Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to UGI Corporation's June 2021 Investor Day based on the theme, Reliable Growth, Fueling a Renewable Future. My name is Tamika Morris, and I am the Director of Investor Relations at UGI. Joining me today are several members of our senior leadership team: Roger Perrault, President and CEO Elect Ted Yastrzebski, CFO Bob Beard, Executive Vice President of Natural Gas Hugh Gallagher, Chief Strategy Officer of Global LPG Matt Dudsman, Vice President of Strategy, Natural Gas Neil Murphy, Vice President of Business Development, Global LPG and Brendan Hecht, Vice President of ESG. Today's presentation will feature the company's strategic plan, discussions around sustainable energy solutions and a progress update on our ESG goals. After the prepared remarks, we will take a short 5 minute break before moving into the Q and A portion of the event.
Please submit your questions using the Q and A chat function on the webcast. Now before I turn it over to Roger, I'd like to point out that today's presentation contains certain forward looking statements that management believes to be reasonable as of today's date only. We will also be describing the business using certain non GAAP financial measures. For more information on both of these topics, please read our annual report on Form 10 ks and our quarterly reports on Form 10 Q. And with that, I'll turn over the presentation to Roger.
Thank you, Tamika. Good afternoon, and thanks to all for attending our Investor Day today. I'll take a few moments to review our agenda. Today, you will hear about the strength of our diversified business and the compelling set of opportunities that we have ahead of us as we continue to create long term value for our shareholders. We will also spend some time on our strategy, walking through each of the three components, which includes renewables, which is a crucial aspect of our growth outlook.
You will hear from various leaders within the business on how the strategy is being executed to create consistent returns and continued earnings growth for our shareholders. We will then provide an update on our ESG efforts before opening up for questions. When I think of what differentiates UGI and positions us well for continued growth and success, a few things come to mind. 1, a diversified business, both from a geographic and operational perspective for balanced growth and returns Also, an excellent infrastructure in key markets that we can leverage to execute against our strategy. Our strategy is clear.
I will walk you through this in more detail. At a high level, it is focused on providing reliable earnings growth, leaning into renewables opportunities we have and rebalancing our portfolio. Our business generates a tremendous amount of cash that finances a lot of these opportunities that we are excited about, and we deploy that capital in a disciplined manner. At the core of this is ESG that we believe is integrated in all we do and is instrumental in our future. I want to assure you that our strategy is still the same.
Our customers need safe, reliable, affordable and sustainable energy solutions. Our mission is to meet that need by providing a superior range of clean and sustainable energy solutions. Since inception, UGI has maintained an innovative spirit, and this will continue as we evolve and adapt to best meet the needs of our customers and create value for our employees and shareholders. I will take a few minutes to walk you through the key elements of our strategy, starting with reliable earnings growth. We are pleased with the investment opportunities to continue growing stable regulated earnings in both our Pennsylvania Gas LDC and with the pending Mountaineer Gas acquisition when it closes.
Currently, we have significant fee based income in our midstream and marketing operations that enables consistency of earnings. We are focused on delivering our financial commitments regardless of moderate volatility in weather. So we continue to invest in high growth and more weather resilient areas such as Cinch and National Accounts and vending machines in Europe. In addition, through our business transformation initiatives and ongoing continuous improvement, we are focused on increasing efficiency and lowering operating which provide even more levers at our disposal to ensure that we meet our commitments. Also, expect reliable earnings growth through our renewables investments, which take me to the second part of our strategy, renewables.
It's important for us to continue lowering our carbon footprint and helping our customers do the same. Our core infrastructure, our core competencies and expensive customer base positions us well to take advantage of the opportunities before us. Renewables will be an area of increasing focus and investment for UGI to drive continued earnings growth. And consistent with our history of entering into new markets, new revenue streams, such as our growth of LPG and midstream businesses. That model has been successful and has enabled us to create value for our shareholders.
We will come back to this topic a bit later in the presentation. Now rebalance. Our desire to rebalance our portfolio through disciplined capital deployment remains strong. Expect that renewables will play a key role in this rebalancing, and Ted will speak to this in further detail. The core elements of our strategy have remained consistent, and we have a proven track record of executing against our strategy with the investments that have benefited our customers, employees, shareholders and the communities we serve.
We have met our long term financial commitment of 6% to 10% EPS growth and 4% dividend growth, delivering at almost the midpoint of the EPS growth rate over the past 10 years and a much higher dividend growth rate. We have been paying dividends for over 137 consecutive years and increasing dividends in the past 34 years. Our business remains strong with an attractive rate based growth and long track record of excellent cash generation capabilities. At the foundation of this is also our core values of safety, respect, integrity, responsibility, excellence and reliability. Now I will pass it over to Bob Beard.
Thank you, Roger. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll give an overview of our natural gas businesses, starting with how our natural gas businesses continue to deliver stable earnings growth, continues to be a positive story for us. So I'll cover 3 areas, primarily our utility businesses, our midstream assets, which is UGI Energy Services, and then I'll talk a little bit about how those two businesses really position us well as we continue to grow our renewables business. Starting with utilities, we serve about 740,000 customers throughout Pennsylvania.
We're the 2nd largest gas utility in the state, and we really believe that Pennsylvania offers a constructive regulatory environment by incentivizing utilities to continue to spend to upgrade and improve our facilities. We're also fortunate that our service territory in Pennsylvania lies either directly above or adjacent to the Marcellus Shale. That enables us to source gas for our customers that is low cost and abundant. And if you looked at a customer's bill today versus what it was 10 years ago, you would see our customers are enjoying significant savings, all due to the fact that we're sourcing their gas from the Marcellus Shale. When we close the Mountaineer deal, which we expect will happen in the last half of this calendar year, we will also be the owner of the largest gas distribution company in West Virginia.
We also see in West Virginia, as we have in Pennsylvania, a great opportunity to build rate base. Our rate base CAGR in Pennsylvania over the last 5 years has been 11.4%. We anticipate the same type of growth in West Virginia as we focus on infrastructure replacement there as well, which I'll talk about in a little bit. Moving to midstream, our midstream business has a great set of strategic assets located in very important and highly productive areas of the Marcellus and Utica production areas. Importantly, with energy services, and I'll talk about this also in a couple of slides, is the fact that most of the margin that we see at energy services is fee based.
So I'll talk more about that in a bit. Next slide deals with capital investment at our utilities. As you'll see, we expect to spend upwards of $2,000,000,000 over the plan years. That type of capital expenditure, we expect will grow our rate base CAGR at about 11%, so very similar to what we've seen over the last handful of years. It demonstrates 2 things.
First, the company's commitment to continue to replace aged infrastructure with more contemporary materials, thereby offering safer, more reliable service to our customers. It also enables us to grow rate base, which is significantly important for utility. But rate base isn't the only way that we grow earnings at utilities. We also have continued increased demand for natural gas as we've added about 15,000 new customers, commercial and residential heating customers, per year for the last 10 years. So we see 2 opportunities for growth at utilities, 1, rate based growth and certainly through customer additions.
Onto the Mountaineer Gas acquisition. We're very excited about this opportunity because we believe Mountaineer is a strategic fit for us, both from a business perspective and from a geographic perspective. The fact that our service territories are but in some areas is helpful. We find the Mountaineer acquisition very much follows suit to the strategy that we've communicated, which is to invest more in our natural gas businesses, whether it's through acquisitions like Mountaineer or through the deployment of significant capital in existing systems. So, the Mountaineer acquisition will increase our rate base by about 14% and the total between the two companies will be about 2.75 $1,000,000,000 We expect the same rate base CAGR in West Virginia that we've seen in Pennsylvania, somewhere between 10% 12%, because there's a fairly large universe of work and opportunity for us to undertake in West Virginia.
That significant investment opportunity includes the retirement of bare steel pipeline at Mountaineer Gas. Mountaineer system today is comprised of 6,000 miles of pipeline, 25% or 1500 miles is constructed of bare steel, which is one of the materials that we target through our replacement and betterment program. So, we see that as a significant opportunity as well because over the next 20 years, as we start to retire and upgrade that system, we expect to spend about $2,000,000,000 And then finally, in aggregate, both utility companies will have in excess of 18,000 miles of pipeline. We'll increase our customer base by about 30% through the Mountaineer acquisition. And that really gives us opportunities when we start to look at what we might want to do in the renewable space.
We consider ourselves as having significant assets and significant capabilities that really serve as a great foundation for our renewable energy business. So, summarizing, Mountaineer, the status, financing is complete. We're going to use a combination of debt, cash and equity units. We're on track to close the acquisition in the last half of this calendar year, and this acquisition will be accretive in the 1st full year of operations. Turning to Energy Services.
The team at Energy Services has done an outstanding job over the last 10 years, building a business of scale. The top chart shows that in 2010, total margin from UGI Energy Services was about $135,000,000 In 2020, it was $334,000,000 That represents a CAGR of about 9%, significant growth. But importantly, the margin at UGI Energy Services, primarily fee based, which means that we insulate ourselves against commodity movement, commodity price movement. If you look at the lower left pie chart, in 2010, about 54% of our margin was fee based. In 2020, it's 94%.
Again, one of the differentiators for us is that we really lean into fee based opportunities when we can, whether it is minimum volume commitments, take or pay contracts, or whether it's fixed fee variable volume marketing contracts that we enter into. It's really important for us to make sure that as we differentiate ourselves, our fee based margin is a huge percentage of our total margin. Finally, why we think UGI Natural Gas has a compelling story. First, again, with the utility businesses. We're growing our regulated footprint, and we consider that a significant platform for investment over the short term and the long term.
We have regulatory mechanisms, both in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, then incentivize us to replace aged infrastructure. In Pennsylvania, it's the DISC mechanism In West Virginia, it's the IREP. I actually like the IREP, because not only does it allow us to recover costs for retiring aged infrastructure, it gives us an opportunity to earn on projects that expand our natural gas system to underserved or unserved areas. So again, we look at West Virginia much in the same way that we look at Pennsylvania, a gas friendly state with a constructive regulatory environment. We continue to expand our midstream business with significant fee based margin.
We offer a full suite of midstream services, and I think that differentiates us from many of the other companies that we have. We have quality assets located across the Marcellus Utica production area, which positions us very well as a midstream provider. And finally, we're well positioned to grow our renewables business. When you consider the fact that UGI Utilities has 740,000 customers, many of whom have been customers for decades, and that will be adding approximately 220,000 additional customers in West Virginia, again, customers who have been with Mountaineer Gas for decades, we think that brand recognition, coupled with the assets that we'll have, like I said, 18,000 plus miles of pipeline, direct connections to over 950,000 customers is really an important way for us to continue to build our renewables business by being that trusted energy partner for these customers. We'll talk more about the renewables opportunities that we have in Roger's presentation and Matt's presentation.
And I look forward to questions at the end of the presentation today. And for now, I'll turn it over to Hugh.
Thanks, Bob. I'm pleased to be here today to share some thoughts with you about our global LPG businesses and the strategic advantages those businesses provide to UGI. UGI is a market leader in the U. S. Through AmeriGas and in several European markets in LPG distribution.
This provides us with exceptional scale and geographic diversity across our footprint. We serve the needs of over 2,000,000 residential and commercial customers in our LPG footprint, providing the additional advantage of significant end use diversity across this geographically diverse footprint. We control strategically positioned distribution and storage assets throughout the U. S. And Europe, enabling UGI to quickly adapt to changing market conditions.
LPG is a mature business, and we've differentiated ourselves over time by introducing solutions that seek to reach customers where they are, including the development of our own cylinder exchange brand in the U. S, known as AmeriGas Cylinder Exchange or ACE, now one of the largest cylinder exchange offerings in the U. S. The development and expansion of at major retailers in both the U. S.
And in Europe, and most recently, the develop of the 1st nationwide home cylinder delivery solution in the U. S, which we have branded as Cynch, CYNCH. We believe that the diverse nature of our footprint and our customer base, along with strategically positioned assets and a history of innovation, provide UGI with a natural platform for the development and implementation of renewable energy solutions that our LPG customers want and need. We intend to develop and deliver these solutions at scale in an efficient, safe manner. We will have more on that later in the presentation.
But finally, I do want to touch on a few core benefits of our LPG businesses. We provide a steady source of cash for UGI for redeployment. UGI develops a steady pipeline of investment opportunities, matches them with the cash and allocates capital to its highest and best use across its portfolio, be it utilities, midstream, renewables or back into LPG projects. Turning to the next slide, margin management remains a core competency of our LPG businesses and I'll touch on that a little bit more on the next slide. But as we've shared with you before, we are focused on transforming the LPG businesses to increase operational efficiency and enhance the customer experience.
This includes using advanced technology and data analytics to optimize operations, drive efficiencies and make that customer experience something special. ACE, Cinch, cylinder vending and our national accounts programs are continued areas of growth and expansion in LPG to help reduce some of our weather sensitivity. Cinch has resonated very well with residential customers, especially during the pandemic, and we remain on track to roll our program out to 40 metropolitan areas by the end of fiscal 2022. We're also experiencing positive momentum with retailers as they deploy cylinder vending in the U. S.
And Europe, and we expect this expansion to continue. Cylinder vending provides a unique opportunity for our retail partners and that it drives efficiencies for them, while at the same time providing for an excellent customer experience. Finally, our market leading position in the U. S. Continues to provide us with advantage of serving increasing numbers of large commercial and national customers, taking full advantage of our scale and operating footprint.
I alluded to this earlier, but if you look at the last section on the right side of this slide, you will see that as we expand our capabilities into renewables, we see our core competencies and our distribution assets as providing a compelling advantage for UGI in this area. Bio LPG and RDME are renewable energy solutions that provide great examples of where we could take our LPG portfolio to a higher growth trajectory, and we'll discuss that a little bit more later in the presentation. Turning to the next slide, it's important for me to reiterate for everyone that although we talk about innovation and we're focused on growth, we remain very fundamentally focused on sound margin management. And without a doubt, margin management has been a core competency in our LPG businesses. We have a long track record of managing margins in high cost environments, low cost environments and transitionary periods when pricing was going from low to high and high to low.
This fundamental blocking and tackling supports our strategy of delivering reliable earnings growth. On this slide, we talk about our LPG business transformation initiatives. We remain on track to deliver permanent benefits from these initiatives. Core components of what we have achieved include operational process redesign and the creation of centers of excellence where best practices are shared to improve efficiency and the customer experience. The transformation initiatives also entail route optimization, which not only ensures a more robust delivery of propane to our customers, but it also drives savings.
Increased flexibility in our operations will enable us to have consistency of earnings growth, while continuing to provide strong cash flows. As we've noted on prior calls, this past winter was our first heating season, utilizing a central customer service process and distribution process at AmeriGas, and we continue to refine our capabilities in this area for the coming season. We're committed to providing a high quality customer experience, and this includes digitizing the customer experience so that customers can interact with us wherever they are and whenever they are, online, 20 fourseven, on the phone, through chat, etcetera. We remain on track with our expected permanent savings from both LPG businesses to be delivered by the end of fiscal 2022, And we have and will continue to invest about a third of the savings in an effort to retain customers with high lifetime value and thereby a high attractive return. Finally, on commercial excellence, our values of safety, reliability and customer excellence are foundational.
In fact, our goal is to enhance these foundational values as part of this transformation process. Turning to the next slide. Summarizing our key messages on UGI's global LPG businesses. First, strong cash flows coming from LPG remain a significant contributor to the overall rebalancing efforts of UGI, facilitating investment in attractive projects in natural gas and renewables. Over the past 5 years, our LPG line of business has generated an average free cash flow of over 420,000,000 dollars We've a proven track record of disciplined margin management, and this discipline, along with the benefits from our business transformation and continuous improvement actions, enable consistent value creation and return for our shareholders.
We continue to experience strong growth in our cylinder exchange, vending and national accounts programs. Given our scale, we're able to differentiate ourselves in the reach and service we can provide in these areas. Our businesses are levering digital platforms to enable enhanced customer communication, customer self-service capabilities and efficient propane delivery across a wide range. We are focused on enhancing the customer experience, satisfying customers in the most efficient way possible and maintaining a culture of operating excellence and commercial excellence within the business. Finally, we see renewables as an opportunity to take a bigger share of our LPG story over the next few years as we leverage infrastructure and geography to grow.
Now, I'll turn it over to Roger to transition to the 2nd component of our strategy, renewables.
Thank you, Hugh. During the last Investor Day, we shared that we plan to invest up to $1,000,000,000 in renewables over the next 5 years. Given our current line of sight and the wide array of exciting opportunities that we see ahead, it is clear that we will invest upwards of $1,000,000,000 over that time period. These renewable energy solutions provides both a pathway to defossilize our existing energy solutions through blending, but also enables our customers to achieve low carbon emissions and meet personal and regulatory mandates. We have a dedicated renewable solutions team that gives us an advantage in identifying opportunities in RNG, Bio LPG, renewable dimethyl ether, among others.
We can capitalize on our strong deal making and business development capabilities to identify and assess the opportunities available. We bring these innovative solutions to market by also leveraging the robust project engineering and project management expertise within our midstream business also our strong distribution and transportation assets within the utilities and global LPG businesses and our experience in navigating different regulatory environments in 18 countries and our core competencies to deliver innovative solutions to our existing 3,000,000 plus customers and also an expanding customer base. For these investments, we target unlevered internal rates of return of 10% and above, based on our experience and the pipeline that we see ahead of us. These returns consider the absence of tax credits, where applicable, and major fluctuations in RINs and LCFS prices. Now turning to the range of renewable solutions.
We are so excited about the range of renewable energy solutions that exist, which are highly compatible with our existing infrastructure and systems when blended. One key advantage is that customers are also able to use their existing appliances, which will support quicker adoption and affordability. Another appealing aspect is that these opportunities exist outside of our traditional geographic boundaries and in different parts of the entire value chain, whether from production through distribution. With the negative carbon content of some of these renewable energy sources, we can also adjust the amount that is blended in order to meet the different regulatory mandates that exist, whether in the U. S.
Or in Europe. As an example, using a combination of our existing products, such as LPG, and a mix of bio LPG and or renewable dimethyl ether, we could achieve a significantly lower carbon intensity. RNG, which is produced from landfill waste or from farm waste, Bio LPG, which is produced from bio alcohols or refineries that have been converted to bio refineries and process hydrogenated vegetable oils or DME that can be produced from bioalcohols or from farm waste or sewage converted to renewable dimethyl ether. It's important to note that we are evaluating these alternative processes with proven technologies. As we look beyond the immediate term, there are other energy sources that we believe will certainly be at play, and we are beginning to explore some of these.
For example, renewable hydrogen or carbon capture, battery storage. And with that, now I will turn it over to Matt.
Thanks, Roger, and it's a great pleasure to speak with you all today. We're excited about the opportunities ahead of us to expand our renewables portfolio, including those in the RNG space. Our long term approach to growing our renewable natural gas business is to build a diversified portfolio of projects, generating various revenue sources that can take advantage of available incentives, as well as expanding contractual arrangements with counterparties that are willing to enter into longer term fixed price contracts for RNG. Our approach involves pursuing different types of RNG supply projects in attractive geographic areas, which may be outside of our existing natural gas footprint. While the recent projects that we have announced use farm waste as a feedstock, we're exploring opportunities using other biogas feedstocks, such as landfill and food waste.
In alignment with our proven business model of maintaining a diversified portfolio, we believe that diversity in RNG supply projects of revenue sources will help us to mitigate risk and ensure healthy returns as we scale up the business. UGI has a number of unique capabilities that will help us successfully execute this approach. We already have a customer base where we can monetize incentives like RINs and LCFS credits, and we will continue to grow this customer base. We have an experienced sales force that sells natural gas to thousands of businesses, government entities and utility customers, and we can leverage this marketing capability to sell RNG to those that want to improve their environmental footprint. We have a highly experienced staff that is involved in plant development, construction and operations.
The equipment and technologies used to produce RNG are very familiar to us. Our GHI business that we acquired in fiscal 2020 also provides a tremendous opportunity for us to create synergies, where GHI can serve as an offtaker from an RNG supply project, similar to the arrangement with the Cayuga RNG project that I will touch on a bit later. Lastly, we are pleased with the potential to integrate various solutions where there are opportunities for RNG to serve as the feedstock for emerging renewable LPG technologies. In short, we are very confident that we have the capabilities to execute and we're excited about the path ahead of us. This next slide is intended to provide a brief overview of the process involved in producing RNG from farm waste.
Starting from left to right, first, farm waste is processed in a bio digester that breaks down the organic material through an anaerobic process. This creates biogas, which is a mixture of methane, carbon dioxide and other gases. The biogas is conditioned and upgraded to remove the CO2 and other gases, making it into pipeline quality renewable natural gas. The RNG is then delivered into the nearest natural gas pipeline for ultimate sale to the customer. This could be an interstate pipeline or a local distribution company like UGI Utilities.
Over the past year, UGI has entered into multiple RNG arrangements, whether through partnerships with experienced developers or the interconnect agreement to gain access to the largest RNG supply point in the U. S. To date. These arrangements move us further along the path to becoming the differentiated renewables energy solutions provider. These investments have been exciting, as they've expanded our footprint outside of the Mid Atlantic region to first to California with the GHI acquisition.
GHI continues to perform well and has provided access to the most lucrative RNG market in the United States. Next, to Idaho, through an interest in a utility scale RNG project. This supply will be sold into an interstate pipeline. And most recently to upstate New York with the recent announcement of the Cayuga RNG joint venture that will develop multiple dairy farm digester projects to produce RNG. As the JV unfolds, we will be able to leverage our existing capabilities and services with GHI serving as exclusive off taker and marketer of RNG for Cayuga RNG.
We continue to explore other opportunities in attractive markets in or outside of our existing service territories, where we can leverage our core strategic assets and capabilities that I discussed earlier. Importantly, we also have experience in working with regulators for our existing natural gas business, and we'll continue to expand this effort as we promote RNG in the future. And with that, I will turn it over to Neil, who will walk you through opportunities in Bio LPG and RDME.
Thanks very much, Matt. What I'd now like to do is to talk to you about our biomolecules, renewable dimethyl ether and BioOPG. Let's start with renewable dimethyl ether, which can be seen as almost the perfect blending agent, blend to 20% blend with LPG. What the renewable dimethyl ether does is it de fossilizes, it drops the blend, it drops the carbon index down of that blend. So it's a great de fossilization agent for us to use.
What we're looking to do is to use a direct synthesis route to produce this renewable dimethyl ether. And by doing so, we will be able to use the most cost effective route that we know is present today. Renewable dimethyl ether is not only a perfect blend, but it is one of the cleanest fuels available in terms of its pollutant. It produces almost no soot when burned and produces almost no NOx emissions when burned. So it's very healthy from an environmental pollutant point of view.
The carbon index actually of the molecule, it very much relies on where it is being produced in terms of the methodology of calculation of that index. And it also depends on the feedstock that we actually use. We can use municipal solid waste in direct synthesis. We can use animal or human slurry in direct synthesis, which gives it a tremendous negative carbon index. But it's not just for LPG blending.
Renewable dimethyl ether has got some interest from the transport industry, where it can be used as a substitution for diesel in some cases. It can be used in heating systems without any or very little modification in terms of the 20% blend in LPG. And with some modification, it can be actually used to 100% purity. So it's a very agile and flexible material and it's something that we are now looking to embrace. It can also be used for cooking and all the normal applications that we've had for LPG.
So the question is how are we going to bring this new molecule to market? And the answer is, through a proposed joint venture with SHV. And the proposed joint venture is not just to bring renewable DME between ourselves and SHV, it's also to enable the LPG industry to embrace this new molecule and in some instances, allow third parties to invest in these plants that we intend to put forward in the U. S. And the EU.
Our plan is that we will look at 6 plants, which in total equate to an investment in addition of $1,000,000,000 and we will start that program from 2023. In terms of other molecules, let me talk about another molecule, which is our ethanol, bioethanol to bio LPG molecule. And here we are utilizing the only known commercial plant, EcoBend, that today is delivering bio LPG to us and they also produce biogasoline to some of the other majors that take biogasoline. So we will have the opportunity to study the material that comes to us from EcoBend. We have the opportunity to understand the technology and hopefully at some point in the future replicate that technology from a bioethanol source.
So in summary, we have bioethanol established today, commercialized, producing bio LPG. We have the proposal to take renewable dimethyl ether, proven technology, lowest cost pathway that we know today. And so these are fundamentals that we believe bring real synergy of benefit to UGI. On that note, I will now hand you over to Ted, who can take you through some of the financials. Thank you.
Thanks, Neil, and thanks to all of you for joining us this afternoon. I want to talk to you about reliable earnings growth and how that helps us deliver on long term targets. UGI continues to create value for as a balanced growth and income investment. And in executing against the strategy of reliable earnings growth, the business has delivered a 7.7 EPS growth rate over the past 10 years and 9.6% over the past 20 years. This is using the midpoint of our current year guidance.
We generate tremendous amounts of cash and follow a disciplined capital deployment approach. We have a clear line of sight in our ability to deliver consistent earnings growth. You heard Bob speak to the record capital deployment and strong customer growth in utilities and our midstream business that's underpinned by a significant percent of fee based income. Hugh spoke to disciplined margin and OpEx management that provides flexibility as well as the business transformation and continuous improvement that's providing permanent savings. We also shared the intent of investing over $1,000,000,000 in renewables over the next 5 years that will deliver returns in low double digits.
Our balance sheet is strong. With our March 31 close, we had $1,600,000,000 in available liquidity and we're intent on rebalancing a fifty-fifty split between natural gas and global LPG through disciplined capital deployment, while maintaining the diversification that comes with our operational and geographic footprint. We had a strong start to the fiscal year, which led to an increase of roughly $0.15 in the midpoint of our guidance. That positions us well to deliver on our full fiscal year's target. And we have a clear pathway to achieve fiscal year 'twenty four estimates previously provided at $3.50 to $4 We'll be providing FY 'twenty two guidance and a revised long range estimate after the fiscal year's end.
Although our business continues to evolve, our history has shown that we're committed to and capable of delivering our long term financial targets of 6% to 10% EPS growth and 4% dividend growth. Our diversified and integrated portfolio provides cash flow stability and growth, which is a key differentiator against any of our peers. And we reliably generate positive cash flows regardless of changes in economic or commodity cycles, weather or political administrations. Coming out of the business transformation in LPG, we'll see even stronger cash flow generation that we can use to finance investments in renewables and the natural gas business as we work towards rebalancing our portfolio. We made progress in paying down debt and this will continue with plans to pay down debt to pre AmeriGas buy in levels of 3 to 3.25x over the next several years.
We also remain committed to getting AmeriGas down to 4 to 4.25x. Turning to capital allocation. We expect to generate a significant amount of cash in the next few years to the tune of roughly $5,000,000,000 to $5,600,000,000 Most of this cash, roughly 60%, is generated from our global LPG businesses, which we can use to reinvest in renewables and our natural gas business. Our LPG business is not very capital needy. Of course, we'll continue to meet our shareholder commitment of dividend growth while maintaining a competitive payout ratio.
Lastly, we plan to pay down debt in order to lower our leverage as we just discussed. Further expanding on how we'll allocate cash. All of our businesses generate cash, something we never take for granted, but the LPG side of the house is especially productive. At the same time, we have disproportionate opportunities for investment on the natural gas side of the house. This includes replacement of aging infrastructure, which attracts base growth of 10% to 12%, along with renewables opportunities discussed earlier like RNG, Bio LPG and renewable dimethyl ether.
More than 75% of the capital deployed will be spent in these areas. That drives the organic rebalancing of our portfolio. As we've mentioned before, we're currently more heavily weighted on the LPG side from an earnings contribution perspective. Again, cash generated by the LPG business finances a lot of the investments made in the natural gas business and renewables. That dynamic together with discrete acquisitions, Mountaineer for example, rebalances the portfolio towards a fifty-fifty split between natural gas and global LPG.
At the same time, renewables will begin to emerge as a significant proportion of the portfolio. While those returns will not be represented as a separate segment in the near term, you can see from our strategy that this will start to be a larger contributor to growth and income over time. I'll close out the financials, once again underscoring the consistency with which despite varying economic cycles and other external factors, we delivered on our EPS and dividend growth targets. Our 10 year EPS CAGR is close to 8% and our dividend CAGR is at 7%. We're well positioned to deliver continued earnings growth through stable regulated earnings, strong fee based income, weather resilient in high growth areas and returns on our investments in renewables.
With that, I'll turn it over to Brendan Heck. Thank you.
Thanks, Ted, and good afternoon, everyone. At UGI, we consider ESG to be an essential aspect of our overall strategy, corporate sustainability and long term value creation. Over the next few slides, we will take you through some of the key elements of our approach to the environment, social aspects of our business and corporate governance. We're committed to providing our stakeholders with valuable and meaningful insight into our ESG goals and commitments. We will continue to enhance our disclosure through various frameworks such as SASB, GRI, CDP and TCFG.
One of the points we want to emphasize is that ESG is not something separate for our organization. It's not a box checking exercise here at UGI. Material ESG elements are a key focus of our overall strategic vision and align with our 3R strategy to deliver reliable earnings growth, rebalancing our portfolio of assets and investments in renewables. As we turn to the next slide, let's take a closer look at our commitment to the environment. As a provider of energy products and services, our commitment to lowering emissions is a critical aspect of our long term strategy.
We have a 3 pronged approach to lowering our carbon footprint: reduce our emissions, reduce our customers' emissions and to invest in renewables energy solutions. We have made progress on all three of these elements of the strategy, but we thought it was important to address and make a commitment to the first part of that 3 pronged strategy to reduce our own emissions. We committed to reduce our Scope 1 or direct emissions by 55% by 2025 using 2020 as a base year. We thought a short term 5 year goal would provide our stakeholders with a reasonable window to evaluate our performance as we will continue to make strides to reduce our emissions. Certainly, the sale of Konamaha will be a large portion of this reduction, but the balance will come with what we consider to be good business practice.
As we discussed at our last Investor Day, we've already planned to invest at least $1,000,000,000 on renewable energy solutions over the next 5 years, but we will also have roughly $1,500,000,000 in planned CapEx that will lower our emissions. As you can see on the slide, we will continue our robust pipeline replacement and betterment program at the utility, which is important to us because it is regulated spend, reduces methane emissions, increases the efficiency of our systems and enhances the safety and integrity of our pipeline system. As we think about R and B, pipeline replacement and betterment, we see the fugitive methane emissions on our system falling from a methane emissions intensity rate of just under 1%, 0.99 percent in 1999 to 0.05% in 2,040 or a 95% reduction. Fleet conversions, route optimization, better technology, our compressor stations, all of these areas help to reduce our carbon footprint and operating expenses over time. So to bring this back to our 3R strategy, you can see how our planned investments will not only impact the renewables aspect of this strategy, but also reliable earnings growth and support our rebalance.
UGI's mission to be the preeminent energy distribution company in our targeted markets by providing a superior range of clean and sustainable energy solutions to our customers. We believe that sustainable, reliable and affordable energy solutions are a necessity for our customers and communities. We strive to deliver this fundamental need through best in class safety, operations, products and services, while enhancing the quality of life of our employees, customers and the communities we serve. To accomplish this, we need to rely on our core values that Roger touched on earlier: responsibility, reliability, safety, excellence, respect and integrity. All of our core values are focused on being a good corporate citizen and embracing a culture of social responsibility.
We have a rich history of supporting the communities we serve as we have been a partner with various organizations for decades, and in the case of the United Way, 100 years. On this slide, I want to highlight our commitment to progress in key areas of safety and diversity inclusion. Safety is a way of life for us. We wanted to provide our stakeholders with meaningful commitments so they can evaluate our progress. As a result, we established 2 goals: a 35% reduction in total recordable injuries and a 50% reduction in accountable vehicle incidents.
And like our Scope 1 target, we expect to achieve these reductions by 2025. As we continue to train our workforce and improve our safety performance, we expect employee and customer satisfaction to strengthen and we can expect reductions in our operating expenses over time. Turning to diversity and inclusion. We remain focused on strengthening our workforce and building on a culture where differences in cultural perspectives, life experiences and differences in viewpoints will be nurtured. A key element of that strategy is our Belonging, Inclusion, diversity and equity or BID initiative, which was launched in 2020.
BID focuses on culture, career, community and commerce and provides the blueprint for achieving diversity of thought, experience, culture, gender, race and sexual orientation throughout our organization. As part of this initiative, UGI established new partnerships with the Urban Affairs Coalition and Big Brothers Big Sisters. We are also proud to report that we support the activities of our employee resource groups, including our Black Organizational Leadership and Development, BOLD, veteran employee team, VET, and the Women's Impact Network, or WIN. These recent enhancements to our culture of social responsibility will continue to strengthen our workforce and create an advantage for UGI as we prepare our business for the next 140 plus years. Turning to governance.
Strong corporate governance is essential to creating long term value and safeguarding UGI's commitments to stakeholders. We believe Board diversity is critical to effective governance, and our Board has a diverse range of backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, skills and qualifications that align with UGI's overall long term strategy. Our Board ensures that our company has a clear purpose, strategic and operational direction and effective management, while taking into consideration economic circumstances along with regulatory and legal requirements. Our Board is actively engaged in oversight of ESG initiatives across our organization for ESG issues as well as oversight. The Board acts through a number of its committees, focusing on their particular areas of responsibility.
For example, our Safety, Environmental and Regulatory Compliance, SERC Committee is responsible for reviewing and monitoring compliance of the company's environmental, health and safety performance, including reviewing key metrics and compliance with applicable regulations. As we continue to lean into our ESG program, our Board's active engagement in the process provides our business with exceptional oversight and guidance. Our Chairman has engaged several of our largest shareholders, representing approximately 20% of our outstanding common stock shares outstanding to request feedback on our ESG reporting. We have incorporated that feedback into our recent report and will continue to request feedback on our program. With that, I will hand it back over to Roger.
Roger? Thank you, Brendan.
Before turning to Q and A, I want to take some time to summarize the key takeaways from today's presentation. We are committed to our strategy, which is to drive reliable earnings growth, opportunities in renewables and rebalance our portfolio. Our strong performance in the first half of the fiscal year, along with recent announcements since our last Investor Day highlight the focus on and the value of our strategy. Firstly, the acquisition of Mountaineer, the largest gas utility in West Virginia the Cayuga RNG joint venture, which builds on the platform started with the GHI acquisition and the Idaho project and the RDME partnership with SHV Energy and the exclusive supply arrangement with EcoBens for Bio LPG. We have a clear path to growth with the investment opportunities in our regulated business that Bob shared, the fee based margins driving returns in the midstream and marketing business, the innovative growth areas in global LPG and the over $1,000,000,000 in renewable energy investments over the next 5 years.
We will continue to accelerate renewables investments and key areas are emerging. UGI is very well positioned to deliver 6% to 10% EPS growth and 4% dividend growth in the future. Strong cash generation capabilities that we expect to increase by more than 15% over the next few years as we move out of the business transformation initiatives. And we are focused on progressing our ESG efforts to reduce our emissions, our customers' emissions and invest in alternative energy solutions. We're excited about the opportunities that exist and look forward to engaging with you on our upcoming earnings call.
And now, we will take a short 5 minute break before opening it up for questions. Thank you.
And the first question is in the area of renewables. You point to $1,000,000,000 in renewable investments over the 5 year time frame, But wondering if you could provide some specifics on the cadence of the investments? Should we assume that it's going to ramp up towards the back half of the 5 year forecast period?
Thank you for that question. A couple of things to highlight when we're looking at the $1,000,000,000 of projected investments over the next 5 years. First of all, we really are considering an array of factors while we're making these investments. With a real focus on the core unlevered IRRs that we talked about and that low double digit rate of return that we're looking for. As you've seen lately, there's been quite a number of announcements on renewable natural gas projects.
We've also announced our joint venture, our intent for a joint venture with on renewable dimethyl ether. So as a result of that, we're seeing some pretty good momentum here coming our way. And we certainly expect that momentum to continue as we go forward. So when it comes to a cadence of investments and exactly what rate is it going to come in at, it's a difficult question to answer just because what we're seeing right now is an increased momentum as we're developing. Every project we're doing, we're learning more and more, and we're seeing more and more opportunities as well.
So with that, I'd like to hand it over to Ted just for a comment on how we thought about this when we did our fiscal 'twenty four guidance, EPS range, I should say, not guidance or EPS range.
Thanks, Roger. So we won't be providing an update to our guidance until we have closed out the fiscal year. So at the end of the fiscal year, we'll give an update to guidance. And that'll be a precursor to our Investor Day in December, where we will give a lot more color on not just guidance for the New Year and 2022, but also across the plan for through 2025 when we meet with you in December and we'll be providing quite a bit more detail on what's behind it, our best thinking at that point in time and how we will be making the renewables investments. And hopefully, we'll have a little bit more color on what the pipeline looks like and then what pace of those investments would look like going forward.
Thank you. So the next question also in the renewables area, how are you thinking of financing for your incremental renewable opportunities that you've outlined?
Yes. So I think Roger did a good job of kind of laying out the fact that it's very difficult at this point in time to be able to say what the cadence and what the scale of our investments in renewables is going to be, and what the pace might be over the next 5 year period. I would say if it's fairly spread out over that time period, yes, we have the capacity to likely manage that completely through cash financing in house. Should we be looking at 1 or 2 investments that become sizable scale investments, then we're going to be looking at different options for how we would finance that. And if we're looking at something that starts to really exceed the $1,000,000,000 we'll also likely be looking at other alternative financing needs depending on the specifics of what those investments look like.
Okay. Just turning to another question also in the renewable space as well. Can you please discuss the cost of producing RDME versus purchasing conventional LPG? Are there any current or proposed regulatory measures that will narrow that cost gap and increase RD and D penetration?
Yes. So I'll take that question. So it is early days. And what we've been doing over the last while is certainly modeling what we think the cost of executing a renewable dimethyl ether plant will be the cost of running 1 and then the expected rate of return that we're targeting with product coming out of the gate of that facility. When we factor all of that in, we're very we're quite optimistic that the product coming out of the facility is going to be very competitive with today's LPG cost.
So again, in keeping with the theme of what we're looking for is affordable solutions for our customers. So really leveraging existing infrastructure as much as possible. Really what we really like about renewable dimethyl ether is that you can blend it and you're not having to increase or change equipment. Customers don't have to change their heating appliances. And it's a product coming out of the gate, as I mentioned, which will be competitive with LPG, but with all the modeling we've been able to do today.
So we certainly look forward to executing these projects as we think it's a solution that will be quite attractive on several fronts.
Thank you. So moving to the next question. This is a little bit outside of the Red Lobos area. But looking at your 6% to 10% long term EPS CAGR and just considering the strong rate base growth at the utilities, the transformation that we have at LPG and also just adding in or layering in the $1,000,000,000 CapEx in high returns for renewables, how do we continue to frame that long term EPS target of 6% to 10%? It seems that we're more likely to fall in the top half of the range.
Do we think there are other factors that may affect this?
Thanks for that question as well. So maybe a couple
of comments here. First of all, our 6% to 10% earnings growth rate has been up there for some time. That is a number we published that we started communicating approximately 20 years ago. We're still comfortable with that number. We're comfortable with it when you consider our portfolio mix of companies, when you consider volatility, when you consider changing economic cycles, etcetera.
That being said, when you look at our actual performance over the last 10 year period, we actually performed at 7.7% growth rate. And when you look at the last 20 years, we performed at 9.6%. And all of that resulted in very good total shareholder returns that far exceeded the S and P. So right now, we remain comfortable with that range of 6% to 10% earnings growth. Next question.
Thank you. So moving now, this question is for Ted. Just on the capital allocation slide, just wanted some clarification on the cash flow from operating activities that's budgeted for the FY 2021 to 2024 period and just any change between that and what we shared for December 2020? Also in keeping with that, I know you mentioned before Ted just the EPS guidance range as well.
Yes. So we kept our guidance range in this deck consistent with the plan that we had shared in December at the December 20 Investor Day. As I mentioned earlier, we'll be providing new guidance with the close of the fiscal year. And that'll be the time period between now and then is the time period we work through our long range strategic plan. And so as we move into the Investor Day and this next December, December 21, we'll provide quite a bit more color on our longer term expectations and plans.
The cash flow that you saw that was updated in this deck is fairly nominally updated purely for actuals that we've already reported on in this fiscal year. It's not an indication of any change in our longer term planning, which, again, we won't be updating until later this year.
Thank you. Now moving to RNG and Hydrogen. Can you talk about opportunities to integrate your efforts in RNG and Hydrogen with your regulated gas utility and whether you could possibly underpin investment in those areas with the utility as a counterparty?
Sure. Yes. Thank you, Roger. Yes, that's something we think a lot about. Absolutely, we look as I mentioned in our presentation, we look at the utility as being the trusted energy provider to 100 of 1000 of customers for decades now.
The process will have to include though getting regulatory approval. There's 2 ways that we can offer renewable natural gas or hydrogen. First is through the purchase gas cost filing whereby we procure gas on behalf of our sales customers. That absolutely will need discussion at the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. And then another opportunity is for us to offer a voluntary tariff whereby customers, primarily larger customers who want access to a renewable fuel would have the ability to do that and we would have that wired into our tariff, again, subject to quite a bit of discussion with the regulator, but that is absolutely the way we're thinking.
We think that today, 740,000 customers in a few months, nearly a 1000000 customers is really great opportunity to serve as the foundation for our renewables efforts.
Sticking with the natural gas side of the house, what is your view on the growth at the midstream segment? Are you included Phase 1 of PennEast in your numbers? And we should have a decision from the sources of the case very soon, next week or in the week and a half. What's your view on the viability of the project at this stage? And how are you thinking of other expansion in that area?
Yes. So I'll leave it off and then I'll
hand it over to Bob for a couple of comments. So yes, as you know, the arguments were heard on April 28, and we certainly look forward to the decision, which is expected anytime now, probably before the end of the month from the Supreme Court. There's still other approvals that will be needed. And so then the partnership will evaluate and then we'll decide on what some of the next steps are. We're of the opinion that we still very much believe that an additional source of natural gas into New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania is required.
It's necessary. But that being said, the timing for the project remains very unclear. And the path forward will certainly have some challenges. So as a result, we're not spending we have not spent very much in fiscal 2021. It's been very minimal.
And when we're thinking about going into our fiscal 2022, we're not planning on putting any including any earnings in our fiscal 2022. Now what I'd like to do is hand it back to Bob just about the general question around midstream and other potential growth that we're seeing in that area.
Sure. So thank you, Roger. So when we purchased the assets of Columbia Midstream Group, we indicated that we would spend 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars over the 1st 5 years to build out those systems or acquire systems that are complementary. And we did that, we started that with the Pine Run acquisition that we've talked about. We think that the midstream business is still a very good business.
And as we continue to see commodity prices recover and hopefully maintain that recovery. We really expect additional drilling to occur both in Northeastern Pennsylvania, in the Marcellus and Southwestern Pennsylvania and the Marcellus Utica. And if you use our utility as a proxy, as I mentioned, we've added more than 15,000 heating customers per year over the last 10 years. So, without a doubt, we continue to see very strong demand for natural gas at our utility and in general. So we still very much like the midstream business.
And as I've mentioned, we've delved into some really good projects and we expect as commodity prices maintain, we'll see that business continue to grow.
The next question, this one is for Ted. Is it correct that the new JV and I believe this is the intent to create a JV with SHV, will that not be consolidated into UGI's statements?
We will not be the controlling partner in that joint venture. And so we would not be consolidating in our statements. We would be managing it through its minority shareholder.
Okay. And then the next question is back in the renewable space. Can you discuss what you're assuming in the 10 plus percent unlevered IRR? It seems like the return profile might be different between RNG in the U. S.
And RDME in Europe. How should we be thinking of this? How are you viewing the returns of some of the other opportunities you highlighted such as storage, carbon capture?
Okay. So I'll kick it off, and then I'll hand over to Bob and potentially Matt here as well to just elaborate further. So the way we're thinking about the rates of return, we're really looking at getting the appropriate return for the risk of execution of a project. So building a facility, operating a facility, and then we're looking at getting a rate of return at the gate of that facility that we would obviously sell that product to the local distribution companies or sell that product to our LPG distribution companies. So we're really looking at framing it that way.
And to date, that looks to be a very feasible and solid way for us to be building these projects with, again, a mindset that we would have these kind of fixed fee or take or pay structures at the battery limits of the facility. So with that, I'd like to hand it over to Bob just to talk a little more about RNG and potentially Matt.
Sure. Sure. Thank you, Roger. Yes, we look at ourselves as a really good candidate to continue to grow our renewables business. When you consider our distinctive capabilities, which are not just the fact that we've got decades of experience in marketing gas and scheduling gas or the customer relationships that I mentioned earlier that we've had for decades, it's also the basket of assets that we have and our ability to design, engineer, operate, maintain those really I think give us a leg up and have us serve as a real foundation for a growing renewables business.
I'll turn it over to Matt to talk a little bit more about the economics of the projects, but I think, as I said, when you consider our distinctive capabilities in that basket of assets that are so critical and strategically located, it positions us really well.
Thanks, Bob. I think in terms Roger hit it right on the head. It's all about weighing risk and reward. And I think the good part about our strategy is that we're going to be very diversified. We're looking across the spectrum of different types of renewable opportunities, and that allows us to be very selective in terms of the projects that we go after.
So again, we're holding ourselves to a high standard in terms of generating a healthy return given the risk reward profile of these projects. And from what we are seeing out there, we think this is very
The next question is also in the natural gas and renewable space. So how would you frame further gas LDC acquisitions or similar moves considering the desire to get to that fifty-fifty mix, especially considering RNG and renewables seem to be accruing to the non gas or more the LPG side of the balance? And that's the first part of the question. Then I'll pause there, and then I'll ask the second part.
Yes. Yes, for that question. So when we're thinking of the rebalancing of our companies, the way we're thinking about it is renewables is now going to be taking a segment of that pie chart. And when we're looking at a rebalance, what we're really looking at is bringing the LPG balance to that 50% level as we're increasing the amount of renewables that we're increase disproportionately, not increase, but disproportionately invest in our natural gas businesses. So that's the way we're thinking about this.
And certainly, so far looking at the specific projects, we're not qualifying them as strictly LPG or strictly natural gas. We're seeing them really as a renewable solution because there are a lot of synergies between these types of investments we're making between whether it's going to be an LPG blended molecule or whether it's going to be a natural gas molecule going into our pipeline systems and getting marketed with our GHI company, for example, in California. So we're looking at it from that lens. With that, I'll hand it over to Ted.
Yes. I mean, I think you covered the question, Roger. We're breaking down LPG from traditional LPG from traditional natural gas and we're going to have an emerging segment in our pie chart if you will that is for renewables. And we'll be looking at that on whether or not that's on the LPG side of the house or on the natural gas side. But as we start to have a significant proportion of our business and renewables, we will start to break that out as a third segment in our portfolio.
In terms of timing, our current plan has us getting pretty close to that fifty-fifty mix. You have to remember that just the dynamics of the business, right, where we are disproportionately creating cash on the LPG side, disproportionately investing it on the LNG side before even bringing renewables into the mix, right? The replacement and betterment work that we're leaning into in the utilities business, bringing on Mountaineer, all of that is fairly dramatically shifting that mix of our business over the time period of our current plan through 2024.
Okay. Thank you. And I think you answered the second part of the question in your response. So that takes me to the end of our Q and A portion. Now I'll turn it back over to Roger for some closing remarks.
Thank you, Tamika, and thanks to all of you for joining us today at this Investor Day. Today, we framed our strategy with 3 key components: reliable earnings growth, renewables and rebalancing our business. As you've certainly seen, we've made a lot of progress since our December Investor Day with all the multiple announcements that we've made over the last few months. We thought it made a lot of sense to do something mid term to really provide an update. So hopefully, you found this very useful to as a follow-up to what we did in December.
We now look forward to our Q3 earnings call, which will then be followed by our year end earnings call, during which we'll provide guidance for our fiscal 2022 year. We're also going to hold an Investor Day in December as a follow-up of today and during which we'll provide some insight on our plan for the next period. So we certainly look forward to you joining us in our Q3 earnings call and then the subsequent opportunities for us to communicate with you the progress we are making with our reliable earnings growth, renewables and rebalancing of our portfolio. Thank you very much for your time today and look forward to the next opportunity.