Gale E. Klappa
Executive Chairman at WEC Energy Group
From America's Heartland, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today as we review our results for the third quarter of 2021. First, I'd like to introduce the members of our management team who are here with me today. We have Kevin Fletcher, our President and CEO; Scott Lauber, our Chief Operating Officer; Xia Liu, our Chief Financial Officer; and Beth Straka, our Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations.
I'm sure you saw the announcement last week that our Board of Directors has taken the next step in our long-term succession planning. Kevin has decided to devote more time with his grandchildren and to water-skiing barefoot on his favorite lakes. He'll be retiring in 2022. We're delighted that Scott will assume the role of President and Chief Executive on February 1. And finally, I've agreed to continue serving as Executive Chairman until our Annual Stockholders Meeting in 2024. Kevin and Scott, of course, have been instrumental in shaping our progress over many years. We wish Kevin all the best. And I look forward to working hand-in-hand with Scott as he takes on his new role.
Now, as you saw from our news release this morning, we reported third quarter 2021 earnings of $0.92 a share. Our results were significantly better than expected, driven by warmer than normal weather, continued economic recovery in our region, and our focus on operating efficiency. Our balance sheet, our cash flows remained strong, and as we've discussed, this allows us to fund a highly executable capital plan without issuing equity.
In just a moment, we'll update you on the details of our new five-year ESG Progress Plan, a plan that will cover our investments in reliability and decarbonization over the period 2022 through 2026. As we've reported to you, we're well on our way to achieving some of the most aggressive goals in our industry for reducing carbon emissions. Across our generation fleet, we're targeting a 60% reduction by 2025 and then 80% reduction by 2030, both from a 2005 baseline. Importantly, we have a roadmap to reach these goals without any major advances in technology. So today, we're announcing that our use of coal will continue to decline to a level that we expect will be immaterial by the end of 2030. By the end of 2030, we expect our use of coal will account for less than 5% of the power we supply to customers.
A number of you have also been asking when can we exit coal completely. Here is the answer. We believe we'll be in a position to eliminate coal as an energy source by the year 2035. The next logical question is, what does this mean for the modern coal-fired units at our Oak Creek site? As you recall, these units were part of our Power the Future plan and were completed only about a decade ago. Well, our modern units at Oak Creek will remain a key part of our fleet for many, many years to come. These Power the Future units rank as some of the most efficient in the country, among the top 5% of all coal-fired plants in heat rate performance over the past decade and they're strategically -- as we've discussed, they are strategically located to support reliability on the Midwestern transmission grid. Fortunately, we can plan for the future of the new units at Oak Creek with fuel flexibility in mind. We've tested coal firing on natural gas at the site. So subject to the receipt of an environmental permit, we plan to make operating refinements over the next two years that will allow a fuel blend of up to 30% on natural gas. And then over time, we will be able to transition completely away from coal by making incremental investments in plant equipment. This would include, for example, new burners and, of course, we will need additional pipeline capacity reaching into the site. So we see a very bright and long future for the newer units at Oak Creek.
And now, let's take a look at the capital plan that will continue to shape a decarbonizing economy. For the period 2022 through 2026, we expect to invest $17.7 billion. Our focus remains on efficiency, sustainability and growth. This ESG Progress Plan is the largest capital plan in our history, an increase of $1.6 billion or nearly 10% above our previous five-year plan. We expect this plan to support compound earnings growth of 6% to 7% a year over the next five years without any need to issue new equity. We'll be increasing our investment in renewables for our regulated utilities from 1,800 megawatts of capacity in our previous plan to nearly 2,400 megawatts in this brand-new plan. These carbon-free assets include solar, wind and battery storage. We're also dedicating more capital to hardening our electric distribution networks, so that we can maintain a superior level of reliability for our customers, and investments in our gas delivery systems and the development of renewable natural gas will support our goals for the gas distribution business as well. As a reminder, we're targeting net zero methane emissions by 2030. So add it all up and we have what I really believe is a premium growth plan. The projects that are driving our growth are low-risk and highly executable, and they are accelerating the transition to a clean energy future.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Scott for more details on our sales results for the quarter, as well as an update on our Infrastructure segment. Scott, all yours.
