. Reduce costs, improve reliability, take fuel out of the system, and put capital to work to make your customers' lives better while keeping the bills flat. That's what we're proud of.
That's what the story is when we meet with regulators and legislators in the, in the state of Florida, and it's a good story and one that I am very, very happy about. To hit home on that last point again, this is some of the cost information over the last 10 years. You've seen it, I've seen it, we all read about it, and then you look at the FPL bill, all the way down at the, at the right. During that term, the benefit of the cost decreases on solar and battery storage have been significant. When I talk about building the next new FPL, the next new FPL is going to be built on solar and battery storage. It will continue to improve all of the things I just talked about. It will continue to take fuel out of the system. It will continue to improve reliability.
It will continue to have a customer bill that is as low as possible, and we are very happy about it. I couldn't be more proud of leading FPL and more happy to be located in the state of Florida. I'm now gonna ask Christopher Chapel, our Chief Operating Officer, to go on with the FPL story.
Thanks, Armando. Good morning, everyone. At the core of every single thing that we do at FPL is the best team in the business. We leverage NextEra's scale, build on nearly a century's worth of operational excellence and experience, and deploy technology across every single facet of our business, all to deliver on FPL's superior customer value proposition. We were the first electric utility to fully modernize our fossil fleet and the first to invest at scale in solar and batteries. Early actions that save our customers hundreds of millions of dollars in avoided fuel costs every single year. And because of our culture of continuous improvement, the entire FPL team participates in our annual storm dry run, and we refine our best-in-class storm restoration process every single year. And we leverage new tools and processes better than any company in our industry.
Technologies, automation, analytics, robotics, and now even generative AI. We leverage them all to improve efficiency, to improve our customer experience, to improve reliability, and to drive costs out for the benefit of our customers. We've talked a lot this morning about NextEra's scale. NextEra's scale directly benefits FPL's customers. It enables us to buy cheaper, to build less expensively, and to operate more efficiently. And as you've heard, as a result, our typical bill is nearly 40% below the national average. That doesn't happen by accident. Our scale, our experience, our technology, our culture, it drives innovation, and that drives efficiency. At $11.59, our non-fuel O&M is 22% better than it was 10 years ago. If you want to understand our company, if you want to understand our culture, that's it in a nutshell....
where we can be both best and not satisfied, striving for continuous improvement. Today, we're a remarkable 41% better than the second best in our industry, and 70% better than the national average. That's our—said differently, our operational efficiency saves our customers over $3 billion every single year versus an average utility. And this is how we get there. It starts with developing the best generation sites for our customers. You heard about our massive data resources and our siting tools. These help us quickly identify buildable land near a grid interconnection, and developing optimized sites enables efficient operations, and that takes costs out. We were the first electric utility to centralize our solar operations. As many of you saw at our Development Day, FPL worked with Energy Resources and did it for our renewable assets.
Well, last year, we leveraged those learnings, and we became the first electric utility to centralize our fossil fleet operations. Of course, that brings savings, but that also brings redundancy and continuity. In leveraging technology and experience, we've centralized our power distribution command center. That allows our grid operators to see the status of every single power line, every substation, every piece of equipment on our system in real time. That enables the efficient monitoring, control, and management of the entire 80,000 mi distribution system. And like our generation fleet, the distribution command center is in a Category 5 building. So that ensures reliable electricity for our customers. That ensures continuity, but it also ensures safety for our team. And our storm response, our storm response has improved dramatically as a direct result of our investments in technology and infrastructure.
We've worked constructively with our regulators and our legislators over the past years and have developed these programs that enable these investments for the benefit of our customers. As you can see from the chart, the difference is profound. We've bent the curve, pushed everything to the left and up. That's more customers restored and quicker restoration times. For example, Hurricane Ian was the fifth strongest storm to ever hit the continental U.S. Every single one of our plants stayed online. Zero transmission structures were impacted. 0.3% of our solar was impacted. Our undergrounded lines performed 5x better than overhead lines. As a result, we were able to restore power to 2/3 of our impacted customers within the first 24 hours of the storm hitting. FPL Air One, which you see behind me, was integral to our response during Hurricane Ian.
Today at FPL, we have 161 drones. We have 20 FAA beyond the line of sight waivers and have already logged over 450,000 drone flights. We use drones as a first wave of response after storms to assess equipment, to speed recovery, to keep our team safe. We also use drones for blue sky patrols to assess equipment and to collect data. We use them to avoid problems before they even become problems. We have the best drone program in industry. Heck, we might have the best drone program of any company in any industry, but we're just getting started. We expect to continue to expand the program, continue to optimize this technology to drive costs out and to optimize our resources. It's not just drones. We've always been at the forefront of innovation.
15 years ago, we were the first electric utility to deploy smart meters at scale. Today, we have well over 5 million smart meters and another 250,000 smart devices across our network. Take a look at this clip. These are automated feeder switches, AFSs. A branch falls on one of our distribution lines or lightning strikes. The automated feeder switch opens to protect the equipment. It closes the circuit if it's safe to do so. If it's not, it isolates the incident, which minimizes the number of customers who are impacted. This helps us manage outages much more efficiently, often without the need to ever even send out a crew. This technology and other technologies in 2023 alone saved our customers 43 million minutes of outages.
I think, I think one of the most remarkable things about FPL is that we've been able to take costs out continually and improve reliability continually. We've improved the average number of minutes a customer is out each year by 33% over the last 10 years and are now 66% better than the national average. And our frequency of interruptions is 22% better than the national average. That's despite Florida's tropical vegetation, that's despite Florida's wildlife.... That's despite the fact that Florida gets more lightning strikes than any other place in America. And at FPL, there's nothing more important than safety. Our teams work incredibly hard every single day to deliver low-cost and reliable electricity to our customers. But our number one responsibility is to keep each other safe, to make sure everyone goes home at the end of the day to their families.
2023 was a record safety year for FPL. We're incredibly proud of that. We're also not satisfied. Just like everything else at FPL, we are committed to getting better. We will not stop until we get to zero injuries. I think we've reinvented the electric utility model by modernizing our fleet, by deploying solar and storage at scale, by showing that you can be high reliability, clean, and low cost, but we're not done. On the generation side, we're excited about alternative storage technologies. We believe these may further enhance the value of solar, provide additional operational flexibility, and additional supply chain diversification. On the transmission and distribution side, we're exploring advanced conductor technology that can be used to reconductor existing power lines without significant structural modifications, increasing the flow of power. We're also excited about generative AI.
In just 12 months, FPL generated 62 actionable ideas, with four high priority use cases already deployed and scaling. For example, we deployed an AI tool to assist our engineers in designing distribution projects by easily assessing equipment-specific data. We're also combining AI visual recognition tools with LiDAR images taken by our drones to detect anomalies on lines. Again, preventing problems before they become problems. With our data advantage and our innovative culture, we aim to continue not just to simply take costs out, but to reinvent the electric utility model yet again. We're also building a digital platform for our customers. Our goal is always to create a seamless experience for our customers, to meet them when, where, and how they want to be met. Last year, we had over 140 million customer interactions, 96% of which were handled with technology.
Over 80% of our customers get their bills electronically. Over 90% of our customers pay their bills electronically. Those are best-in-class numbers. But our platform is not just about billing. We're building a platform to provide our customers with tools and to empower them with their energy data. We're building a platform that provides options, not just for electricity, but for services and products like EV chargers and smart panels. We also created an innovation hub to grow startups. Our goal is to help entrepreneurs develop energy and tech ideas into thriving businesses in Florida. We've already graduated 13 startups. We're piloting technologies with two of the startups, and the program's won three awards. An example of one of the startups is a company called Switched Source. They developed a technology that behaves a lot like a cop directing traffic.
Their technology redirects electrons to balance the flow of electricity across power lines, enabling our lines to carry even more electricity. We've piloted their technology with them and are working to deploy more units this year. These are all great accomplishments, but the thing I am most proud of is the fact that our team never loses sight of the fact that it is about our customers and our communities. For us, it's about doing the right thing, having a service mindset, giving back, being leaders in the communities that we are honored to serve. Our economic development program has helped over 300 companies locate to FPL service territory. That's brought 50,000 new jobs and over $6 billion of economic investment.
Over the last two years, our teammates have volunteered over 130,000 hours through 77 distinct service projects, like the classroom makeover that you see behind me. They've donated over $8 million to local nonprofits. I'm incredibly happy and proud to end exactly where I started, by talking about the best team in the business. Ultimately, it's our people and our culture that enable our success. With that, I'd like to hand it over to our VP of Finance, Scott Bores, to wrap up the FPL presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Christopher. Good morning. We've talked a lot this morning about the growth at FPL, the best we've seen in the last 15 years, with no signs of that growth slowing down. That provides tremendous visibility into our capital plan. Over the next four years, we project to invest $34 billion-$37 billion. That's gonna allow us to continue to grow regulatory capital employed at roughly a 9% compound annual growth rate through 2027.... We're gonna continue to invest to improve the overall customer value proposition by adopting new technologies, maintaining our existing generation fleet, expanding and enhancing our transmission and distribution infrastructure while maintaining our best-in-class reliability, and building new generation to support load growth to continue to drive fuel out of the bill. Roughly a third of our generation, or roughly a third of our investment is gonna be in generation.
We're gonna invest $12 billion in solar over the next few years. Back in April, we filed our 10-Year Site Plan. From a solar perspective, our site plan this year looked a lot like it did last year: solar, solar, and more solar. 20 GW over the next 10 years. Solar is a great investment for our customers and fits perfectly into our strategy of deploying capital and keeping bills low. Unlike a traditional fossil plant, which carries with it a capital revenue requirement and a fuel expense that increase customer bills over time, solar today is nearly at the point where it is zero cost for customers over its life. So what does that mean? Yes, solar also has a capital revenue requirement, including our return on that investment. However, that is primarily offset by fuel savings and production tax credits.
When you run all of that out over a 35-year life of a solar facility and then discount that back to today's dollars, it results in nearly zero cost for customers over its life, a tremendous investment. And we all know the sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day. That's why we're excited to invest $1.5 billion over the next four years in battery storage. Back in 2019, we placed in service our Manatee Battery, and having that as part of our generation stack the last five years has provided some really valuable insights. Whether it's there to help with day-to-day reliability or on a cold winter peak morning or hot summer peak afternoon. Batteries also provide great operational flexibility during storms. During Hurricane Ian, our Manatee Battery was available and ready to dispatch.
That's why our site plan is doubling the amount of battery storage from 2 GW - 4 GW over the next 10 years. Paired with solar, battery storage results in the most reliable, lowest cost generation plan for our customers. Back when we were on this stage in 2022, we announced an ambitious, but what we viewed as a realistic goal, to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2045. We remain committed to the goal, but as a reminder, it hinges on ensuring we can do so at zero incremental cost for our customers. I just talked about our site plan, where we plan to add 25 GW of new renewables over the next 10 years.
Paired with the 5 GW we already have in service today, that has us well on track to meet the emission reduction milestones we laid out back in 2022. Longer term, this plan has the potential to add significant low-cost renewables and battery storage, over 100 GW to our system, representing a significant investment opportunity for years to come. That plan is based on our load forecast as of today. If we see some of this demand that I'm going to talk about in a few minutes, it has the potential to significantly increase our generation build. We remain committed to doing what's right for our customers and the state of Florida. On the transmission and distribution side of the business, we plan to invest $13 billion-$15 billion over the next four years.
That investment is really gonna fall into three main buckets. First, growth. I've talked a lot about the growth. We are gonna need to continue to invest, to expand our transmission system, as well as build the distribution backbone to be able to support that growth. Second, reliability. Christopher just talked about all the technology and automation that we've introduced to our grid. We're gonna continue to make those investments to maintain our best-in-class reliability position. Third, storm hardening. Through programs like the Storm Protection Plan, we're gonna continue to invest to improve the resiliency of our grid. Today, 96% of our transmission system is hardened, including all of peninsular Florida. 80% of our feeders are underground or hardened.
And while we've made great progress on our laterals and are already seeing day-to-day reliability benefits, we're only roughly 50% of the way there, representing a tremendous investment opportunity, $25 billion over the next 15 years. We continue to focus on voluntary product offerings to meet the unique electric needs of our customers. As the second largest state in terms of EV registrations, we are looking to capitalize on the demand for reliable and low-cost charging solutions. We're now offering two products for our customers. For our residential customers, we are offering an in-home managed charging solution for a flat, low monthly rate. And for our commercial industrial customers who are looking to electrify their fleets, we have the capability to bring the charging infrastructure.
What's great about both of these offerings is they allow us to deploy capital through a tariff and only charge those customers who wish to participate, thereby insulating the general body over the life of those investments. Back last year, we placed in service our Cavendish Hydrogen Hub, which is located next to our Okeechobee Clean Energy Center. Adjacent solar plants power five electrolyzers that produce and store green hydrogen. Today, we're running roughly a 5% blend of green hydrogen with natural gas through the combustion turbines at Okeechobee.... The existing technology in those combustion turbines is capable to producing up to, or accepting up to a 15% blend of green hydrogen. We have already learned a lot through developing, commissioning, and operating the hydrogen hub, and are excited to continue to bring forward new technologies that could unlock long-term value for our customers.
Given the benefits we've seen throughout the years from the pilot projects we've done, we are already beginning to develop another innovative pilot proposal for our upcoming rate case. That's likely going to hinge around the use of alternative and longer duration battery storage technology. You heard us talk this morning a lot about new areas driving demand growth in the industry. Florida's favorable business climate, coupled with FPL's strong customer value proposition, make us a great partner for many of the hyperscalers and other data center operators. Today, FPL already has 50 data centers operating within our service territory, though most of these are much smaller in size than what we're seeing in the market today. In the last nine months, we have seen significant interest in data center operators looking to relocate to FPL's territory.
However, we expect that growth is going to take some time to materialize, but by the time these data centers reach their full operational potential, it's likely going to be the latter half of this decade. Additionally, we do not expect these data centers are going to impact our near-term load forecast. As the customers show up in our service territory, we will be ready to efficiently serve them, just as we had all of our existing customers over the last 100 years. And in doing so, we're going to be smart. We're going to look to design rate structures to ensure we don't impact the existing general body of customers. Now that I've walked through the capital opportunity set, I thought it would be a good time to take a brief moment and remind you all on the simple recurring earnings equation at FPL.
It all starts with our regulatory capital employed. You multiply our capital employed times our allowed equity ratio, and multiply that by our return on equity, and that serves as a great approximation for FPL's net income. Growth. I talked about the growth. That growth has caused us to invest a lot more capital and invest that capital a lot sooner than we anticipated when we signed the settlement agreement. Back in 2022, we told you to expect us to invest $32 billion-$34 billion over the settlement period. Earlier this year, we increased that range and told you to now expect us to invest roughly just north of $34 billion over the settlement period. Additionally, back in 2022, we told you we were likely to grow regulatory capital employed at a 9% CAGR over the settlement period.
Again, earlier this year, we increased that and now told you to expect us to grow that to roughly 10% over that settlement period. All of this growth in capital is increasing our revenue requirements, and in between rate cases, we utilize our reserve amortization mechanism to offset those higher revenue requirements. As a reminder, as part of our settlement agreement, we received a $1.145 billion reserve amortization mechanism in lieu of no cash rate increases in 2024 and 2025. Given our strong focus on O&M and cost productivity through Project Velocity, we have been able to earn at or near the top of the ROE range, and we're going to continue to focus on cost. But all of this growth, in the short term, may challenge the amount of reserve amortization we have available.
Long term, this is going to be great for customers as it provides rate stability and highlights the benefits to the commission of having a reserve amortization mechanism. As I talked about earlier, we have great visibility to grow regulatory capital employed at a 9% compound annual growth rate through 2027. We're going to be filing a rate case early next year for new rates in January 2026. At FPL, our strategy is simple and has been for quite some time. It hinges around the virtuous circle. With the virtuous circle, it starts with the customer. Always putting the customer first and doing what's best for the customer. Investing to improve their reliability, investing in low-cost generation to drive fuel out of the bill, having the best-in-class O&M. All of those allow us to have low bills.
When you're improving the customer value proposition and have low bills, that leads to high customer satisfaction. That high customer satisfaction is what helps support our constructive regulatory environment. When we can go into a rate case and demonstrate all the great things we've done for customers and still have a low bill, that's what allows for the successful rate case outcomes. Those rate case outcomes support our strong balance sheet. With that strong balance sheet and our financial discipline, that's what allows us to attract capital and continue making investments for customers and keep that virtuous circle going. Having a strategy focused around the virtuous circle is not unique. What's unique is our ability to continually execute on that strategy and continue to deliver value for our customers over the long term.
That's why I'm confident as we head into this upcoming rate case, we're going to continue to be able to demonstrate to the commission all the great things we've done for our customers over this period that should lead to another constructive outcome. Before I close out on the FPL story this morning, I want to summarize the key takeaways... Armando talked about how we are well-positioned for long-term success. Our strong customer growth, coupled with new demand for power, will create opportunities for expansion and innovation. Our focus on putting the customer first, delivering high reliability and low bills, leads to our constructive regulatory environment that enables us to continue to deliver a leading value proposition. Christopher talked about our scale, experience, and technology that enable us to innovate, take costs out of the business, and keep our customer bills low while maintaining high reliability.
I just talked about our capital plan, the smart capital investments that we're going to make over the next four years. Longer term, as we work to build the utility of future, the great opportunity set, we have to continue to harden our grid and strengthen the resiliency, as well as invest in low-cost generation and battery storage that will create long-term value for our customers and our shareholders. On behalf of Armando, Christopher, and the entire team at FPL, thank you for the opportunity this morning to share our story. Now, I'm going to hand it back to Kristin to guide us to our break.
Thanks, everyone. So we'll take our 15-minute break now, and we'll be back here in 10:15 A.M. Thank you.
Please take your seats, everyone. Thank you, everyone, and I'd like to hand the mic over to Rebecca Kujawa, who will take us through the NEER section.
Good morning, everybody. I love to see the energy in this room, and the excitement, and the difficulty getting back from the break, as it's clearly a sign that we have a lot to talk about. Well, I am thrilled to be one to get to talk about the NextEra Energy Resources story. We are the world's leader in renewable energy from the wind and sun, and the world's leader in battery storage. We now have 34 GW of operating capacity in our portfolio. Now, we've talked about a lot of big numbers today, and we tend to talk about them pretty casually. But just to put that 34 GW in context, that is larger than the operating portfolios of most holding companies across this company, save only a small handful. Keep that in mind as we go through the rest of the presentation at Energy Resources today.
When you look across that 34 GW, what may be most notable is the breadth of it across so many different dimensions: across geography, across technology, across customer, across regulatory jurisdiction, all built over decades in our industry. You really would be hard-pressed to find an energy company with a better vantage point from which to see and participate in the trends that we are talking about today. We remain committed to delivering results. Our two-year report card, love to take Armando's comment, we have crushed it. In the last couple of years, we have delivered 18 GW of new renewables and storage that we have placed in our backlog. We have commissioned 10 GW of new renewables and storage projects and placed them into service.
We've originated $3 billion of investment opportunities in transmission, taken together with our existing fleet across NextEra Energy Transmission, enable 41 GW of renewables and storage to connect to the grid today and in the future. Throughout it all, we've remained committed to our financial discipline and committed to the strength of our balance sheet. That track record of execution goes back a very long time. In fact, over the last 20 years, we have delivered adjusted earnings and adjusted EBITDA growth of 15% and 14% annually. Through times that were really favorable, through times that were more challenging, throughout it all, we remained focused on delivering results and focused on navigating a strong path forward. What do we see looking forward? One of the best and most complex environments in our history, in our sector's history.
There are five key themes that I want to focus on for Energy Resources. First, this unprecedented demand for power is creating a new paradigm, which is important to consider what has changed as a result. Then I'm pleased to be joined by Petter Skantze, who is the Vice President of Infrastructure Development, which is responsible for all of renewable storage and transmission development for Energy Resources. He's going to talk about our scale, experience, and technology, and how they differentiate us in the development process, paving the path for us to power the growth in the American economy. And then Matt Roskot, our Vice President of Business Management and Finance, will join us to talk about the strength of our operating portfolio and all of the option value embedded in it, and how that creates strategic go-to-market advantages us—for us today and in the future.
Matt will also cover our fourth theme, which is our track record of results delivering superior returns and growth over a long period of time. And finally, I'll come back to talk about our fifth theme, which is our capital plans looking forward, how we plan to invest capital at superior returns and deliver 13% adjusted earnings growth over the coming years. Before we look forward, let me take just a minute to look back. Over the last five to seven years, renewables demand has really been characterized by a replacement cycle, by replacing old, inefficient, high cost, high carbon-emitting resources. And as we've been replacing these assets, new goals from corporate energy companies trying to get to zero carbon goals have further stimulated growth across renewables, accelerating our transition to a cleaner energy economy.
During this time, renewables additions have generally been just that, additive. There weren't significant financial or reliability considerations if these projects were a little bit late or didn't show up. Generally meant that an older asset ran for just a little bit longer or ran for just a little bit more, and our grid had ample capacity to accept these new additions. During this period, we and many others in our industry have thrived. This gently rising tide had lifted many boats. But let me be clear, going forward, a lot has changed. A lot has changed in the last couple of years. Today, we find ourselves at a new paradigm for power. This intersection of growth and transformation happening simultaneously, and this new paradigm brings new drivers for what it's going to take to be successful.
Understanding this is critical because this tsunami, this wave of demand, is not going to lift all boats. Only those that have been preparing for years, that have a bigger boat, that have been investing in technologies and enhancing their capabilities to navigate going forward, will have a significant advantage. Through the rest of this Energy Resources presentation, consider two questions: What technologies are best positioned to meet this new paradigm of growth and transformation? And secondly, what company is best positioned to deliver in this environment? In terms of what will win, I believe it's the least cost solutions that are fast to market, that are clean. In terms of who will win, it's the companies that have the ability to execute, that have market and speed to market advantages and scale, that will have a significant advantage.
I believe it's renewables and storage, and I believe it's NextEra Energy Resources. Let's spend just a minute talking about this wave of opportunity that's coming. The power demand that we are seeing is broad-based, and it is unlike anything we have seen in our industry for decades. It is driven not just by technology, but also manufacturing and industrial activities. It's aligned with broader themes that you know well: the continued growth in the American economy, the re-domestication of manufacturing and industrial activities, exciting trends in technology that will bolster U.S. leadership globally, and it is about electrification, not just for decarbonization, but also because of economics. It's crucial to understand that the tide shifted quickly, seemingly overnight, in an industry that likes to plan in decades. Just look at the chart on the right. Construction... Excuse me, on the left.
Construction manufacturing spend, which is represented over the last 10 years. It has gone up 4x over this timeframe, with most of that increase in manufacturing construction spend over the last two years. Very few have been planning for a change of conditions like this. The best leadership teams in our sector have thrived on navigating stability, on producing consistency. Few have been challenged by what it takes to grow in dynamic conditions such as these, and our commercial and industrial customers need solutions urgently. Their own business prospects are counting on the ability to access power. So given that market backdrop, let's talk about what is likely to get built. New renewables and storage are the least cost forms of energy and the most nimble forms of capacity across most parts of the U.S. today.
This is based on a generation profile basis of what do we need to recover in order to invest in these assets? But even if you look at renewables and storage on a seven by 24 profile basis, you integrate these resources into the grid with storage technologies, or you pair them with peaking gas facilities. New renewables, plus the addition of storage, remain lower cost than a new combined cycle natural gas plant. And that is before you take into account the long-term uncertainties of what it's going to cost for emissions mitigation and the near-term uncertainties of being able to access pipeline capacity or get through the permitting and regulatory process. And new renewables and storage are what is in the interconnection queues across the United States. That pie chart represents the interconnection queues across the entire United States today.
Nearly 90% of what is in the queue today are new renewables and storage. Now, it doesn't mean that only renewables and storage are going to get built, but what it does mean is these technologies have a cost and a speed-to-market advantage that suggests they are going to be the winners in the near and longer term. Given this backdrop, we are talking about a doubling of the installed capacity of generating resources in our electric grid over the next couple of decades. A doubling. And that is onto a grid, as you can see on the right, that is largely built to accommodate the resources of today before you've doubled the amount of installed capacity.
Those bolder lines are the 500-kV system across the United States today, the higher capacity transmission lines, which you clearly can see are built where load and generating resources are predominant today, not where they're going to be built as you double the installed capacity in the next couple of decades. We need new solutions for transmission and new investment. Now, I believe all this talk about our country running out of power is a little bit dramatic, but it is true that we urgently need to think about where these new loads and new generating resources are going to go. So what does it mean in terms of what's changed and who's best positioned to win? New demand needs to be met with physical energy and capacity solutions in specific locations to serve this load.
Note, there are many existing assets that will benefit from enhanced value for certain of their attributes that they have today. That's terrific. We have nuclear facilities that will benefit from attributes being more valuable going forward than they have been in the past. But make no mistake, new assets need to be built to meet new load demand. And those that have developing assets in progress today, in that process of getting developed, have a significant advantage because these new customers and the utilities that serve them need timing certainty. Gone are the days where an asset could be late or not show up at all, and it not matter. And understanding grid constraints and helping to resolve them has become central to the solution that our customers need. We recently had a customer ask us, fairly casually, where they can connect 5 GW loads, plural.
To put that in context, what does 5 GW mean? That is larger by a large measure than the city of Miami. To understand and how to place large loads and match them with new generated capacity and transmission resources is not a simple exercise. It means that systems thinking is required. It means being able to contemplate where a new load can get interconnected, where new generating resources can be sited, and how they can be optimally connected together and navigate all of the many stakeholder relationships to bring this together is required. So what do I mean by systems thinking? If you start with the basic capabilities and what's required to build a generating resource today, certainly in the past, maybe singular solutions going forward, it's skills and capabilities like this: siting, permitting, interconnecting, figuring out, you know, construction spend, building, and ultimately putting something into service.
These are the table stakes for the development process, and I believe we do this better than anybody else based on our scale, experience, and technology, as Petter's gonna talk about in just a minute. But if you were talking about what is required to do this at scale over a long period of time on a consistent basis, it means you need to navigate the relationships and understand the desires of a broad set of stakeholders across this process. We have excelled here. And if you think about the advanced skills that we uniquely bring to the table, it is skills like these that have become imperative in this moment. This is enabling load interconnection, enabling transmission optimization, even expanding the grid.
These things have become critical 'cause if you are working with large loads, which by the way, we used to consider roughly a 25- MW load before, much less something approaching a gigawatt or much above. These capabilities across all of these dimensions are what is going to make the difference between realizing a little bit of value from all of the trends that we're talking about today versus deep, sustainable, long-term value creation for our customers and our shareholders. Because this is what is needed to execute at scale, at the speed that our customers require today. Let's go back to the questions I started with. What technologies should win, and who is best positioned to win in this market construct?
It is clear to us that renewables and storage are best positioned to meet the growth that we are seeing today, and I believe NextEra Energy Resources is uniquely prepared for this moment. We are prepared to respond to the need for low-cost, fast-to-deploy clean resources with an unparalleled speed to market advantage and the ability to execute at scale. For years, we've been honing our navigation skills. We've been investing in our technology. We've been cultivating our culture of innovation and continuous improvement. We have nurtured a growth mentality across our entire company. And keep in mind that we are a part of a larger we, NextEra Energy and Florida Power & Light Company, which is often recognized as one of the best utilities in this country. We deliver not just power; we deliver clean, reliable, low-cost power for our customers every day.
Together, we have the biggest vote. Let me welcome Petter Skantze to the stage.
Hi. Thank you, Rebecca. There is a tsunami of demand coming our way, and NextEra Energy Resources is uniquely positioned to capitalize on that opportunity. Why is that? ... because we have that breadth of capabilities to deliver those system solutions for our customers. From siting the right projects, navigating the transmission grid, to providing low-cost, reliable operations. And at every stage, we use our scale, we use our experience, and we use our technology to carve out a distinct competitive advantage. What does that mean in practice? Most importantly, it means we have the sites, right? We have that 300 GW pipeline, wind, solar, storage, in all the key geographies around the country, and 150 GW of that is in that all-important transmission queue. Why does that matter?
Because when it takes four to seven years to navigate through that queue, you need to have those projects in there today if you want to serve your customer in this decade. These customers, these large data center loads, these large manufacturing loads we've been talking about, to bring them online, you don't need a good project somewhere. You need that right set of projects in that right location and on that right time. Now, it's not just the scale of our pipeline that sets us apart. It is also the quality of the projects inside it. That all comes from picking just those right sites and putting them into the top of that funnel. To do that, we rely on our experience and our technology.
Our data scientists have paired up with our technology with our subject matter experts from across the company, and they've gathered and identified all those key components of what makes a truly great renewable site. They've put it into a single application that we call our Discover tool. That tool takes and looks at over 30 million land clusters every single night. 30 million clusters that it evaluates on 100 different attributes. What does that mean? Well, it starts with the basics. We got to have buildable land, and we want to have great renewable resource, great wind resource, great solar radiation. So those are good things, but not enough to make a great project. We also need to have access to the transmission grid, need to be able to access the grid and deliver that power to where our customer is.
We want to avoid any pitfalls, so we look at environmental conditions. We screen for wetlands, we screen for endangered species, and we also want to go and capture any attributes to enhance the economics of that. Tax incentives in local areas, and dozens and dozens of other attributes like airspace restrictions that may impact that project. All of that in a single application, put at the fingertips of every single one of our developers. Now, perhaps the most important part of that application is its deep understanding of that transmission grid. We keep coming back to that grid. Why is it so critical? Well, let me give you one example. So if you're a developer and you submit your project into the transmission queue, then that grid operator, he's going to take that project, and he's going to examine it.
He's going to look at what does the grid need to do to upgrade and accept that project, and he's going to turn back and give you a cost estimate. How much will it cost to interconnect? Now, that's a make or break moment for that project. But it comes several years into the development cycle. You've already bought land, you spent all this time developing the project. It's a little bit like going into a restaurant, and they give you a menu, and it has no prices on it. And at the end of the meal, you get your bill, and you look at it, and you go, "Hmm, if I knew that, I might have picked something different off the menu, or I might have gone to a restaurant across the street." So what does our Discover tool do?
Well, it goes through, and it looks at thousands of different nodes across that system. For every single one of them, it'll analyze and estimate what does it take to connect that wind project, that 100-MW wind project, 200 MW solar project, what cost am I going to get allocated? It gives it to our developers right up front when I'm in the top of that funnel. The tool basically takes the prices and puts them on the menu right from the start. Now, you can imagine what an advantage that is. If you want to make sure your team is spending the time just on the right projects that have the best chance of success. It really takes that broad part of the funnel, and it narrows it down. Now, at NextEra, we're not satisfied with just analyzing the grid.
We actually have the capability of physically enhancing it to bring more projects online. Great example of that is a set of upgrades we were awarded in Nevada. This is building a 160-mi new double circuit line. It was awarded to us by the California ISO. It's about a $1 billion project. It's going to earn a regulated rate of return. But even more important, that project alone is expected to enable over 19 GW of new projects, renewable development projects and storage projects, to come online and deliver into that California market. 19 GW from that single set of upgrades. If you look across NextEra Energy Transmission's portfolio, that number is 40 GW, and about a third of those projects sit in our development pipeline. Let's talk about our customers. Today-...
We have about a 20% share of the market, and we are the leader in supplying renewable and storage solutions to our power and C&I customers. We've been spending decades delivering to them, serving them, and building those really strong relationships. That is a tremendous base from which we're now looking to expand into this growing market. We talk about technology customers, the data center customers. Again, we are a leader in that market today. 6 GW of projects under contract. Some of those are in operations, some of those are in our development backlog, and a huge opportunity right in front of us. Now, what's interesting about this customer set is really how our interaction with them has been evolving, right? You had a hyperscaler in the old days. They used to come to you and say, "We've picked a great site for our data center.
Now show me your renewable projects. Show me how you can serve me right here." Now, power and electric connectivity is so critical that they're coming to us right up front. They're saying: Help me find my best location for my data center, so that I know I'm gonna have that energy and that capacity to be able to interconnect. So to facilitate that, we've expanded our toolset. We took that Discover tool that we just talked about, that had all that great information about the grid, about all our development projects, and we layered on top of it the things that a data center customer needs and cares about. So now you got both those sides of the equation in one place, and you can truly optimize to find the right site. And we bring that tool with us and sit down with our customers.
So if you were down at our Development 101 day in Juno Beach, this will look very familiar to you. You had a chance to see an in-depth demo. And for the rest of everyone here, I just wanna give you a little bit of a, a sense of what this does. So we're gonna look at trying to identify a place where we have a renewable development project and can co-locate a, a data center site. So the system, first, we're gonna identify how big does this site need to be. Let's say we have a 200-MW site, 200 MW of generation we need to provide renewables, and it needs to be ready by 2027. That tells me right up front, well, this better be coming out of our existing development portfolio to be ready on that timeline.
We can put in some constraints about how close it needs to be to a given population center, so they have some people there to operate it. And then, what's critical to that customer? Is it access to water? Is it fiber latency? The different pieces that may matter about. Then it's gonna go out and search in that entire large portfolio of projects, where should I take this? Where should I go first? So let's see what it comes up with. It's gonna run and produce that list of potential candidates, all scored on all those different attributes. So we'll look at the one that scored the best and see what's underneath it, what really kind of made it like that project. Here in the middle, you see it.
It's about a 200, little over 200 MW wind project that we think will be a great location. So let's figure out, can we get that connected to the grid? Well, here you got our transmission line, our existing transmission in blue and orange, and then those substations. Remember, we talked about getting upgraded and how much cost that can be to a project. So we're actually looking now to see, to get that load and that generation interconnected in. That chart on the bottom is showing you, as you keep upping that capacity of that data center, how costly is it? So you can say, not only can I get my 200 MW online, but I can actually expand this down the line.
I can add a 500-MW data center or maybe more until I hit that really steep part of the curve and I get constrained by the grid. Next, we're gonna look at water. Water is really critical, right? It needs, needed for cooling of that data center. I wanna make sure there's access to water. It wants to be in a low water stress area, but I also wanna make sure that water is, of high quality. Why does that matter? Because low-quality water means a lot of processing, a lot of cost for that data center. So here, the tool is looking and actually scoring the different water qualities of points near that data center. And then finally, we're gonna look at fiber connectivity, right? We gotta get that data center connected into the fiber grid.
So we'll map out the existing lines and see where we could potentially connect. All those blue lines are existing lines of fiber near the data center. If we zoom in a little bit, we'll see just to the north of that project, we got fiber. There's some more to the west, some good options for us to potentially go and interconnect. I'll pause there. That's just a little bit of a snippet around some of the things a tool like this can do, and there are layers and layers and layers of more detail. We bring this in with our customer and let them drive the tool, let them select what's most important for them. It accelerates that exchange of information, right? Zeroing in on just the right project in our portfolio to serve their best needs.
Another thing that's really critical to understand, and Rebecca touched on this, is these really large loads, right? These data center loads. They don't exist in isolation. They are connected into the grid, and that connection happens at a local utility, or a municipality, or a co-op. Now, that local utility is not likely to have hundreds of megawatts of generation sitting around and capacity, so we can serve that data center. That's where we come in. We provide those renewable projects and those storage projects for capacity, but that does not mean that that local utility is not critical… Right? It is responsible for that part of the grid, and it's also responsible towards its customer to make sure that there's those existing customers locally are not adversely affected when we put a large new load on the system.
And only when they can all get comfortable will they let that data center connect. So this is almost always a three-way conversation between us, the data center customer, and that local utility. And our hyperscale customers will tell us all the time: "We want to work with you, NextEra, because you know, and you have these existing relationships with those utilities. You can navigate any issues that come up. You can get us to that right result." So behind me are just a few examples of where we've done this recently, where we've brought together that renewable solution, that data center customer that wants to locate there, and that local utility, and gotten them all comfortable that this can be done safely and, and without affecting the customers.
We've done it in New Mexico, in Nebraska, in Arizona, all leaning on the strength of those established relationships that we have, and that's critical to success in this sector. Let me talk a little bit more about these power customers, our power customers, right? They're seeing that wave of demand coming their way, and they're looking to respond. But they have established processes for planning their system, for sourcing new generation, for going to their regulators and their stakeholders, and so this is a process that's gonna take some amount of time, right? They're gonna ramp this up over several years. And they're also identifying that they're gonna want partners. They want partners to help supplement their capabilities and expand their scope to address that big new demand. And so why does NextEra Energy make a great partner for them? Well, there are three reasons.
One, we have served them for years in the past. We've built that trust by delivering on our commitments. Two, we bring that scale, right? Including that large development portfolio, that 150 GW of projects that's already in the transmission queue, and portion of that is in their area and can help them bridge that gap. And three, we are part of the bigger boat. With FPL, we live that regulatory process every day. We can really, truly see this from our customer's perspective. A great example of that is the partnership we just announced with Entergy a few days ago. It's gonna... targeting to build 4.5 GW of renewable and storage solutions to help Entergy meet both its new rising load demand and energy transition goals.
We couldn't be more excited than to work with a long-term established customer and help them execute on those goals. Execution, right, across all of these different customer classes, execution is more important than ever, and our scale, again, is a huge advantage. In supply chain, that means we have that really broad, diversified global supply base, and we have people on-site at all those key suppliers so that when there is a disruption, we know about it right away. We have somebody on-site who can go and help fix that. It also means that we have backup inventory in-country and on-site so that if there's a disruption, we have the ability to act.
On the EPC side, we sign long-term agreement, multi-year agreements to lock in that supply, and we also work with our suppliers to make sure that they can actually levelize their crews across many of our projects. Gets them more efficient, reduces their cost, and they pass some of that cost savings back on to us. Across all of these different areas, our scale and the depth of those relationships mean that we get served first. If there's a disruption, they're gonna come to us, we're gonna be first in line, and that translates directly into security for our customers. On the operations side, we've centralized our operations, we remotely operate our assets, and where we have resources in the field, we use strategies like renewable clusters. So we actually share resources between different wind and solar farms in the same area. It helps increase their utilization.
What does this mean in practice? It means that a NextEra wind technician covers 50% more turbines than their peers at another operator. It also means that every project that we add into our portfolio has a 20%-25% cost advantage on O&M versus the rest of the industry. 20%-25% lower O&M cost per megawatt hour than the industry average. That is a huge differentiator. Across all of these different areas, we use technology relentlessly. On the left, you'll see our solar optimization tool. It goes through 100,000 iterations of designs on a solar field before we actually put it out in the field. Figures out the lowest cost, highest production, best profitability. In the middle, I talked about central remote locations or operations. That is our Renewable Operations Control Center.
So from here, we operate 400 different projects, 44 GW of capacity from a single location. That location is built to scale. We can double our operating portfolio and add very few resources in that. On the right is our AI technicians tool. So this is something we deploy to every one of our resources in the field on an iPad. It gives them access, through a GenAI interface, to all that experience that we've had, decades of operating these wind farms, these solar farms, and storage battery facilities. It is a way of upskilling all their capabilities and get better results. We have that breadth of capabilities that are needed to deliver these system solutions that our customers must have in this environment.
In every one of those steps, we use our scale, we use our experience, and we use our technology to get a competitive advantage. When you stack that, that adds up. It adds up to 500-1,000 basis points of ROE improvements. Some of that we share with our customers. For our shareholders, it means attractive returns, cash ROEs in the mid-teens for solar and over 20% for wind and storage. All of that is before we take into account the value that's built into that optionality of our existing portfolio. To talk about that, I am going to hand you over to my colleague, who's responsible for that portfolio, our Vice President of Business Management and Finance, Matt Roskot.
Morning. Petter just walked through the importance of leveraging our scale, experience, and technology to execute for our customers. And we've executed in this business for more than 20 years, building today's leading renewables and battery storage portfolio. This morning, I'm going to walk through the significant option value embedded with, embedded within that portfolio, option value that we have a history of delivering on. And then I'm going to highlight Energy Resources' broader execution track record and the significant value that is generated for our shareholders over a long period of time. Energy Resources has a massive and growing renewables fleet. Today, roughly 30 GW, and projected to more than double by 2027. And that portfolio provides two significant advantages: speed to market and extensive option value. There are a tremendous amount of long-term investment opportunities embedded within the portfolio.
Repowerings, co-located storage, solar under wind, bringing load to our existing generating sites. For all of these opportunities, our returns are terrific, our track record is terrific, and our competitive advantages relative to the rest of the industry is terrific as well. These opportunities have delivered a ton of value to our shareholders over a long period of time, and we expect this value creation will dramatically expand over the coming years. Given the current market dynamics that you've heard about this morning, the single most important development asset is an interconnection position. Without an interconnect, a project can't move forward, customers ultimately can't be served. Now, if you think about our typical wind site, on average, that site's producing energy 40% of the time. That site's using its interconnect 40% of the time. But the other 60% of the time, the interconnect is available.
It's available for a co-located battery, it's available to put solar under that wind site, potentially both, in the future, potentially supports new technologies. Solar is similar, but with roughly 70% surplus interconnect. That means across Energy Resources' portfolio today, there's nearly 15 GW of unutilized interconnection capacity, all of which is fast to deploy, typically one to two years or less. This is a tremendously valuable asset. Nobody else in the industry has this. Timelines for interconnection continue to expand, today, stretching for four, five, seven years or beyond, but not for surplus interconnect. As I mentioned, we can deploy our surplus projects in one to two years or less. It means across the country, we can deploy new battery storage projects at existing sites at least four years faster than greenfield development. And Petter talked about the upgrade costs.
For all of these projects, there's no upgrade costs, no interconnection costs, no risks to that. In the past, the timelines were an advantage, but they weren't critical. It simply meant keeping an older plant online longer, running it a bit more. But ultimately, customers could wait. But a lot has changed over the past couple of years. Under this new paradigm of transformation and growth, speed to market matters. A prime example of this is several years ago, when California was in dire need of grid capacity. The state urgently required solutions. By leveraging our existing assets, the depth of our supply chain relationships, our profound development experience, Energy Resources was able to respond quickly and effectively. We jumped the line and deployed more than 1 GW of co-located batteries in under 24 months.
In one of the procurements, despite there being competition, we were the only developer to actually show up and execute. Today, when an asset doesn't show up, it puts grid reliability at risk. But we showed up for our California customers. Reliability and capacity needs are no longer just a focus in the West, though. Our co-located battery deployments started there to address the urgent customer needs we were seeing. But those capacity requirements, those customer needs, have rapidly spread to new markets, and we, in turn, have rapidly responded for our customers. Looking forward, and based only on our existing backlog, we will continue to rapidly expand where batteries are deployed. Co-located batteries are the single fastest capacity resource to get to market today. They're going to get built at scale over the coming years, well in excess of what's shown on this map.
Energy Resources' operating portfolio gives us a distinct competitive advantage to do something no one else in the industry can do... deploy renewables quickly, where and when customers need them. One of the other greatest opportunities for value creation in our portfolio, and an opportunity that allows us to, again, quickly provide customers what they need, is wind repowering. Repowering involves a replacement of a number of components within a turbine and allows a turbine to improve energy production, improve technology, and allows an asset to restart production tax credits for an additional 10 years. At 50%-80% of the cost of new build, repowering provide extremely attractive return profiles. They create significant value for our shareholders. Customer interest in repower has also been significant. They're providing customers exactly what they need today: more energy, more RECs, and more capacity.
As a result, we've had one of the best origination periods for repowering in our history over the past nine months, reflecting the urgent customer demand that we're seeing. Now, some of you may be wondering, we've heard a lot about wind repowering, but what about solar repowering? Well, we believe solar repowering is the next big opportunity to unlock value from our existing portfolio. Prior to the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, solar repowering was not viable. To make any repowering work, you need production tax credits, and previously, solar didn't receive PTCs. But that changed with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, and now this is an opportunity we're extremely excited about. We expect our solar repowers will have many of the same benefits as wind repowers.
The ability to leverage existing infrastructure, reduce development costs, reduce development challenges, and maybe most importantly today, the ability to be executed quickly. At many of the sites where we deploy solar repowering, we also expect to co-locate batteries, rapidly providing customers what they're looking for. We expect to sign our first solar repowering over the coming quarters, and we look forward to scaling the program over the coming years. Important to note, Rebecca's gonna walk through our development expectations in a few minutes. Those development expectations assume no contribution from solar repowering. As we scale the program, those are all incremental upside to the numbers you see. Petter talked about how Energy Resources is able to leverage our scale, experience, and technology to deliver best-in-class returns. Project ROEs that are 500-1,000 basis points better than the average developer.
Now, let me assure you, none of the optimization opportunities I discussed, none of the opportunities that we're pursuing, are assumed in those returns. We always use conservative enough assumptions in our initial investment decisions. It's reflective of the fact that we continue to remain financially disciplined. But these levers provide real value to our existing sites, and that's all incremental value to our shareholders. We take our superior project returns, and we make them even better. And these opportunities are not theoretical. These are levers that we have a best-in-class track record of delivering on. Eight years ago, we weren't even considering wind repowerings at our existing sites. Today, we've executed 6 GW of repowers. That is more than 10x the capacity of any competitive developer.
That comparison versus the industry is reflective of our significant competitive advantages, reflective of our ability at Energy Resources to do something nobody else in the industry can do. Looking forward, the long-term opportunity set is going to massively expand. Co-located storage is similar. To date, we deployed roughly 2 GW, and we expect deployments are gonna rapidly increase over the coming years. The significant option value within our portfolio is rapidly expanding, both as we deploy new sites and as we identify new opportunities to unlock value. Energy Resources' existing portfolio puts us in the unique position to give customers the right projects, in the right location, at the right time. Our success in these efforts is a testament to our unparalleled portfolio scale and our unmatched ability to execute. Now, let's take a step back and talk about all of Energy Resources.
Across the business, we have a proven track record of execution in the power space. This allowed us to successfully deliver generation assets at low costs and attractive returns for a long period of time. We consistently deliver on our commitments. Over the last two decades, the renewables industry has undergone significant change, but Energy Resources has consistently maintained its position as the industry leader. By leveraging our scale, experience, and technology, we've been able to consistently deliver roughly 20% market share. No one else in the industry can come close to this. And that consistent origination and development execution has led to consistent portfolio growth. By executing and delivering on our commitments, we have built the industry's leading clean energy portfolio. Rebecca's gonna talk about how this portfolio will rapidly expand over the coming years.
What took us 20 years to build, we're going to more than replicate in the next four. A lot of wind, a lot of solar, a lot of battery storage growth. And as we've executed and expanded the portfolio, we have significantly expanded its diversity. Today, including our backlog, roughly 50 GW, nearly 500 projects, nearly 200 different customers, on average, extremely strong credit quality of A-minus, in addition to tax credits backed by the U.S. government. This is the portfolio that underpins Energy Resources' strong cash flow growth. Additionally, this is a portfolio that delivers those 560 billion data points, provides tremendous insight into power markets. We have data collected over decades. It is broader and deeper than anyone in the industry.
You've heard repeatedly this morning, we are consistently finding new ways to harness and analyze that data to deliver real value, real value to our customers, and real value to our shareholders. Our track record of execution is not just about growing the renewables portfolio. We have a culture of continuous improvement across the business, and that translates to real benefits. Over the past decade, we've reduced wind total cost of operations by approximately 4% on average every year. We've leveraged those massive datasets, advanced platforms, the scale of the portfolio, to drive significant long-term improvement. Today, we are clearly the best-in-class operator. The story for solar and nuclear O&M is the same. I would not trade our operating performance for anyone in the industry. Finally, safety. I'm personally proud to work at an organization that prioritizes safety.
It's up and down this company, from our techs out in the field, to our staff groups, to our executive team, everybody makes safety a priority every single day. We have a great track record here, improving safety by over 50% in the past decade. As Christopher said, though, we are not done. We're gonna continue to drive improvement in all of these metrics going forward. Now, what does this history of execution mean for our shareholders? It translates into the exact results that you would expect. By executing across the board, Energy Resources has consistently delivered on our financial expectations. Over the past three years, we've delivered 12% compound annual growth in adjusted earnings, adjusted EBITDA, and cash from operations. We've leveraged our scale, experience, and technology to execute and deliver for the benefit of our shareholders.
To highlight how we expect that execution track record to continue going forward, I'd like to welcome Rebecca back to the stage. Thank you.
All right. Following Petter's discussion about scale, experience, and technology, and how that differentiates us in the development process, and Matt's discussions just now about our operating portfolio and our track record of execution, I do want to turn to our fifth and final theme, which is about how we plan to deploy capital to build long-term value for you, our shareholders. This paradigm shift towards simultaneous growth and transformation across our sector positions us well to keep making investments in renewables, storage, and transmission, where we expect to deploy capital not only to realize long-term stable cash flows, but at superior returns and delivering adjusted earnings and adjusted earnings per share growth. What do I mean by superior returns?
The 500 basis points-1,000 basis points of advantage that Petter walked through today creates a meaningful opportunity for us to win business from our customer—win business of our customers or deliver better returns, or ideally, of course, both, which is what we've been able to over a long period of time, delivering what you see on the right-hand side of the chart, which is returns at mid-teens level for solar and above 20% for wind and storage. And as Petter highlighted, we know what we have in our pipeline. Our portfolio of opportunities is really valuable, and we are pricing accordingly. The returns on our gigawatts have an upward bias, and we have a lot of gigawatts in the pipeline.
We believe over the next four years, we have the opportunity to build 36.5 GW-46.5 GW of new renewables and storage projects that we see and have visibility to today. In terms of the shape of demand, we do see meaningful growth between the two two-year periods, and it's driven by two particular drivers. First, as we're continuing to work through the drivers of disruption over the last couple of years, we did see projects, just like everybody else in the industry, move to the right and particularly into this 2026 and 2027 time frame. As we originated new projects, we are focusing our customers on this time frame as well. So you see growth between those two two-year periods. And secondly, it is when we are starting to see the impacts of this demand.
I know it feels like we've been talking about demand now for a long time. It's six to nine months in reality, and for utilities, they need to digest that new growth. They need to issue RFPs, they need to evaluate those RFPs, get the approvals for projects, and ultimately, we need to have time to build those projects. So in reality, when you will start to see material growth improvement, assuming all these trends come to fruition, is in the latter part of 2026 and into 2027, which you'll see reflected in our expectations here. In terms of technologies, we are continuing to see very strong demand for solar and solid demand for wind, albeit at lower levels than what we previously thought when we last updated expectations in the Q4 2022 earnings call.
I think it's really driven by a critical factor, which is that the production tax credit for solar really improved the economics for solar across a wide swath of the United States, where it's under-penetrated relative to wind technologies. And customers have continued to be very excited about deploying solar, even in the midst of the disruption we've seen over the last couple of years. But that production tax credit has meaningfully also improved the earnings profile for solar for us, and we have developed significant competitive advantages across the solar opportunity set. So we are just as excited about solar as we are about wind.... The biggest surprise in our mind of these development expectations is the strength of demand for solar. The nimble capacity resources that our customers and our customers' customers so need in this market environment.
We have an opportunity set that is uniquely positioned, and we're taking advantage of that. We continue to be excited about wind repowering, as well as the potential to add solar repowering to these opportunity sets, as Matt highlighted a couple of minutes ago. Taken altogether, what you'll see is meaningful growth in our opportunity set over the coming four years. If you just consider that we deployed 5.6 GW last year, and on average, which I'll talk about the shape some more in just a second, but on average, in 2026 and 2027, you expect to deploy 13 GW each year. That's more than 20% growth. It is meaningful improvement in our growth prospects going forward. And the growth profile I just discussed is reflected in these CapEx plans and underpins the financial expectations that we are laying out for you today.
It should come as no surprise, based on our discussions today, that our CapEx is very much focused on renewables, storage, and transmission. And notably, you'll see less capital in other areas, really reflecting the fact that we have huge opportunity set, renewable storage and transmission, and a differentiated position in going after these markets, and so we are prioritizing them. And Brian will talk in just a couple of minutes about putting in context these CapEx plans into NextEra Energy as a whole. And where CapEx flows, so too does adjusted EBITDA and adjusted earnings. Over this four-year period, we're expecting adjusted EBITDA to grow at 16% annually, of course, driven by renewable storage and transmission additions, partially offset by some production tax credit declines relative to the 2023 timeframe.
If you look at adjusted earnings, it has a similar pattern, of course, driven by renewable storage and transmission, and, and as well as the prioritization of growth and investment in these areas. We are also expecting some modest declines in our gas infrastructure and less growth in our power marketing and, customer supply businesses as we're focusing our investment opportunities on renewable storage and transmission. I couldn't be more excited about the position our company today against this opportunity set that's in front of us. There are four key themes, takeaways, that we hope that you're hearing from us today. First, the unprecedented demand in power is creating a new paradigm that is creating new opportunities, new challenges, and a position that is unique to NextEra Energy Resources to go after.
Second, our extensive scale, experience, and technology uniquely position us to capitalize on this opportunity for what we think is truly decades long. Third, the investments that we're making are not just maintaining our competitive advantages. I strongly believe they're expanding them for all the reasons we've been talking about this morning. And finally, we continue to exercise discipline in our strategic decisions and are extremely well positioned to enhance shareholder value through consistent, profitable, accretive growth to our adjusted earnings and cash flows. As you think about our future prospects, consider this: Electricity doesn't just light our cities, it powers the transformation and technological progress across the American economy.
In this new paradigm, where growth and transformation are surging through our sector like a tsunami, those that are well prepared, investing in technology, that have better strategies, are really well positioned to be successful over the long term. By delivering integrated power solutions, NextEra Energy Resources supports not just today's manufacturing and technological progress, but we are laying the foundation for future economic growth. We are well positioned to power the growth in the American economy. I'm pleased to welcome Brian Bolster, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of NextEra Energy, to the stage.
Okay. So it's been a very full morning. We've covered a lot of good ground over the past three hours, and as I try to harmonize the various presentations from today, I'd like to focus you on four key messages. First, the demand outlook is as good as it's ever been, and that demand is coming from multiple sectors. This is not a one-dimensional opportunity. Second, the capital deployment opportunities are massive. Third, and more importantly than that, the return on that capital is differentiated. We are putting steel in the ground at 10%-20% equity returns. No one else in our industry is delivering these kind of returns at that kind of scale. And finally, I hope you have heard loud and clear that no one is better positioned than us to deliver on this opportunity.
We have the scale, the experience, and the technology needed to meet the moment. So the setup looks great, but execution is gonna matter. So let's talk about execution. Let's start by looking at our track record of execution. This slide is looking at earnings expectation on the left versus actual results on the right. On the left-hand side, you can see what NextEra and our peers are expected to deliver. Everybody's targeting generally 68% per year. On the right-hand side, you can see what was actually delivered. NextEra stands out for actually doing what we said we were gonna do. In fact, no one has a better track record on this front. And you can look over multiple time frames. This is the three-year. Here's the 10-year. I believe John showed you the five, 15, and 20-year as well. We have consistently delivered across all markets.
The reason we can consistently deliver is because we've built a business that takes opportunity and converts it into a visible pipeline. Let's start with FPL. It's a simple plan. We're going to spend around $35 billion over the next four years, and as Armando and team reviewed in their presentation, it's driven by customer growth, modernization of the grid, modernization of the generation fleet. We're going to build solar, storage, and transmission to serve our growing customer need, and we're going to do that in a market where we have a constructive relationship with our regulator. Turning to Energy Resources, again, it's a very tangible opportunity. We're going to build on average, 10 GW per year. Rebecca and team talked about how we're positioned to deliver on this growth.
We have the largest market share, we have the biggest backlog, we set ourselves up in the queue well before our competitors. These are big numbers, but it's straightforward execution, and we've been doing it for decades. Build out wind, solar, storage, and transmission for our customers at attractive returns. Now, let's turn to financing, and as you'd imagine, just like the business strategy, we're going to keep it simple. As you can see on the left-hand side, we start in a great position. Over 50% of the cash need is being met by our existing assets, and as you move right, the vast majority of the rest is coming from well-understood markets: corporate debt, project debt, tax equity. Before we talk about those markets, I want to continue on the page and say a word about the other sources that we're showing.
You've seen the progress we're making on asset recycling. It is not just a NEP story. Last year, we sold Florida City Gas to Chesapeake. We have more in the queue. As John talked about, you will see us look at non-core assets to focus on the core. Nothing's been decided, but the point is, for a company of this size, this is not a large number. With regard to equity, what you see is very consistent with our past practice of issuing about $1.5 billion of equity per year for the next four years. I understand at the high end, that's a little bit above that run rate. We're going to give ourselves room in case we have accretive, accretive growth opportunities that require equity. Again, for a company of this size, deploying the amount of capital that we're deploying, this is not a big number.
Now that we've discussed asset recycling and equity, let's turn to the heart of the financing. Operating cash flow is the bedrock of the financing plan. If you look at gross CapEx, cash flow finances well over 50% of our capital needs, and year over year, I will not have to spend a lot of time thinking about the source of financing. Over 90% of the EBITDA comes from contracted or regulated assets. Over 70% of our EBITDA comes from, and will continue to come from, our regulated businesses. That provides the kind of strong and stable cash flow that you can anchor a financing plan around. Before moving on to cash flow, I do want to spend some more time on CapEx.
Earlier, I used the phrase gross CapEx, and I used that phrase purposely because it reflects how we think about financing our CapEx. On the Energy Resources side of the business, the assets we're investing in can individually support their own financing in the form of project debt and tax equity. This means the cash investment needs at the parent, and that's the cash that's going to grow our earnings, that's the cash that's going to grow our cash flow. That cash need is actually closer to $50 billion. Applying that lens to the financing picture, you get a parent-based view of our capital need. And as you can see on this chart, the actual cash needed to fund the future corporate-level investment is almost entirely funded by the cash generated by our existing equity investments.
That's an incredible position to be in, and we're fortunate to have such an amazing starting position. So as you can tell, our parent-level cash flow gets us a long way to our goals. Of course, we need to go out and raise the asset-level financing, and we need to refinance our existing corporate debt. Is that something that keeps me up at night? Not at all. Why? Lenders want to do business with NextEra, and they want to do business with us because we're a proven and quality credit. In an industry that has pushed up leverage over the last decade, we have sustained our balance sheet. How have we sustained our balance sheet? We focused on our 70/30 business mix. We focus on project diversity. We don't bet the farm on any single project, and we never lose sight of the fact that customer credit quality matters.
That focus on our balance sheet... There we go. That focus on our balance sheet creates a very attractive credit profile, which we show here. As you can see on the right side, we are number one or two in the industry on key metrics that our lenders care about. We're very focused on maintaining that credit quality. Our focus on credit quality is a virtuous circle. Banks want to work with us because we're an attractive credit. Here you get a sense of the breadth and depth of those relationships, and I think it's fair to say that our banking relationships are the envy of the corporate community, not just the utility community. We don't take that for granted, and we work very hard to maintain those relationships. Tax equity used to be more of the same in light of the overlap with the bank market.
That said, with transferability, we're finding new participants in the market. In fact, we are bringing new companies to the table. The NextEra name, the balance sheet, the sophistications opens doors in a new market. We did $400 million worth of deals at the end of last year.
We've done over $1 billion worth of deals so far this year. People want to work with us in this emerging market. Add those pieces up, and you get a very attractive picture, and John walked you through these numbers before, so I'm not going to focus on them in particular. I'm going to spend a minute putting these expectations in context. We believe we are in the early days of a secular change in demand growth. This is not a fleeting moment, and we're behaving like a company that's looking to maximize long-term value. At FPL, we're prudently deploying capital as we evaluate the evolving demand landscape. That balanced approach has worked well for our customers, and it's worked well for our shareholders, and we believe that balanced approach will be well received by regulators in next year's rate case.
At Energy Resources, as we enter the early innings of this market evolution, we're certainly leveraging the changing supply and demand picture. As we've talked about at the outset, we want to drive superior returns versus chase incremental megawatts. Now, of course, we are clearly evaluating paths to drive more megawatts through the system, but the development cycle we've been discussing means we'll feel the most material impact of those megawatts starting three to five years from now. So yes, our expectations in the early stage of the secular shift are consistent with recent history. But we're a company that's laser focused on being opportunistic and finding ways to exceed expectations. As you reflect on our ability to over-deliver during this secular shift, I'm happy to stand by our track record, which is depicted very clearly on the right-hand side of this page.
As you can see on the left-hand side of this page, our history of exceeding expectation has put us in an enviable position. There's nowhere else in the S&P 500 where you can get this combination of scale, growth, return, and investment stability. As I said at the start, a lot of promises are made, results matter. This slide tells you we've delivered. As we wrap up, here's what we'd like you to take away from today. First, in the current market, our growth is as tangible as it has ever been. Second, we're doing what we've done for decades. We're focusing on building solar, wind, storage, and transmission. Third, that plan is going to allow us to spend $25 billion this year alone and generate differentiated returns as we utilize our scale, experience, and technology advantages.
Finally, we're going to use our visible cash flow and our strong balance sheet to bring those opportunities online. With that, I'd like to thank you all for being here, and I'd like to bring John, Rebecca, and Armando onto the stage and open it up for questions.
Thank you. You can ask the first question.
Steve can ask the last question. Just real quick, just on the development expectations, big step up in . I guess we're going to ask again, what's driving that? Do you have any data center demand in those numbers? And then maybe how does that big step up play into that six to eight as we roll forward our models into 2028? Could it be accretive to the 8%, given the shape that you sort of highlight, or is there some offsetting factors we should be thinking about?
Yeah, let me go ahead and start, and then I'll turn it over to Rebecca. The way I think about it, Shar, is that, you know, first of all, you know, had we held this conference last year, we would have seen similar numbers through 2026. There already was a lot of demand through 2026. This new power demand is resulting in new conversations, right? And those new conversations have really occurred over the last three to six months. But I'll use the data center as an example. A data center customer comes to NextEra and says: "Look, you know, we're looking for an opportunity to build a new facility." And when you start from scratch, you got to pick a site, you got to get it permitted, you got to get it built. How long does that take? two to three years.
That's why we're saying that with this new power demand that's coming, those conversations, yes, they are occurring all over the place. We have significant opportunities, but you got to realize, whether it's a data center or somebody building a manufacturing facility, I'll use a chip manufacturer as an example, right? Those don't go, get built overnight. They don't need power until they go COD. And so what we're saying is that the COD years of a lot of that power demand that's coming really starts in 2027, which means, and that's how we've set up our expectations. You can see that with the CapEx that's really escalating from 2026 to 2027 on the last slide that Rebecca wrapped up on, because we see those COD dates coming in 2027. And then beyond that, now all of a sudden, we've got a twofold opportunity.
Remember, we've always been in a replacement cycle where our business has been based on replacing less efficient, higher cost generation. This is the first time in a long time where we've actually having conversations with customers about actually accommodating new growth and new growth demand. So as you add those two together, this creates a lot of opportunity as you get out, once those new facilities that are driving that new growth demand actually get built, go into service, and need power. And yes, the outlook over the long term-
is substantial for us. Becca?
I think that's terrific. The only thing I would add to it is we're gonna start to see that over time, right? What we're reflecting today is what we're seeing in the marketplace, reflecting the conversations that we're gonna have. But as this materializes, you're going to see that in our origination, in the development numbers that we ultimately are able to show in the next couple of years. We'll be able to start adding those signings to that timeframe. Our gut is it's more in 2027 than in 2026, but to the extent that we can move it to the left, I can assure you our customers are anxiously prodding us, I would say, to see what we can do to get solutions into service faster than even what we, you know, are currently anticipating.
Yeah, and if that demand materializes earlier, which it well could, this company is gonna be ready for all the reasons we gave you, right? We've got the sites ready to go. The development team is all over it.
Okay, perfect. And then just lastly, I mean, NEP is obviously noticeably missing from your slide decks. Brian talked about sort of non-core assets, optimization opportunities. I guess, where does NEP fit within - could it fit within those buckets? Any updates there? How are negotiations going with sort of the convert investors? Thanks.
Yeah, thanks, Shar. So, you know, on NEP, I think we've been very open. You know, we don't have to do anything this year in 2024. We actually have modest growth plans for 2025 as well, and so, you know, we continue to look at all alternatives, you know, for NEP, and we wanna do what's right by unitholders, what makes the most sense for NEP. But I think the point Brian was making, you know, on the slide is, look, we have a modest amount of capital recycling opportunity that we see through 2027. We have plenty of ways to get that done. We are not concerned.
There are all kinds of folks, and we've seen this over the last, you know, six months to a year, that would love to hitch their wagon to Energy Resources as a private capital recycling source, for example. So we feel very good about where we are.
Steve?
Yeah. Hi, thanks. Just a couple numbers questions. So just on the, there's that CapEx inflection in kind of 2026, particularly 2027. How should we think about when you see the EBITDA relative to that CapEx? Is it the same year as the CapEx, or is it kind of more the following year?
Are you talking specifically on Energy Resources?
Yeah, I guess, 'cause I assume that's probably where it is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It does depend a little bit on the timing. Well, the CapEx plans that we highlighted are underpinning the financial results that we've laid out, but the actual realization of the EBITDA and earnings growth would depend on when the COD dates actually are in the year. Obviously, at the beginning part of the year, we'd actually realize some value in the year. We are trying to break the cycle of COD-ing assets at the very end of the year. We're making some progress, not perfect progress, but 27 is a long time from now. So I hate to tell you-
Yeah
... it depends, but it does depend.
Okay. And then on the kind of, I guess, asset sales and the like, and when you think about, like, gas infrastructure, where it's actually shrinking some in the outlook, does that include asset sales in your plan already, or that does not include asset sales yet?
That, that does include asset sales in our plan. Two things: one, it includes asset sales in our plan, and number two, it also includes really just de-emphasizing that business, putting a little less capital into it than we have historically. It's those two things together.
Okay. And then the last question, just... This has probably been asked every two years at the Analyst Day. If you take 13% at near growth, 9%, you know, regulatory capital employed at FPL, I know there's parent drag, I guess, to fund everything, but, just how do you think about that matching up with the, the 6%-8%, overall growth?
Yeah.
Is that cushion? Is that just the financing drag? How, how to think about that.
Yep. I think you would think about it in one of the comments that John made, which is we like to put together a plan that we have high confidence in, that has been de-risked. I feel like we have the one of the most visible set of growth prospects and Energy Resources that we've seen in a very long period of time, and to the extent that we can do better, we absolutely will. And then I think from a regulatory perspective, I think a lot of the comments reflect going into a rate case for next year, and being cognizant of the realities of a great story going into the regulator, but there's a lot of outcomes and you need to be prepared for managing a variety of those potential solutions.
But that being said, you know, again, we feel great heading into our rate case. We do. I mean, you think about the track record that FPL has had, and the team went through it today. You know, being able to grow regulatory capital employed, be able to absorb the growth for customers, everything that we've done on the bill. Having a bill 37% lower than the national average, have an O&M that's 70% lower than the industry average, again, we are going into this rate case with as much, if not more, strength than we ever have. We have really delivered for customers.
Hi, good morning, Jeremy Tonet, JP Morgan. Rebecca, I just want to unpack one of the comments you had there a bit, with regards to pricing having upward bias in this environment. You know, given how competitive renewables are against other generaton sources, given NEE's competitive advantage versus other renewable competitors, just wondering if you could unpack that a bit more, how meaningful that could be in the future? Just any way we could frame and think about that upside.
Yeah, perfect, and I appreciate the, the question. You know, the first framing point of view is certainly around where are we confident that we're adding value from a shareholder perspective. And to have mid-teens returns on equity on solar and above 20% on wind and storage, I feel terrific about those returns. Given today's environment, the risks, the uncertainties, the upside, and all of the option value that we don't even price into our return expectations that Matt walked you through today, which is very significant over time, and fortunately, we've been able to, to find new ways to add value over time. That's just a founding point, you know, that's the minimum threshold, and then we assess, you know, in a given market opportunity, what is our positioning relative to alternatives? What is our positioning relative to the customer's need?
In this environment, where interconnection queue positions, development projects in flight, are needing to be matched with urgent need from end customers, whether our customers or our utilities customers, has created an environment where we can price accordingly. And where we can, we will, 'cause we know that we're, we're creating value for customers. But this is a long-term game, too. We know that we need to be good partners, and enable solutions that work for customers, of the utilities and our customers, whether they're data centers, manufacturing facilities, et cetera. But I feel terrific in terms of the value creation, the existing re-- you know, that we're creating for shareholders, but also the potential we have in the coming years.
Yeah, and Jeremy, one thing I would add to what Rebecca said is this is more of a seller's market than it has ever been. And I said this a few weeks ago when I was in New York. Is in some ways, investors are asking the wrong question. We focus so much on PPAs, right? How many PPAs did you sign a quarter? The real question is, how many sites do you have? Because if you look across the landscape in our industry, very few people started making the investments that we've been talking about all day today, seven years ago, when you had to make them. And so when our customers are looking for somebody that can actually deliver, it's few and far between. People don't have the sites.
They were not in the queue with MISO and SPP and CAISO, take your pick, and it takes a long time to get through it. We had the foresight to do it. We have the sites ready to go. That's why we spend so much time talking about our pipeline and our 150 GW of interconnection queue positions, and that's why we have more pricing power than we've ever had before.
That's very helpful. Thanks. And maybe continuing with NEER and building on that as far as transmission is concerned, just wondering if recent FERC initiatives help on that side, or what do you think could happen to help that, and, you know, could it be a more meaningful driver of capital spend in the future?
I also appreciate that question. I think it was a step forward. It's not the entire solution that ultimately is needed. So the FERC NOPR, and ultimately, rulemaking that they'll be promulgating over the coming couple of years with the ISOs, gives better visibility to long-term planning, which I think is critically important. It also provides for some cost allocation frameworks, which is also critically important. If you think of the two challenges, among several, but two important challenges, is that the ISOs haven't been looking far enough forward for a two X-ing of capacity installed on the grid, and now they're required to provide some of those scenario analysis. And then secondly, how do you allocate costs between those that are hosting infrastructure versus those that are benefiting from the infrastructure?
So to have FERC step forward is important, but there's a long way to go, in terms of really enabling a significant transmission build-out. Where is our position in that? We'd be thrilled to build, incremental transmission solutions. Clearly, the $3 billion is probably the first step in that direction. There's more investment opportunity over the longer term. But I would think about our transmission capabilities even more wholesomely than that, meaning not just the ability to build transmission, but also to plan for it, think about what enables it. The transmission solution that Petter talked about, that it unlocked the 19 GW in California, didn't just happen because CAISO thought about it. CAISO thought about it because we told them: "If you upgrade these lines, 19 GW can be connected.
It can meet your goals longer term for California." That is just one example of the types of work that our team is working on every day, not only creating investment opportunity for us, which I appreciate, but also the ability to know ahead of time what makes sense, so that we can get the right, you know, development solutions in the process to build those renewables and those storage solutions. That is super unique to our customers and our, you know, customers on the power side, but our customers on the manufacturing, industrial, and technology side, where they can work with someone who can see like that. It is a, it is awesome position to be in, in this marketplace.
Dave or Carl?
Hey, thank you. Rebecca, I think you mentioned 5 GW large loads getting requested to connect, which is just shockingly large. I was just wondering, how real are those conversations? When might those show up? And, curious how you're thinking about how you would serve customers like that.
Yeah, I think it's a, it was a real question. It was asked in real earnest. I don't know that they fully comprehend that that's the size of Miami, plus a lot. And you go to any utility across the country, and you ask to connect the size of Miami right here, you'll, you'll be met with some interesting looks and interesting conversations. So it was, it was asked in reality because of real business opportunity. I think the practical realities of needing to break that up into multiple solutions is probably gonna rule the day. Even a 1 GW solution somewhere is not insignificant.
I think what that suggests is you'll see more projects like the ones that we could put together, where you have commingled technologies, wind storage, and battery solutions near one another, so that when you go to a utility and help this customer connect with a very large load, you are bringing the solution with you, with that customer, with that utility partner. So, this is not a unique conversation, and it is a sign of what growth looks like. We, across the entire industry, need to figure out how to grow. It is a very different dynamic than what we've seen across the couple of decades. And I made the comments I made for a reason. Like, our industry is not known for growth. We are known for stability, for resilience, for reliability.
Growth is a new, you know, word that we need to incorporate, and we need to figure out how to make it work. Couldn't be more excited about it, but-
Yeah.
You know, it's gonna take a little bit of time.
Yeah, and David, Rebecca made this point, I made it in my comments, too. There's now two conversations that have to be had. You're not only working with the customer that wants the 5 GW, right? But you also have to work with the regulating utility that's located in that area, because it's gonna take a combination of the two to be able to satisfy the demand. Sure, we can build behind the meter solutions for the C&I customer, if it is a C&I customer. But then, at some point, you're also going to need support from the local utility, whether it's in the form of grid power or some other solution. We're unique in that we have relationships on both sides of the fence.
We work really well with the C&I community, but we have probably the best relationships of anybody in our sector with the utility, and they trust us. They trust us 'cause we are one of them, right? We see them every quarter at EEI, and they know what we've been able to do in Florida, and they're very interested in the way we think about solving the complex problems that they have to accommodate that additional load demand. And so it takes the ability to work with both of them, which creates two sets of opportunities for us: one to build for the C&I and one to build for the load, the utility that needs to meet that additional load demand. And that's what's really different.
Andrew?
Thanks. Andrew Weisel from Scotiabank. Two utility questions. First, the bills have been stable, 1.8% CAGR over the last 10 years. Very impressive. What are you thinking about in terms of an outlook? And, I'd be happy to hear either if you're willing to tease a little bit about what the rate request next year might look like, or if you're willing to give more of a longer-term, maybe next 10 years outlook.
No real tease with numbers.
Had to try.
I think everyone's expectation for the next rate case, which we'll file in March of next year, should be that it looks very similar to the last one. In other words, we've put a lot of capital to work for the benefit of our customers. We've also taken a lot of costs out of the added system. Things like reliability are really important to our regulators and really to the whole legislative front in Florida. A mechanism similar to the one that Scott Bores talked about, with surplus depreciation, is likely to be part of that. A lot of solar type of mechanisms are likely to be a part of that. Some pilot projects that Scott also spoke about are likely to be a part of that.
But it's gonna be very similar. If you look at today, what Duke and TECO are going through in, in Florida, I'd say it's a typical rate case, right? They've got an ask for revenue requirement. They've got some things that they wanna do. They've got some mechanisms that they wanna put in place. And I expect that the back and forth with, with the interveners and other parties are gonna remain the same as they have in the past. So look, it's a good thing to be in Florida and have a set of regulators that are interested in a customer outcome. How are you doing for the customer? So we feel really good about that.
In terms of the bill, you know, we said at FPL, and we've said at FPL for a really, really long time, and geez, at least since 2008 that I've been here, that we would manage the bill to be no higher than inflation. Now, we're not saying that anymore because, gee whiz, inflation's been kind of ridiculous. But we manage the bill. We wanna make sure that customers have a good experience while they're there. So I think you should expect the filing to be the same, the numbers to be similar to what we've shown in the past, and the regulatory outcome and the interveners, if you will, to be essentially the same of what we've done.
Remember three things: One, last time we filed a rate case, the 10-year was 1.46%, right? 4.5 today. Two, we have a 20% CAGR filed in our 10-Year Site Plan for solar and storage build. Three, the slide Scott Bores showed you, right from now until 2045, as we think about the possibility of a Real Zero initiative in Florida, if it doesn't have any impact on customer bills going from roughly 8 GW - 100 GW, 100 GW, the growth does not stop at FPL, and together with all that generation comes transmission and maintenance CapEx. So we got a lot of, lot of opportunity at FPL.
A lot of spending. All right, my second question is on data centers. There was a comment, I'm going to paraphrase, but it was something about protecting the rest of the customer base, making sure they're not adversely impacted. Can you elaborate about the rate design there? Is it negotiated tariffs for... I'm talking about FPL and data centers. Is it negotiated tariffs? Are they fixed commercial tariffs? And will that rate design be explicitly discussed in the rate case specific to data centers, or will that all be folded under the more traditional commercial rates? Thank you.
So I think a couple of comments on that. If you go, and as many of you do, you know, you follow utilities all across the nation, right? And you are starting to see across the nation a lot of discussion about load building because of what I'll call data centers. It's much broader than that, as Rebecca, as Rebecca described. In some of those situations, you're now seeing legislators in that jurisdiction start asking questions like: What does this mean? And in some of those jurisdictions, you're seeing regulators start asking questions: What does this mean? And in other jurisdictions, you are seeing companies that are thinking about filing rates or have filed actually rates, and by rates, I mean special tariffs. I think all of that needs to wash around a little bit. This is all...
You know, we pick up the whatever your news source is today, and you talk about data centers and all of this new load. My gosh, nine months ago, right, you would have been hard-pressed to find any of this in any of the news or any of the writings that people have. So this is all relatively new. Everybody's trying to figure it out. For us at FPL, look, it's important, right? It's important that our retail customers, which is not our residential customers, but also our C&I customers, it's important that we pay attention to them, right? That we focus on those customers, and we do what we've said that we were going to do over the long period of time.
It's also important that we feel excited about all new load growth in Florida, whether they're data centers or all. So I'm really excited about additional load growth in Florida. Now, we're going to have to figure out when they're gonna come in, because the discussions that we have today with the number 45 that Scott Bores showed on his chart, those 45 folks that have shown an interest are really talking about the back end of this decade, right? They're not talking about: "Hey, can we get into your system right now?" So we've got time to figure out what a special tariff might be. We have not yet...
While we've been thinking about it, we haven't yet said publicly what that might be and whether that's going to be something before the rate case or during the rate case. But your expectation should be that it would be, we would deal with it no later than when we file our rate case.
Andy?
Hi, it's Andy Levi from HITE Hedge. Just two questions, somewhat related, but just, you know, as this chase for power or whatever you want to call it, how do you view the regulated utility as far as competition, against what you plan to do? Because obviously now everyone's getting real excited, and there are different benefits to either going with you or going with the regulated utility, or maybe there's enough for both. And then separate to that, you signed a deal with Entergy the other day, down south, which was fairly unique as far as the structure, and I think you're sharing in some of the earnings.
Can we see more of those, let's say, like in Oregon, where, you know, a company has a tremendous amount of growth, but maybe it's not big enough to capitalize on that growth, and you've done some stuff with them in the past? So those are my two questions.
Yeah. Well, let me go ahead and take those, Andy. Yeah, first of all, when I think about rate-regulating utilities, the challenges that they're facing are everything we just spent, you know, three or four hours talking about this morning. This power demand has come really quickly for them. A lot of them don't have sites, so they don't have inventory, and they have not been in growth mode, right? They've been in a static environment in their own states, and so they don't have established supply chain capabilities, all the engineering and construction, the data and analytics that goes along with selecting the best sites. And so they're looking for a partner.
They want somebody that they can work with, somebody that they can trust, somebody they've been working with for two or three decades, and that's the perfect answer for them is NextEra. And we can go in there with the tools. We talked a lot about the Discover tool. We have a very similar tool that we go in and we work with rate-regulating utilities on. Basically, what it does is it takes their ten-year site plan, but we modify it the way we would think about it. And we say to them: "Look, we understand what you have showed your regulator, but here's where we think the opportunities are for wind, solar, battery storage. These are all opportunities to reduce your bill and also accommodate all this demand that is coming into your service territory." We can offer them solutions that they don't have from anybody else.
The transaction with Entergy is a perfect example of that. So when you think about Entergy, we have a lot of sites. We have a ton of sites in Arkansas and Louisiana, and we have plenty of sites to accommodate what I would call three prongs of demand. First of all, I'll start with the joint development agreement that we signed with Entergy, which will allow us to earn good returns, you know, off those investments that we make. But you know, I go into it, first of all, with neither party is obligated to put any projects into that, right? So first of all, we have complete flexibility. We can put projects into the joint development agreement with Entergy. We can put them into PPAs, right? And we've had a lot of success in PPAs in that area.
We can use sites to serve C&I customers. That's at our option. We think we can do all three. We think we have the ability to set... We have so many sites in those areas. We can help Entergy with the 4.5 GW. We can work with C&I if they have opportunities in those areas. And then three, we have the opportunity to get PPAs also with Entergy. If you look at Louisiana, Louisiana has a track record of basically doing 50/50 PPAs and BOTs over the last, you know, several years, and Entergy has just been a wonderful partner for us. We've already done about 1.7 GW. It's been a combination of BOTs. It's been a combination of power purchase agreements.
So we view this as a tremendous win-win for Entergy and for us and our ability to continue running the playbook we've always run across the country, but being able to serve a key partner in Entergy and meeting their needs as they look to the future. Portland, Oregon. Portland, Oregon? Yeah. Yeah, we do a lot with Maria Pope and with PGE. I mean, they've been a tremendous customer of ours over the years, and we have a great partnership with them, just like we do with many utilities around the country. And, you know, again, I think it comes back to the fact that we've been doing this for two to three decades.
We've been helping utilities solve complex problems for a long time, and they view us as a trusted partner that can come in and do things in a smart way that really help them to address bill pressure, accommodating new power demand, replacing existing generation that they have in their fleet. Because, you know, as we've said, look, we make these decisions every day as a utility as well, around Florida Power & Light, and we're able to share a lot of the insights that we have from running the nation's largest rate-regulated utility to help solve the complex problems that they have. But the bottom line is that in order to succeed going forward, you cannot win by taking a singular approach.
If you are going forward, and while much of our competition still does today, and you're a one-trick pony, and you can build a solar project, or you can build a wind project or so on and so forth, that's not gonna get it done. These folks, whether it's C&I customers, whether it's utilities, whether it's munis, whether it's co-ops, they want a partner that can solve a complex energy problem that is not only bringing the bill down through a replacement cycle, but is helping to address all the growth and all the demand that's coming forward. And there's only one company in my mind that can do that, and that's this company. That's why I feel so terrific about the long-term growth prospects that we have in front of us.
For our last question, we'll go with Nick.
Hey, thanks. Nick Campanella at Barclays. So I guess on renewable development and market share, you're at 20% market share right now or better. You're clearly painting the picture that you got to have size and scale and expertise to play in this space. Just how do you think your peers are doing? What's the opportunity to roll out these developers? It's been a conversation point in the past.
Yeah, I mean, look, you know, for us, I think our scale advantage just continues to grow and grow and grow. I talked about 81 GW. Think about that. 81 GW renewable company, right? That includes FPL's megawatts and Energy Resources mega... 81 GW by the end of 2027, if we meet the midpoint of our expectations. How do you catch up with that? If you're a small developer who, you know, a great year for you is building 250 MW or 500 MW, how on earth do you compete with a company that has 81 GW in operation and that operates that digitally from Juno Beach, Florida? And every incremental megawatt you add is 20%-25% less on an O&M per dollar per megawatt hour basis than the one that came before it.
That's really, really tough, and the buying power that goes along with a company like that. And our competitive landscape has not changed. We still compete against a lot of really small players that are trying to do the same thing that they've always done, but they have not been able to building the scale. They don't have any of the investments in the technology that we've spent so much time going through today. And let me tell you, we are changing the way not only we approach the market, as I said, but we're also changing customer expectation on what they expect from a partner that is going to work with them to solve their complex energy problems.
When we put up this Discover tool that we showed you for data centers, and we throw it up in front of the hyperscalers, and trust me, we put it up in front of all of them, it blows them away. Nobody has that kind of capability, and it cuts time out. On small developer roll-ups, look, we work with these folks. If they have decent sites, sure, yeah, we'll take a look at them. But we have such a deep greenfield pipeline, and we're so far ahead of where they are, and we have queue positions that are ready to go. Typically, we pass because they just don't have the capability to develop a high-quality site in the right place because they don't have the data, and they didn't make the right decision on where to put it.
That's helpful. And then I guess on FPL, you know, during the presentation, you talked about the amortization surplus reserve. Can you just remind us how you're gonna utilize that through this rate period and then potentially through the next plan? I just... I think there were some comments maybe, maybe de-emphasizing it. I just wanted to get that straight.
Yeah, it's not de-emphasizing it. It's. Remember, our surplus mechanism really allows us to deal with regulatory lag. So I think the point that Scott Bores was making earlier was, we've seen an awful lot of growth in Florida, right? Which is great. But as that additional growth has come online, we've had to make more investments sooner, right? Which create depreciation expense, which we typically absorb with that surplus amortization mechanism, which is great for customers, right? Because we're absorbing, you know, those additional costs with that accelerated generation that's getting built, which, by the way, is a great way to enter our next rate case. That is a great way to be able to explain to the commission how this company has helped customers by shouldering the additional growth that came faster than we expected.
I think that's it. We'd like to welcome you all to our lunch reception. If you head down the hallway and hang a left, that's where we'll be. Our IR team will help you there, and we'll be available to answer any other questions. Thank you, everyone.