Okay. We're going to move on to our next panel. I have been told to warn everyone, I'm not sure if you're all aware of this, but supposedly FEMA is sending out an alert at 2:00 this afternoon, so all of our cell phones are going to go off today. If that happens, that's what's going on, so don't get freaked out. Yeah. I'm actually not kidding, that's serious. Just FYI. Very happy to have our next panel here. I think these are two of the premier companies in the regulated space, and two of the best CEOs, so very happy to have both of them. We've got Ameren, who's going to start us with Warner Baxter, Chairman and CEO. WEC Energy Group with Gale Klappa, Chairman and CEO. Let me turn it over to Warner to kick us off.
Thank you.
All right. Well, good afternoon, everybody. First, Steve, thanks for the invitation. This is always a pleasure to be here. World-class conference, thank you, and thank you for the kind words. Gale, it's always a pleasure to share the podium with you. We've done this gig a few times before, both here and otherwise, so we're looking forward to that conversation. Frankly, it's an honor to be up here and characterized as a premium-regulated utility. My objective really over the next few minutes is to talk to you about the things that we've been doing to have that title. We don't take it lightly, to be clear, but I think as important to take even longer time to talk about what we're going to do in the future to continue to sustain that.
Before I jump into that, right here in front of me is my Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Marty Lyons, and Andrew Kirk, our Director of Investor Relations. All the tough questions will go to them, just to be clear. Let me start with cautionary statements. No surprise here. This is the standard. Some things I say may be forward-looking, and certainly we can't predict actual results, so I encourage you to take a look at those types of things. Let me level set just for a moment and start with Ameren. Many of you know our company, but just so you know, we are a fully rate-regulated company operating in both Missouri and Illinois. We have about two and a half million electric customers in both states, about a million natural gas customers, and certainly a large generation fleet.
I think what you see from all these jurisdictions, I'll talk about it again, what I'm pleased to talk to you about today is that all four of these jurisdictions that we have are constructive jurisdictions that support investment. I think that's certainly a big part of our thesis, we'll talk a little bit more about how those constructive jurisdictions are driving growth and benefits for both our shareholders and our customers, which really gets me to the value proposition. We like to say the value proposition for shareholders, which you all are, but also for our customers, because they're closely intertwined. If we do the right things for our customers, we're customer-centric, the customers are at the center, we're going to do the right things for you, our shareholders. It begins with really executing our plan.
One of the things that we've been doing over the last several years is the consistent execution of our strategy. That strategy has delivered strong results, not just from an earnings per share perspective, but from a customer reliability perspective, from an affordability perspective. All those things put us well-positioned, not just for today, but for tomorrow. When you shift down, you take a look at tomorrow and you look at our long-term growth outlook. It is among the best in the industry. 5%-7% earnings per share growth outlook from 2017 to 2022. It's driven by strong rate base growth, 7%.
What's important to know about that 7% rate base growth is that it does not include two important items, an incremental $1 billion of grid modernization investments in Missouri, which was precipitated and driven by recent legislation that was passed there just this past spring. Secondly, an announcement that we made associated with 700 megawatts of new wind generation, or approximately $1 billion. I'll be able to touch on a little bit of those activities with both of those, but those are not incorporated into our 7% rate base growth. I look at our plan over the next several years.
I'm encouraged by our ability not just to execute based on our historical performance, but also, as I said, because of these strong regulatory frameworks are going to enable us to deliver the things we want to deliver to you, our shareholders, as well as to our customers. One of the things I know we've been getting a lot of questions on is, well, what about your investment pipeline? Is it only a five-year pipeline? Rest assured, that pipeline is deep in all of our jurisdictions to continue to invest on behalf of our customers and our communities. Many of you have also asked, when are we going to update our earnings growth guidance because of these two items, especially the $2 billion of potential investment in Missouri?
We said we might have done it at EEI, frankly, we're going to do that during our fourth quarter conference call in February. There's nothing to read through that. It's just a matter of time, we think we'll be able to give you a better and more comprehensive update in the fourth quarter. Stay tuned for that. You take our long-term growth outlook, you combine that with a solid dividend, what we believe then is a very strong total shareholder return story. Certainly compared to many of our peers, I'm sitting next to someone who's been delivering for quite a bit of time, hence it's why we're standing up here talking about his premium-regulated utilities. I think important on a risk-adjusted basis, we feel very good about what we're doing and continue to do in the future.
Look, I'm not going to go through a lot of the details here. Our strategic plan and your message here with this particular slide is that it's not changing. It's been the plan that we've been operating for the last 5 or 6 years, we believe it's the same plan. Going to continue to deliver superior value to our customers and our shareholders in the years ahead. I'll talk about certain aspects of this plan here in a moment, I'll start with this. It's really the point about how we think about investing and operating in our regulatory jurisdictions based upon the existing regulatory frameworks. How do we maximize value given the existing rules and regulations in Missouri, Illinois, and transmission? You can see how we allocate capital. That's an important component of our strategic plan. Has been and will continue to be.
One thing I'd point out at the bottom, you see there that Missouri had a CAGR of 3.5%. When you look at the details, what it also says is that this plan that was presented in February does not include the incremental $1 billion for grid modernization investment in Missouri, as well as the potential $1 billion of incremental investment associated with wind generation. When we look down there, we've said that we expect those two additions to be largely additive. When you look at the CAGR for Missouri, you can expect that to grow in the future. We'll provide more of that guidance when we come back in the fourth quarter. Excuse me, on the fourth quarter conference call.
One other thing to be mindful of, too, is that what you see in the regulatory jurisdictions, we've been successful in achieving several settlements with a lot of the key stakeholders. Just recently in our wind generation, we just reached a settlement with key stakeholders, the Missouri Public Service Commission staff, and the large industrial customers. In Illinois, both our electric and gas cases, we've virtually settled those cases entirely with all the key stakeholders. Certainly what we've noticed there is one of the first things that we did with the Missouri legislation was provide our customers with a 6% rate reduction. We came to an agreement with all the key stakeholders in terms of the level and the timing of that settlement. Moving forward, this has obviously been something many of you have been focused on, is the legislation that we recently passed in Missouri.
It's been several years in coming. It's been one that it was a collaborative effort that we stuck with to make sure that we were delivering the results that the key stakeholders wanted to achieve. This is a win-win-win. It's a win for shareholders, it's a win for our customers, and it's a win for the state of Missouri because we're going to put people to work for jobs. We're going to have an enhanced grid, which is a great thing for economic development. Certainly, our customers have a host of consumer protections in there, and you, our shareholders, are going to give us the ability to put more money to work to enhance the grid. We can talk more about some of those details in the Q&A should you care to do that. The other piece of our story is the wind generation investment.
As I said earlier, we informed and we made the announcement for 700 megawatts of wind generation, or approximately $1 billion. Earlier this year, we announced a 400-megawatt deal with a company, and we filed a certificate of need with the Missouri Public Service Commission. I alluded to this a little while ago. As part of that process, we've already achieved a settlement with the key large industrial customers, as well as the Missouri Public Service Commission staff. We still have some other interveners that are opposing certain aspects of what we want to do.
The point is that we're making good progress, and we're hopeful as we go before the Missouri Public Service Commission, we'll be able to get this CCN not only done in a timely basis but give us the ability to set the stage for future settlements as well as negotiations for the other 300 megawatts of wind generation that we hope to announce by the end of the year. We're very excited about this. This takes a meaningful step in terms of the transition of our generation portfolio to a cleaner, more diverse portfolio, but to do so in a responsible fashion. The support around the state for this project is very strong, and so we're looking forward to bringing it home here in the next several months. Moving on. I've talked a lot about, in my very brief few minutes, about our five-year plan.
I think it's important for you all to know that our team, me, we don't just think about the five years. We're responsible and thoughtful about not just the next five years, but the next 10, 15, 20 years. That's our job. That's what our stakeholders expect us to do. As we look ahead, we frankly see a very bright energy future. We see an integrated energy grid that's going to be more resilient, that's going to be more reliable, that's going to deliver the things that our customers want, which is greater levels of reliability. We believe that there are meaningful opportunities to continue to make not only the electric and the gas rates affordable but gives us the ability to continue to drive economic development within the states and the regions that we operate.
We also believe that there are greater opportunities for greater levels of electrification of so many things, including transportation. Try not to drink the Kool-Aid. This is not about, oh, yeah, yours is pipe dreams. This is real. We as an industry, we as a company, are focused on that because it's efficient electrification that's going to drive significant benefits for the environment, significant benefits for our customers, significant benefits for our shareholders, and certainly the states that we operate in. Last but not least, we are not standing still. We need to be looking ahead on innovative technologies, things that we can do on behalf of our customers in the states that we serve in.
We're convinced as we move in this digital transformation, not only going to deliver great things for our customers, we believe too that that digital transformation will continue to drive efficiencies in our business, which also will benefit our customers. As I wrap up and before I turn the dais over to Gale, let me finish the same way I began. We feel very good about our story because it's delivering strong earnings per share growth, not just this year, but over the next five years. We're focused on delivering strong earnings per share growth and returns, not just for today, but also for decades in the future. We're focused on doing that for customers in the states that we operate in as well.
You combine that with a very solid dividend, we believe that our total shareholder return potential is very strong, and we're going to stay focused on executing our strategy so we can continue to deliver that, not just what we've done in the past, but in the future. With that, I'm going to step aside. I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Gale Klappa. Thank you very much.
All right. Well, Warner, thank you. Steve, thank you as well for the invitation. Warner and I go way back, and you notice that we're both Midwest nice. Instead of calling me old during the presentation, he just said, "Well, he's been delivering for a long time." But Warner, thank you for being here. Literally, Warner and I do go back a number of years, and I have tremendous respect for not only what Warner's accomplished, but also the way he's accomplished it, with a ton of integrity. So, a brief introduction. Ashley Knutson from our investor relations team is right here, and Scott Lauber is way in the back, our CFO, will be happy to answer any questions at all. Marty can answer some of our questions if he wishes as well.
Thank you for inviting us, I think we and Ameren both pay the same lawyers by the word, your future results may vary. Just like Warner, I'd like to just level set you with what WEC Energy Group is all about today. A Fortune 500 company serving about 4.5 million customers across the great Midwest. Assets just north of $31 billion. In fact, I think we passed $32 billion the other day. Nearly 70% of those assets, even though we made a major acquisition three years ago, nearly 70% of those assets still reside in the state of Wisconsin, which as many of you know, has had a very balanced, supportive regulatory jurisdiction, supportive of low cost of capital for customers.
We are today the eighth largest natural gas distribution company in the U.S., by market value, the 13th largest publicly traded utility in the U.S. We've been very fortunate in that for you and for our other shareholders, we have delivered a decade of growth. Our average earnings per share growth for each of the years of the past decade has been 8% a year. I think that puts us basically in the top decile of our industry in terms of EPS growth. We've also had a very strong track record of dividend increases, I think all of you are aware that a big component of total return for companies like ours is not only earnings per share growth, but dividend growth as well. 2018 marked the 15th consecutive year of dividend growth for our shareholders.
I'm going to spend a lot of time on this slide just because I really like it. If you look at the past 15 years, the same period in which we've seen 15 consecutive years of dividend growth for our company, it's actually been a pretty strong period of performance for the utility sector. You can see on the screen here that the Dow Utility Average up almost 500% in terms of total return over that period of time, the Philadelphia Utility Index and the S&P Electric Index both up well above 300% in terms of total shareholder return. If you look at the broader averages, you can see again, pretty solid performance over that 15-year period with the Nasdaq leading with over 500% total shareholder return over that 15-year period. Here, folks, is why I like this slide.
WEC Energy Group's total shareholder return over that 15-year period, nearly 725%. The question becomes, that's great, what have you done for me lately? What we are doing lately is really both focused, as Warner mentioned in terms of his company, focused on customers, performance, reliability, and shareholder returns. I'm pleased to report to you that last year, our We Energies subsidiary based in Milwaukee was named the most reliable utility, not just in the Midwest, where we've won the award for seven consecutive years, but we were named the most reliable utility in America. I compliment our folks tremendously because when you're one of our line crews and you're fighting ice storms and 14 feet of snow, it is not easy to have that kind of reliability record.
I think it's testament not only to the talent and dedication of our folks, but also to the kinds of investment decisions we have made in enhancing our grid and enhancing the reliability of our performance across our network. We also last year, this is several years running now, were named one of the 100 best corporate citizens in the U.S. Something we're very pleased about, that our philanthropic record, our record of economic and community support across our service area has been recognized by Corporate Responsibility Magazine as among the best in the nation. Going forward, as Warner said, where do we go from here? We have what I believe is a very robust executable capital plan, to put it in the vernacular, this capital plan has no big bets, no science experiments, no serial number 1s.
Again, I think our capital plan, which is very focused on reliability and on the types of investments that we think will benefit our customers short-term and long-term, is a very executable plan that is very low risk in terms of delivering that plan on time and on budget. We start with gas distribution. Let me spend just a bit of time on the capital that we're allocating over the course of the next five years to our gas distribution business. First of all, unlike our electric business, where customer consumption of electricity has really been essentially flat since the Great Recession, we are seeing, for our industry, pretty considerable growth in customer consumption of natural gas. If you look back to 2016, we saw about 3.7% weather normal growth in customer demand for natural gas over the previous year.
You move to 2017, we saw another 3.7% growth on top of that, and we're ahead of plan this year in terms of increase in customer demand for natural gas. That growth and the need to update aging natural gas underground systems, the very critical need to upgrade the natural gas distribution systems in our country are driving a fair amount of capital spend for us and capital investment opportunity for us in the natural gas distribution business. You saw the tragic happening that occurred just a couple of weeks ago in the Boston suburbs. What you see as part of that pie chart, 42% of the $11.8 billion in our capital plan over the next five years is dedicated to expanding and upgrading the quality of our natural gas distribution network.
On the generation side of the business, we are very deep now into reshaping our generation portfolio. The 21% of our $11.8 billion that will be dedicated to generation really is renewables and natural gas. A big chunk of what we're doing here, and we will complete this sometime next year, is we are going to be able to retire our aging coal-fired power plant, which does not have the most modern environmental controls and is not all that efficient in converting raw fuel to electricity. The aging coal-fired power plant that we have in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan will be retired and will be replaced by something we think is pretty innovative. We call them RICE units. That stands for Reciprocating Internal Combustion Engines. They're fueled by natural gas, they're modular, and they're portable.
In 40 years in the industry, this is the only power generation technology I've ever seen that you can have on wheels. We're going to replace the older coal-fired power plant. We're going to save $40 million of O&M expenses by retiring that older coal-fired power plant, and we're going to meet the reliability needs in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with these brand-new efficient units. That's a big chunk of what we're spending on generation capital over the course of the next few years. Technology, we are in the early stages of more than a $100 million investment in a brand-new customer billing system that will be a lot more flexible and will help our customers in terms of our billing accurately to them for various types of additional rate flexibility that we'll be implementing over the next few years.
We have a technology piece of the capital spend. About 8% of our capital spend will be on technology over the course of the next five-year period. The next one you see here, electric distribution. We continue to need to add to our investment in reliability, add to our investment in automated metering systems. It's standard block-and-tackling in terms of upgrading our electric distribution network. Finally, a new segment of our capital spend for our company. Let me take just a couple of minutes to explain what this energy infrastructure bucket really means. We are seeing an opportunity today that perhaps five years ago we would not have seen, and that is a number of companies in our industry are trying to repair their balance sheets. They're issuing equity. Many companies are selling really good assets.
Many developers want to move on and develop new assets and sell the ones that they're completing. We have, given the strength of our balance sheet and the no need for additional equity. We can finance this $11.8 billion plan without a single additional share of stock being issued. We also have a tax appetite where many companies do not today. We are now very competitive as we look at renewable assets that are not part of our retail rate base, but renewable assets, like, for example, Bishop Hill, which we just purchased 80% of. Bishop Hill, for example, is a wind farm in Henry County, Illinois. It's very close to our service area, but not in our service area. Bishop Hill has a long-term 22-year offtake agreement for all of the energy with a wholesale customer of ours in the state of Wisconsin.
We will now be the 80% owner of Bishop Hill. It is a great asset for us, and it gives us additional flexibility down the road when we might need more renewable generation for our retail customers. In the meantime, these type of assets, which we are now very competitive for, are giving us an additional growth opportunity, an additional investment opportunity, and giving us flexibility down the road with returns today that are frankly higher than our allowed returns in our retail business. This is about 8% of our capital spend over the next five years.
We refresh our capital spending plan, which we will do in the fourth quarter, you probably will see that part of the pie chart grow a little bit, but we have some really good opportunities here, again, because I think of our sound planning and the strength of our balance sheet today. We've also just announced, in terms of environmental responsibility, a brand-new goal for reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. Last year, we set a goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 40% by the year 2030. Given the progress we've already made, we think we can hit the 40% reduction goal by much earlier than 2030, perhaps by as early as 2023. On our last earnings call, we announced a brand-new CO2 reduction goal, 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by the year 2050.
That goal we will work hard on achieving, but I believe, in echoing what Warner said, given the advances in cost efficiency in renewable technology, I believe that we can achieve that goal very responsibly and at very little cost to our customers. Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't chat with you just a little bit about what I call the Wisconsin comeback. The economy in the state of Wisconsin today is literally stronger than it ever has been. We have an unemployment rate at 3%. The unemployment rate has stood at 3% or less for six consecutive months. That's a record low unemployment rate for any six-month period since data was collected for unemployment rates in the state of Wisconsin.
We have the top five in the country, one of the five highest in the country in terms of labor participation rates, which essentially measures the % of adults in the workforce who are actively in the workforce. We have the top five in the country. Manufacturing wages are growing again. We have a very strong situation in the state, and the pipeline of additional economic development is terrific. You've heard us talk about Foxconn. Foxconn is going great guns. You should come see the construction. It is phenomenal. Foxconn will be investing in a 23-million-square-foot high-tech manufacturing campus. It'll be one of the largest manufacturing campuses, if not the largest, anywhere in North America. They will be hiring 10,000 construction workers, and by 2023, they have promised to have 13,000 high-tech employees on this campus, which is just 15 miles south of the Milwaukee Airport.
Just a terrific economic development opportunity. In fact, in terms of jobs, it is the largest economic development project in the history of the U.S. Foxconn is coming and will provide us additional infrastructure investment opportunity. We will lay out that opportunity on our call again just in a couple of months. Haribo. How many of you have kids that like gummy bears? All right. Well, Haribo's the company. This is a German company that's more than 100 years old. It is the world leader in gummy bears. I'm amazed at how much electricity it takes to manufacture gummy bears. Haribo is coming, and they're going to build a huge manufacturing plant, their first in North America, just about 10 miles south of where Foxconn is locating. Just last week, you see Komatsu on the screen. Komatsu purchased Joy Global.
Many of you may remember Joy Global, mining, manufacturing huge mining equipment. Komatsu purchased Joy Global about 18 months ago. Just last week, the governor and I hosted a news conference with the North American CEO of Komatsu, where Komatsu announced that they're going to build a brand-new, state-of-the-art heavy mining equipment manufacturing plant just south of downtown Milwaukee. 2.4 million sq ft campus. They will employ over 1,000 people on that campus. Again, I think this is testament in terms of the negotiations we've all had with Komatsu, testament to both the reliability of our network and our cost competitiveness for manufacturing customers. You will see some updates in terms of additional investment opportunities being driven by these economic development projects and others as we roll out our new five-year plan before the fall. Finally, just the key takeaways from our standpoint.
I think we have a track record of exceptional performance. A portfolio of truly premium businesses that are focused on customers and focused on reliability. Investment opportunities that do support a 5%-7% earnings per share growth with minimal rate impact for customers. Dividend growth based on our dividend policy, and our dividend payout policy is 65%-70% of earnings, and we're right smack dab in the middle of that range today. You could expect dividends based on our policy to grow in line with earnings per share growth. A differentiator for us, absolutely no need to issue additional equity to finance our capital plan. Finally, I believe along with Warner, that we're poised to deliver among the very best risk-adjusted returns that our industry has to offer. Thank you very much for your attention.
I feel like we should just end it there.
Okay.
Good.
There we go.
All righty, go. Go buy the stock, yeah. Both of you, as we saw from your presentations, have had a lot of success and look like you're going to continue to. Maybe you could just talk about, just to start, what are you worried about? What do you see as the biggest risk for each of your companies to continue to achieve what you've been doing?
Sure. I'll kick it off. Thanks, Steve. People often ask me, say, "Well, what keeps you up at night?
I tell them I generally sleep pretty well at the end of the day. I generally do. Having said that, there are always things that are on top of mind, and any CEO in the country comes up here and says that cybersecurity and cyber risks aren't top of mind, then they're not really shooting you straight. That's not one of those things that keep me up at night. Cyber, in that particular instance, is a team sport. Cyber risk and managing that is a team sport. I mean that within our industry, within our company, within the government. We, as an industry, have done a very effective job working with other critical infrastructure industries in doing that. Certainly, if you look at sort of a heat map, that's one of those areas in the heat map that's a little bit brighter than others.
Clearly, when you have a coal-based fleet like we do, we're always very mindful of environmental matters and regulations. Our team, I'm blessed to be working with brilliant people that really make sure that not only comply, but we do innovative things to make sure that we are great environmental stewards for our customers and the communities that we serve. Having said that, you always have to consistently be mindful of environmental policy and its implications, not just on the company, but on customers. I would say last thing, again, in terms of really executing the plan, I think our story is very consistent. You need to have good energy and economic policies, not just today, but we look at plans for the next 10, 15 years.
We need to make sure that we're delivering and executing our plan to position ourselves to have the right energy and economic policies to continue to do the right things for our customers and the communities that we serve. When you talk about top of mind, maybe it's a better way to do it. Those are things that are top of the mind. You have to stay focused on executing your plan. You can never lose sight and just saying, "I'm going to chase the shiny stuff." At the same time, you have to look beyond the horizon. Part of that looking beyond the horizon is making sure you have the right policies in place to achieve what you want to do. Just a few examples, I would say that are top of mind.
Yep. I absolutely agree. I think when you have, we're both fortunate to have a very talented, focused, and experienced team backing us up. When you have that, when you know that they're focused on executing the plan, it's the stuff you can't control, the black swan stuff that you really start to worry about. I think on everybody's top of mind for the things you really worry about, I agree with Warner, it's cybersecurity. There, what makes me sleep better at night is the absolute effective and continual coordination that our industry has with Homeland Security.
I can give you examples of amazing communication between Homeland Security and our industry at the highest level. I remember, for example, being on an elliptical machine on a Friday night, the night that we did some type of strategic bombing in Syria.
My cell phone rang, it was a representative of our industry who was one of the people calling every CEO in the industry to put your teams on cyber alert. There was concern that Russia, which has been opposed to us in Syria, might retaliate with a cyberattack in the United States. We all put our internal teams on red alert. I feel much better. You can never say we're secure in terms of cybersecurity.
Yeah.
The effort that's going on and the communication that's going on between Homeland Security and our industry is, I think, extraordinary.
I agree.
That, I think, should make all of us feel a little bit better.
Yes.
The other thing relates to what Warner said. I think it is a challenge when we are building and planning assets that are going to last for 40 years or longer. It is a challenge to stay agile. Five years ago, if we were sitting here, we wouldn't have a big solar element to our generation plan. Not us anyway. Installed solar capacity prices are down 70% in five years, and the solar panels are more effective. You have to have an ability to stay a bit agile so that you can be planning and executing the best plan for your customers and eventually for your shareholders.
You know, Gale, I'll just add to that. I think that last point is spot on. I've had the opportunity here over the last couple of months to meet with all of our leaders as part of our strategic planning efforts. I look around the room, I know I've been in this industry about 25, 30 years, I see a lot of very familiar faces. Right?
Right.
If you look back.
Carl's been here even longer.
Exactly. The point, a message I deliver. If you think about the time we've been in this industry, 25, 30 years, maybe even just 15, and think about what's transpired in the last five years.
Yeah
to your point. I said, "Would you agree with me that what's happened in the last 5 years has been things that you would never imagine, things are coming faster than you've ever seen it?" I generally get the answer, yes. I said, "It'll never be that slow again." It'll never be that slow again. Agility is going to have to be a core competency to check and adjust and to be willing to check and adjust and to actually go out there sometimes even as we look into the future, and we start having our vision as an industry. Before we never used to talk about what this integrated energy network may be or how we're going to start transforming our portfolios. We have to talk more about that now because our customers and our stakeholders expect it.
We never used to do that unless we're 99% certain in the past. We don't have that luxury anymore.
That's correct.
We have to start talking about that. We may only be 70% certain, we're going to be better to have those conversations today versus having them after the fact.
To your point, Warner, even the rise of ESG investing. It was really only a glimmer on the radar screen five years ago.
Absolutely.
Obviously, I mean, we do one-on-one investor meetings, and it comes up in every single meeting.
Even from an investor standpoint, I keep telling Steve, you got to be agile.
Oh, yeah. No, we're agile.
Now here come the tough questions. Thanks, Gale. I appreciate you poking him a little bit. Yeah. Oh, great. This is both a question or a rhetorical question for Warner. You had the Missouri legislation get passed this year, and just be curious, in your words, obviously, just from watching the history of this, I guess one time, two times, three times, fourth time a charm. Just how meaningful is that for the future of the company? In some ways, it feels a little like Wisconsin Energy with Power the Future, where that was a game-changer for them over many years. Do you view it in that context?
Yeah. Well, look, you used the right words, I've said it before and I'll say it again, it is a game-changer for our company. Because the reality is, it's not just a game-changer for our company, it's a game-changer for our customers, it's a game-changer for our communities, it's a game-changer for our state of Missouri. Because now we are enabled to put investments into the state that we think is really important for the long-term benefit of that state, that are going to be meaningful to modernize that energy grid. We're talking about $1 billion. In Missouri back in 2016, we said that to modernize the grid, over the next five years, we identified projects from $1 billion to $2 billion of good projects that we could do for our customers.
We took that further and said, "If you look out 10 years, they're up to $4 billion of projects." These are not just projects that we made. These are solid projects that'll really move the digit for our customers. Now, we have to always be mindful of affordability, we have to always be mindful that we're delivering value for our customers. The big picture, what it truly means is that we have a strong infrastructure pipeline, that in doing that, if we're able to not only do that and deliver the value for our customers, to keep rates affordable and to put literally thousands of people to work in the state of Missouri, it's a game-changer for all those stakeholders, it's a win-win-win. We're really excited about it.
Mm-hmm. Good. Gale, just all the growth that you mentioned, particularly Foxconn, also the others from, I don't think you've been dealing with a positive sales growth environment. Just recently. How meaningful will that be potentially to growth in sales from your perspective?
I think it'll be fairly significant. Mind you, we're going to see a lot of this growth materialize in 2022 and 2023 when construction is completed and the actual operations of Foxconn and Komatsu and others are ramping up. In term, it is already providing us additional investment opportunity that is not in our plan, and I can give you three examples. The area that Foxconn is building, our natural gas infrastructure just isn't strong enough to support that much growth. We've applied to the Wisconsin regulator for approval to build a $140 million expansion of our gas distribution network in that area. I expect we'll get approval of that fairly shortly. The transmission network in that part of the state has to be upgraded as well to meet that growth.
American Transmission Company, of which we're the 60% owner, has just gotten final approval and has begun construction on nearly $120 million transmission upgrade for the region. That's the second upside for us. Thirdly, we are still in very meaningful discussions with Foxconn about the actual configuration of their electric service on this 23 million square foot, $10 billion high-tech campus. There may be some additional investment opportunity there related to renewables that they would like to have dedicated to them. Again, we'll have all that worked out in the fourth quarter with Foxconn because we need to start building to meet their timelines. There's a fair amount of capital that you will see incorporated in our new rolling five-year plan just from this initial announcement, and that doesn't take into account yet the suppliers or all the ripple effect in terms of economic development.
I want to see if there's any questions from the audience.
Steve, just maybe while they're thinking of questions, one thing I would add about the economic development, I think you're going to find in the industry, and you've seen it with Gale, you've seen it with our company, an even greater focus for energy providers to get more engaged in economic development. We have a good story, and we have not just affordability, we have reliability. One thing I didn't mention, even in the Missouri legislation, we have a new economic development incentive rate that for large energy users, they get a 40% discount, 40% discount for our already low rates for incremental load. That's game-changer kind of stuff to attract companies to your service territory.
I think around the country, not that we didn't do it in the past, I think we see with so many changes that we can play a more meaningful role, and we should. We're part of the critical infrastructure, and we should lead as opposed to just follow. We can't do it all. Obviously, government is a really important partner no matter where you're at, and we'll continue to work with a bunch of key stakeholders. That's one of those things that five or 10 years ago, you wouldn't have seen too many of us talking as much about it as we do today.
To Warner's point, one of the things that actually surprised me when the governor and I were privileged to go to Asia to make a presentation to Foxconn about why Wisconsin was right for them. One of the things their senior people said to us after our presentation was, and I'll remember this as long as I live, "How can you sell electricity so cheaply?
Right.
The electric costs and the natural gas costs in Asia, which we don't often think about, are dramatically higher than they are in the U.S., perhaps except for California. The only thing that is going to cost Foxconn less in terms of operations in the U.S. as compared to Asia, is natural gas and electricity.
Yep. Absolutely. When you got a story, tell it.
Yeah.
That's what we're doing.
Maybe just to end up, your favorite question I'm sure to get is M&A. Both companies have done M&A in the past pretty selectively, successfully. Just how much is that part of the focus, or because the growth that you see is so good that that's not really a priority for either of you?
I can start if you'd like. We've had, as many of you know, we have three criteria written on the bathroom walls. Even if we paint over it, they'll get written over it again. We have three very set in concrete criteria as we assess M&A, and it is the same criteria that we used when we did the Integrys acquisition. They're very simple, but I think they're so important that unless you follow these criteria, you may get bigger, you may not get better. The criteria are, you'd have to believe after a lot of due diligence, that you could make the acquisition accretive to earnings per share in the first full year after closing.
Secondly, that you have to believe that the organic growth rate of whatever you're acquiring, or merging with, would have to be at least as strong as your own organic growth rate. Thirdly, would have to be largely credit neutral. What I mean by largely credit neutral is, would we take, for the right opportunity, one notch downgrade? Maybe. Would we take a full category downgrade? No. We've worked very hard to have one of the stronger balance sheets in the industry, and we're not going to trash the balance sheet. The reason those criteria are so important to us is I think those are the criteria that in our industry, if you can find one that matches those criteria, then you do create shareholder value. That's why that's important to us, and we'll continue along those lines with that criteria.
Obviously not a new question for Gale or I. As we look at it, we have said before, and I've said it before, and I'll say it again, we're very focused on executing the plan that I just talked to you about. That plan has really delivered superior earnings per share growth and total shareholder return. As I pointed out in that plan, we have the opportunity, certainly in terms of rate base, to have a plan that's even better. Our focus is on executing the plan. We believe that at the end of the day, when you look at any M&A opportunity, it has to beat your standalone plan.
Yeah.
It isn't just, Gale named some criteria. These are things that we look at as well. The point is, it's got to beat your standalone plan, and it's a very high hurdle.
Yeah.
It's a very high hurdle. We're going to continue to stay focused because we think that is the way that we're going to continue to deliver superior shareholder and customer value.
Great. Well, Warner, Gale, thank you. That was a great panel. Appreciate it.
Thanks.
Thanks.
We're going to take a break until about 2:00. See you back here for the Moody's presentation.