Welcome to the annual meeting for Xcel Energy Inc. I'll now turn the call over to your host, Bob Frenzel, Chairman, President, and CEO of Xcel Energy.
Hi, good morning. For more than 150 years, Xcel Energy has provided safe, reliable, and low-cost energy to our customers. Today, our country is experiencing an unprecedented demand for energy, and building a cleaner, more efficient, more resilient infrastructure to meet this moment is more important than ever. Xcel Energy is prepared to meet this challenge while continuing to serve customers and advance the economic growth and prosperity of the 1,600 cities and counties that we serve. I'd like to start today by expressing my gratitude. Thank you for joining us for Xcel Energy's 2025 annual meeting of shareholders, and thank you for your ongoing support of the company as we work toward our vision of being the trusted and preferred provider of the energy our customers need.
For our meeting today, I'll first ask Amy Schneider, our Vice President and Corporate Secretary, to lead us through some of the business updates, and then I'll discuss our 2024 results as well as some priorities for 2025 and beyond. After my prepared remarks, I'll also address some of the shareholder questions we've received in advance. The Xcel Energy Executive Committee has joined us today, as has your entire board of directors, and I'd like to take just a moment to specifically thank the board. Xcel Energy faces a unique opportunity for growth as we work to meet the surging demand for electricity driven by new technologies, coupled with the exciting transition to cleaner energy sources. We know that to capture this opportunity, we must continue to evolve, develop, and push ourselves to new heights, and our board is key to this.
I want to personally thank Chris Policinski, Kim Williams, and Daniel Yohannes. As you can see on this slide, they're retiring from the board today after this meeting at the end of their available service. Both Chris and Kim have served on our board for 15 years, and Daniel for 8. Together, they've been instrumental in helping us deliver safe, reliable, and cost-effective energy to millions of homes, businesses, and communities across the eight states that we have the privilege to serve. They've also supported a strong governance process that allows the entire board and our management team to deliver consistent, strong results for all of our stakeholders. I appreciate their dedication and their commitment to this organization. In January, we welcomed Devin Stockfish to the board.
Devin has served as President and CEO of Weyerhaeuser Company, North America's largest integrated timber and forest products company since 2019, and he serves as a member of its board of directors. Devin's an accomplished executive who is deeply committed to safety, operational excellence, and sustainability. We're pleased to welcome him to our board and believe that our company will greatly benefit from his acumen in leading a publicly traded and capital-intensive business, his expertise in sustainable forest management, his engineering education, his depth of knowledge in corporate strategy and finance, and his experience managing complex legal and regulatory issues. Devin, along with the rest of the talented and dedicated group of individuals that make up our board of directors, is nominated today for re-election so they can continue our long legacy of strong governance.
With that, let me turn it over to Amy, who will lead us through the business portion of our meeting.
Thank you, Bob. Good morning, everyone. Let me start with a few procedural matters. As noted in the proxy statement, the record date for voting at this meeting was the close of business on March 24th, 2025. As of that date, there were 576,110,585 shares of common stock outstanding. Each share has one vote. More than 88% of the shares of our common stock are present by proxy at this meeting, so we do have a quorum. If you've already voted your proxy, your votes will be counted as you've instructed. Anthony Caratzas from Broadridge Financial Solutions is our Inspector of Election. There are three proposals that will be voted on today, the details of which were provided in the proxy statement. Proposal number one is the election of 11 directors to one-year terms.
The names of the nominees are listed on the screen, and their backgrounds and credentials are detailed in the proxy statement. Proposal number two seeks approval on an advisory basis of our executive compensation. Proposal number three seeks the ratification of the appointment of Deloitte & Touche as Xcel Energy's independent registered public accounting firm for 2025. Polls have been open for several weeks. We appreciate your participation. I now declare the polls closed. The official results, which will include the ballots cast at this meeting, will be disclosed in an 8-K filing and posted on Xcel Energy's website. Meanwhile, the Inspector of Election has provided us preliminary results showing that all director nominees were elected, our executive compensation was approved, and the appointment of Deloitte & Touche was ratified. With that concluded, the formal business portion of the meeting is now adjourned.
Before I hand it back over to Bob, let me also remind you that we may make some forward-looking statements during this meeting. You should refer to our SEC filings for the risk factors related to our business. We may also refer to non-GAAP measures during the presentation. The nearest GAAP measure and reconciliation to the non-GAAP measure can be found in our 2024 year-end earnings release located on the Investor Relations page of our website. Bob will now share details on the company's 2024 performance and progress towards our strategic priorities, as well as some key priorities for 2025 and beyond. Following his prepared remarks, he will answer shareholder questions. As noted in our proxy statement, we will provide responses to questions not answered during the meeting on the Investor Relations page of our public website. Thank you for attending our business meeting.
I will now turn it back over to Bob.
Thank you, Amy. I'd like to begin by highlighting the immense opportunity before us. It's a great time to be an electric provider in the United States. Our product is as critical to economic development and enabling our way of life as it was when we first harnessed it more than 140 years ago. Xcel Energy is strategically positioned to capitalize on this generational opportunity to drive value for our shareholders, as well as enabling our customers and communities to meet their respective goals. Over the past year, U.S. electricity demand growth rate through 2030 has tripled from its previous projection, led by AI-driven data centers, new technologies, transportation electrification, and a resurgence of U.S. manufacturing. Xcel Energy expects to sell 30% more electricity in 2030 than we did in 2024, driven by those same economic drivers.
From data center companies alone, Xcel Energy has received requests for nearly 9,000 MW of new daily demand, equivalent to powering more than 8 million homes each year. At the same time, our energy grid is facing an inflection point as we work to meet the rising demand while simultaneously confronting extreme weather, cyber risks, advanced technologies, and new regulatory requirements. Xcel Energy is built for this moment. We have been strategically investing in our generation, our transmission and distribution infrastructure, and customer service programs to benefit our customers and our shareholders. A great example of this is how we've continued to meet our growing demand by adding cost-effective wind and solar generation that takes advantage of our operations in some of the sunniest and windiest parts of the country.
We are adding long-term generation assets to our energy mix that are powering our growing local economies while allowing us to keep customers' bills as low as possible. We are also playing a key role in building the energy infrastructure needed to power the 21st-century economy. We are accelerating the AI and tech boom by partnering with major players like Meta and QTS to power their operations with clean, reliable energy. Data centers, the backbone of the technology-driven economy, are our fastest-growing electricity customers, driven by AI, cloud computing, and data storage. In Minnesota, we are working on multiple data center projects, including two near our Sherco Energy Center, and we are collaborating with Meta to power their new 715,000 sq ft data center in Rosemont and other hyperscalers and data center developers. By 2029, we expect to power 25% of the nearly 9,000 MW of data center opportunities in our pipeline.
Already, we've contracted half of this 25% target and remain on track to contract the remaining half by the end of this year, delivering value to our communities while keeping energy affordable to all. We're taking this growth as an opportunity to build a modern, efficient, and sustainable grid that benefits our customers and shareholders alike. At the same time, we're supporting existing business and enabling the resurgence of U.S. manufacturing by modernizing and strengthening the grid to create a more resilient, reliable energy system. A smarter, weather-hardened grid is essential to meet the growing energy demands of manufacturing while ensuring reliable and cost-effective service for all of our customers. Through these efforts, we're enabling the clean energy transition, supporting economic growth, and powering the industries for the future.
In 2024, we announced our most ambitious system investment planned to date: a $45 billion investment over the next five years to modernize, strengthen, and expand the grid to power our businesses, our homes, our communities, and our way of life. We also have a strong line of sight to our more than $10 billion investment pipeline, following our recent approval of 5,000+ MW of generation resources in Minnesota and awards to $3 billion-$4 billion of transmission in the MISO and Southwest Power Pool Regional Transmission Organizations. As we carry out these strategic investments for our customers, communities, and shareholders, we're focused on delivering an enhanced customer experience with improved affordability, an expanded grid to meet growing demands, increased reliability, safety, and resilience, and the advancement of clean energy policy goals of our communities.
As the complexity and scale and speed of our team's efforts continue to rise, we know we will only realize the opportunity before us if we act together with a shared focus on our three core priorities: our customers, our people, and our performance. We delivered strong results for our investors in 2024, marking the 20th consecutive year of meeting or exceeding our initial earnings guidance. We delivered GAAP earnings per share of $3.44 and ongoing earnings per share of $3.50. We also made significant strategic investments. We've invested over $7.5 billion in 2024 to modernize electric and natural gas systems, in addition to updating our five-year capital plan. In 2024, we made progress on our resource plans, including proposal 15,000 MW to 29,000 MW of new, efficient, clean generation and 1,100 MW of contracted data center customers and a nearly 9,000 MW total data center pipeline.
We secured $1.4 billion in forward equity to fund our growth initiatives, and we issued approximately $1.1 billion of equity via our ATM and DRIP programs to fund accretive growth and maintain our healthy balance sheet. Looking ahead from a financial perspective, last month, we reaffirmed our 2025 earnings guidance range of $3.75-$3.85 per share and long-term earnings per share growth expectations of 6%-8%, with dividend growth of 4%-6%. Importantly, we made significant progress to mitigate risks from extreme weather and wildfires, bolstering infrastructure resilience and reliability, and accelerating our efforts across the eight states we serve. In 2024 and 2025, we filed and reached constructive, unanimous settlements on wildfire mitigation and system resiliency plans in Colorado and in Texas, outlining strategies to enhance risk assessments, integrate new technologies, and reduce wildfire risk.
Key learnings from these plans will be applied across our entire footprint. We're also collaborating with state legislatures, the Edison Electric Institute, other peer utilities, and other organizations to advance both state and federal wildfire risk frameworks. These efforts aim to protect public safety, to reduce system risk, and to ensure access to low-cost capital, allowing us to deliver safe, reliable energy in volatile weather conditions. We're also enhancing real-time situational awareness to prevent wildfires and to protect our communities. Using advanced fire science software, risk models, and seven-day-a-week forecasting, we leverage localized weather data updated every 10 minutes to inform mitigation strategies like enhanced power line safety settings and public safety power shutoffs. Our ultra-high-definition cameras equipped with artificial intelligence scan the landscape to detect and signal wildfire activity within a 10-mile radius.
Technosylva's Wildfire Analyst software models fire spread using weather, fuel, and moisture data to predict fire behavior and assess risk across our system. By combining advanced technology, industry collaboration, and proactive planning, we're taking meaningful steps to reduce wildfire risk and protect our customers and our communities. The work we do also helps support the economic growth and development in our communities. In 2024 alone, our corporate economic development team closed on 24 projects across our service territories. These projects were supported by more than $5 billion in capital investment and resulted in the creation of more than 3,000 jobs. As part of our efforts, more than $5.2 billion was invested in small or local businesses last year. At the same time, we also continue to make it easier for our customers to meet their own energy goals. For instance, take Eldora.
Since last summer, the Colorado Ski Resort has participated in our Renewable Connect and Renewable Connect Flex programs, innovations that enable our customers to access low-cost wind and solar energy to achieve their own sustainability goals. When designing their new Caribou Lodge, Eldora enrolled in our Energy Efficiency Buildings program to identify green construction strategies and take advantage of thousands of dollars in rebates for high-efficiency equipment. They've taken other steps to reduce their environmental footprint as well, including installing solar arrays to generate renewable energy on-site, with any excess energy being stored or going back to the power grid. The resort also offers 30 electric vehicle charging stations, with more on the way. Working with customers of all types and sizes like Eldora showcases our ability and expertise to guide and support our customers to make energy work better for them.
Xcel Energy employees are an important fabric of our local communities, and we continue to show that in 2024, as our dedicated coworkers went above and beyond to give back to our communities. Employee giving, combined with company contributions and Xcel Energy Foundation matches, enabled us to make $14.5 million in charitable contributions in 2024. In addition to giving with their wallets, our employees volunteered 89,000 hours, helping to address the issues that matter most to their communities. Our customer care group helped our customers receive $175 million of state and federal energy assistance. When back-to-back hurricanes Helene and Milton devastated portions of the southeastern United States last fall, more than 100 Xcel Energy employees answered the call for mutual aid assistance from neighboring utilities, helping to restore power and bring hope to those impacted communities.
Our crews are truly among the best in the business, and I am proud of their commitment to keeping communities safe and restoring power as quickly as possible, whether catastrophe strikes in our service areas or around the country. Xcel Energy faces an unprecedented opportunity for growth. We also know that to capture this opportunity, we must continue to evolve, develop, and push ourselves to new heights. I couldn't be more optimistic about our new leaders. In 2024, we were pleased to welcome Rob Berntsen as Executive Vice President, Chief Legal and Compliance Officer, Rob Clark as Senior Vice President, Chief Communications Officer, and Chief of Staff, Paul McGregor, Vice President in Wildfire Risk Management, and Todd Wehner, Vice President of Finance and Treasurer. We also elevated Roopesh Aggarwal to Vice President of Finance and Head of Investor Relations. We continue to advance our talented teammates.
Already this year, we've advanced key operational team leaders, including Michael Lamb to the role of Executive Vice President and Chief Delivery Officer, Scott Sharp to Executive Vice President and Chief Generation Officer, Todd Conner to Senior Vice President of Distribution, Lauren Gilliland to Senior Vice President of our Gas Infrastructure, and Sandra Johnson to Senior Vice President of Transmission, all part of planful leadership development and succession planning processes. In 2024, Xcel Energy was once again recognized as one of Ethisphere's world's most ethical companies for the sixth year in a row. We're also named as one of Fortune's world's most admired companies.
Beyond this, we received accolades from Military Times and VIQTORY as Best for Vets and Military-Friendly Employer, a score of 100 on the Disability:IN survey for our disability inclusion in the workplace, and the Human Rights Campaign for its Equality 100 Award, Leader in LGBTQ+ Workplace Inclusion. Finally, throughout 2024, our teams exhibited tremendous resiliency to numerous challenges, including the Smokehouse Creek Fire in Texas, accomplishing extensive wildfire risk mitigation across our territories, and ongoing challenges from extreme weather and more. Our people have been and always will be the core of Xcel Energy and the reason for our success. We are nothing without the energy, the commitment, and the ingenuity that they bring. When we live our values of connected, committed, trustworthy, and safe, there's really nothing that we can't do together.
To our nearly 12,000 employees, thank you for your ongoing commitment to Xcel Energy, and thank you for the work that you do every day on behalf of our customers, our communities, and for each other. As I said at the start of this presentation, 2025 marks the beginning of a period of unprecedented growth for Xcel Energy. As we embark on the new year, we remain steadfast in achieving our vision of being the trusted and preferred provider of the energy that our customers need. In 2025, you'll see a renewed focus and commitment by Xcel Energy on our three core priorities: our customers, our people, and our performance. Our team is fully aligned to deliver on these three priorities, and we know that our collective commitment in these areas will truly make energy work better for our customers.
It's an exciting time to be in the energy industry and to be at Xcel Energy. I'm excited to make energy work better for our customers, to help them thrive every day, and to truly become the trusted and preferred provider of the energy that they need. Thank you for your ongoing support of Xcel Energy, and thank you for taking the time to join us today. That concludes my prepared remarks. I know we've received some questions from our shareholders that I'm also happy to answer now.
Thanks, Bob. For efficiency, I have consolidated questions that relate to the same topic. You may not hear your question worded exactly as submitted, but we've done our best to accurately reflect the inquiries we've received. Our first question this morning is, can you provide an update on your recent resource plan?
Yeah, thanks, Amy.
Look, resource plans is the nomenclature we use for what forms of generation are we bringing back to our system? I got to tell you, it's a really exciting time to think about this. I mentioned in my prepared remarks that we've got plans to add somewhere between 15,000 MW- 29,000 MW of new generation resources across our enterprise, and that breaks down into really our three operating geographies. We're adding new, efficient, flexible, and cleaner energy sources to serve our customers. Maybe I'll start in the Upper Midwest. We've been through a resource planning process with our commissions in our states in the Upper Midwest, and we've approved 720 MW of firm dispatchable generation. We've got about a 400 MW gas turbine, as well as a 300 MW battery that's going back in at our Sherco Energy Center.
These ensure reliability of our system as we retire our legacy coal fleet in the Upper Midwest. In addition to that, in order to provide the energy that our customers need and a carbon-free energy sources, we're adding over 3 GW of new wind, 400 MW, I think, of solar, and another 600 MW of standalone storage. All that adds carbon-free energy reliability in the Upper Midwest, and I think that those same tenets apply to both our Colorado company as well as our Southwestern company. In Colorado, we're seeing extraordinary growth opportunities driven by the comments that I mentioned earlier, and we've got a resource plan in front of our commission there that could add somewhere between 5,000 MW and 14,000 MW of new generation.
There will be some combination of clean energy resources like wind and solar, and then enough gas and battery backup to make sure that we have the reliable energy that we need to serve our customers all in as affordable a way as possible. Similarly, in the Southwest, tremendous growth opportunities. We have a resource planning process down there and RFPs there for somewhere between 5,000 MW and 10,000 MW of new generation resources driven by incredible mining operations in the Southwest and serving our customers. Again, we put our focus on reliability, affordability, and sustainability as we think through these resource plans, and all those are held in balance as we go forward in time. I'm really excited about the opportunity.
We're working with vendors across the United States to make sure that we can build the most efficient, the most flexible, and the most clean energy sources for our customers. Hope that helps.
Great, Bob. Thank you. The next question is, what impact will data centers have on future load growth?
We talked in my prepared remarks about data centers, and we're seeing this real explosion of knowledge manufacturing, I'll call it, across the United States. They've shown a real interest in the areas of the country that we serve for a host of reasons. We have incredibly talented human capital in our regions. We have access to some of the cleanest energy systems, some of the lowest-cost energy systems. We have access to airports and fiber, things that are really important to the data center development pipeline. We have got receptive geographies to this new and exciting business.
We've got almost 9,000 MW of backlog. We'll probably not serve all of that. Some of that will find its way elsewhere in the country, but we're excited about the opportunity to serve about 25% of that. Half of that's already under contract or under construction in our service territories, and another half we expect to be contracted by year-end. These are with hyperscalers that you know the names of and data center developers that have become sort of top-of-mind names across the United States for an industry that really didn't exist two or three years ago. This is a booming opportunity for the United States. Xcel Energy is here to meet the moment and to meet our customers' needs in this regard.
Thanks, Bob. This will be our last question. What impact do recently announced tariffs have on your capital investment plans?
Maybe the best word I have to describe the tariff environment is dynamic and flexible. We, as a company, have been incredibly agile. We gave a pretty good update on our first quarter earnings call for those that were available to hear that. We did not wake up on November 6th or April 2nd and think that this was the first time we had ever heard of this administration being interested in tariffs. We have been doing a lot of work as a company over years to pivot our supply chain. Most of our products are generally domestically manufactured. We do have some exposure to internationally manufactured materials and some from China. We have a big solar build-out. We have been able to manage and maneuver our solar supply chain quite effectively to have minimal impacts on our solar facilities that we are planning for the future. Same with our wind.
Most of our steel and aluminum are produced and manufactured and procured domestically. I'd say the one area that we've got exposure to of any material amount, and that's obviously been mitigated in the past couple of weeks, is battery storage. We've got one large battery storage project in our base capital plan. That project has lithium-ion cells largely manufactured in China, and that makes up about half of the capital cost of that project. Now, the Chinese tariffs have been reduced for the next 90 days from 140% down to 30%, and we're still working with the administration to make sure that we can get access to the materials at a price point that's competitive for our customers and trying to keep our energy bills as cost-effective as possible.
Largely, the tariffs, as we architected, were about 1%-2% of our total capital bill over the next five years, probably exposed to tariffs. We think that's manageable, and that's before we start working with our vendors to figure out how much of that they're willing to accept and absorb in this process, or how much are we going to go to alternate vendors that may have less exposure. I think it's very manageable. It's not zero, but we look forward to working with the administration to mitigating any of the impact of tariffs on our customers over time.
Thank you, Bob.
I think we're out of time. I appreciate everyone's support on the call. Thank you for your continued support of Xcel Energy, our employees, our communities. We look forward to talking to you again next year.
This now concludes the meeting.
Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.
The host has ended this call. Goodbye.