Robert M. Blue
Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer at Dominion Energy
Thanks, Jim. Starting with safety, Dominion Energy finished 2021 with it's second best performance ever. Additionally, the company was the top performer in the 2021 Southeastern Electric Exchange Ranking. We take pride in our relentless focus on safety and it's the first of our company's core values. While our safety performance relative to industry is very good, our goal has been and continues to be that none of our colleagues get hurt ever.
Our customers' highest priority is reliability. They expect their power will come on when they need it, period. In the past year, our customers in our electric service areas in Virginia, South Carolina and North Carolina had power 99.9% of the time, excluding major storms. When major storms approach, we stage equipment and people to be ready, so crews can swing into action as soon as it is safe to do so. As we did for the first Winter Storm of 2022, the dumped wet, heavy snow on most of the Northern, Central and Western regions of Virginia, interrupting service to over 400,000 customers. Over 80% of those customers had service restored after two days of restoration and 96% within four days. Our crews worked around the clock in frigid temperatures and treacherous icy travel conditions to safely restore service to our communities.
Our gas distribution business knows that safe and reliable service is the priority, especially when exigent circumstances exist. When an emergency notification is received, we typically have a crew on site twice as quickly as the industry expected response time. Last month, we had the highest ever flow of gas at our Utah system and the highest ever daily throughput across our Ohio system, higher even than the Polar Vortex of 2019. And in both cases, our service never missed to be and our customers would never have known we were setting all time records. I'm proud, though not surprised at the way in which our Dominion Energy team members have responded on behalf of our customers.
Now I'll turn to updates around the execution of our growth plan. In Virginia, the SEC approved the comprehensive settlement agreement for our first triennial review in November. We're very pleased to be extending our track record of constructive regulatory outcomes. On top of that, we are incredibly excited about what Dominion Energy is working to accomplish, specifically our green capital investment programs on behalf of our customers in Virginia, which I will touch on in a few minutes, nearly all of which will grow earnings under regulated rider mechanisms. Since the Virginia rider investment programs are reviewed and trued up annually, they are not included in the Virginia triennial review process. Based on these trends, the Virginia base investment balance as a percentage of total Dominion Energy declines to about 13% by 2026, and is expected to continue to decline as a percentage in the future.
Turning to offshore wind. The country's only fully regulated offshore wind project is very much on track. As it relates to the SEC rider application, we're currently in the discovery phase. And to date, this process very much conforms with what we typically expect during a rider proceeding of this type. Major project milestones are listed on Slide 15. We expect to receive a final order from the FCC in August this year.
A few items to reiterate here. First, this project will provide a boost to Virginia's growing green economy by creating hundreds of jobs, hundreds of millions of dollars of economic output and millions of dollars of tax revenue for the state and localities. It will also propel Virginia closer to achieving it's goal to become a major hub for the burgeoning offshore wind value chain up and down the country East Coast.
Second, unlike any other such project in North America, this investment is 100% regulated and eligible for rider recovery in Virginia. Finally, the VCEA provides very specific requirements on the presumption of prudency for investment in the project, which we are confident that we have already met. Our Jones Act compliant wind turbine installation vessel is being constructed and is on track for delivery in late 2023 as originally scheduled. The project is currently about 43% complete. We expect the vessel will be in a central resource to EV as well as to the overall domestic offshore wind industry and we'll be entering service with plenty of time to support the 2024 turbine installation season.
Our other clean energy filings in Virginia are also progressing well. Last month, we were very pleased to see the SEC approve Phase 2 of our grid transformation plan for projects that we plan to deploy in 2022 and 2023. These projects will facilitate the expected increase in distributed energy resources, like small scale solar and expand electric vehicle infrastructure as well as enhance grid resiliency and security. Our clean energy and nuclear rider filings remain on track. Final orders are expected later this year as outlined on Page 18.
Through 2020, we have successfully reduced our enterprise-wide CO2 equivalent emissions by 42%. That's great progress, but it's not enough. By 2035, we expect to improve that reduction to between 70% and 80% versus baseline on our way to meet net zero by 2050. As shown on the right side of Slide 19, the transition to a clean energy future means reduced reliance on coal-fired generation. Back in 2005, more than half of our company's power production was from coal-fired generation. By 2035, we project that to be less than 1%.
We show our timeline for transitioning out of coal on Slide 20. By the end of the decade as part of our ongoing resource planning, we expect to be coal free in South Carolina and have only two remaining facilities at Dominion Energy Virginia for reliability and energy security considerations. While our IRPs are informational filings and do not provide approval or disapproval for any specific capital project. We look forward to continuing to work with stakeholders, including the Commission to drive towards an increasingly low carbon future.
From an investment base -- from an investment based perspective, which is a rough approximation of earnings contribution, you can see on Slide 21 the diminished role coal-fired generation plays in our financial performance, driven by facility retirements and non-core investment. We're mindful that this shift has the potential to be disruptive to employees and communities and we are being purposeful in our efforts to ameliorate any such negative consequences. We believe and adjust transition we have and will continue to consider the needs of impacted communities and our entire workforce during this clean energy transition. You'll also note that zero carbon generation grew significantly, such that by 2026 over 65% of our investment base will consist of electric wires and zero carbon generation.
Moving on to South Carolina. As part of our ongoing resource planning, Dominion Energy South Carolina is planning to replace several of our older generation peaking turbines with modern, more efficient units. These peaking units which often operate seasonally during certain times of day when the demand for energy is at -- is at its highest play an important role in our generation fleet with their ability to go from idle to producing energy quickly. Modernizing this equipment will lower fuel cost to customers, improve environmental performance and provide reliability and efficiency benefits. These will become even more important as additional intermittent fluctuating resources, such as solar are added to our system. Last quarter, the Public Service Commission of South Carolina approved a settlement, allowing the company to move forward with two of the proposed sites and we'll hold an RFP for a third.
Turning to gas distribution. In North Carolina, the Commission approved a comprehensive settlement last month for our gas operations with rates based on a 9.6% ROE. As a reminder, the agreement included three new clean energy programs, a new hydrogen blending pilot, a new option to allow our customers to purchase RNG attributes, and a new and expanded energy efficiency programs. This is a prime example of the role that supportive regulation can play in meeting our decarbonization objectives.
Let me now address this morning's announcement regarding the sale of our West Virginia Natural Gas Utility to Ullico. Hope Gas is a valuable business with tremendous people. At the same time, compared to the other larger state regulated utilities across our five premier stage, Hope Gas is relatively a small standalone operation. Our talented employees have consistently delivered safe, reliable and affordable energy to Hope's customers. We're pleased that these best-in-class employees are now joining another excellent organization in the form of Ullico, who has agreed to provide significant protections for employees and honor existing union commitments. Ullico's operating expertise and financial resources will also ensure that Hope's customers will continue to receive the high level of service to which they have grown accustomed.
Slide 24 provides a summary of several important steps we took in 2021 that enhanced our industry-leading ESG profile. Just a couple of items I'll highlight here. In July, we published our updated climate report, which included disclosure of Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, an important step as it relates to our net zero commitment as I will expand on in a minute. In November, we issued our inaugural diversity equity and inclusion report, which highlights our progress towards building a more diverse and inclusive workforce. As part of that report, we also published our EEO-1 data. This enhanced external reporting builds upon our commitment to increase our total workforce diversity by 1% each year with the goal of reaching at least 40% by year end 2026. We're very much on track to meet that goal.
These and other ESG-oriented efforts have been recognized by leading third-party assessment services as shown on Slide 25. By each measure, our performance exceeds the sector average. We've been recognized as part of the leadership band by CDP for our climate and water disclosure for the second year in a row as trendsetters, the highest categorization for the fourth consecutive year by the CPA-Zicklin report on political accountability and transparency. And most recently, MSCI increased our rating from A to AA, which designates us a leader in the field.
Turning to Slide 26, I'm pleased to announce an expansion of our net zero commitments. In addition to our current commitment to achieve enterprise-wide net zero scope 1 carbon and methane emissions by 2050, we now aim to achieve net zero by 2050 for all Scope 2 emissions and for Scope 3 emissions associated with three major sources, LDC customer end-use emissions, upstream fuel and purchase power. These new commitments formalize our continued focus on helping our customers and suppliers decarbonize, reducing emissions as fast as possible and achieving net zero emissions company wide requires immediate and direct action. That's why the company continues to take meaningful steps to address Scope 3 emissions.
We formalize our support for Federal methane regulation and we're working towards procurement practices that encourage enhanced disclosures by upstream counterparties on their emissions and methane reduction programs. Further, we encourage suppliers to adopt a net zero commitment and we have started to receive quotes for responsibly sourced gas which were evaluated, consistent with our reliability service and cost criteria for natural gas supply.
For downstream emissions, we expect to increase our annual spend on energy efficiency over the next five years at our LDCs by nearly 50% and to provide our customers with access to a carbon calculator and carbon offsets. For example, in both Utah and North Carolina, we offer GreenTherm, a voluntary program that provides customers with access to renewable natural gas. While initially being offered on a voluntary basis, we are working with policymakers and regulators to increase access to RNG for our customers.
And finally, we continue to pursue innovative hydrogen use cases, including our blending pilot in Utah, which based on early assessment confirms the ability to blend at least 5% and potentially up to 10% without adverse impacts to appliance performance, leak survey, system safety or secondary emissions. Over the long term, achieving these goals will require supportive legislative and regulatory policies and broader investments across the economy. This includes support for the testing and deployment of technologies. For example, we support efforts to research and develop new technologies through collaborations, such as the low carbon resource initiative, of which we're a founding sponsor. And we will never lose sight of our fundamental responsibility to to customers, providing safe, reliable, affordable and sustainable energy.
With that, let me summarize our remarks on Slide 27. Our safety performance was our second best ever. We reported our 24th consecutive quarterly result that normalized for weather, meets or exceeds the midpoint of our guidance range. We affirm the same 6.5% operating EPS growth guidance through 2026, and affirmed our existing dividend growth guidance through 2026. We're focused on executing project construction and achieving regulatory outcomes that serve our customers well, and we are aggressively pursuing our vision to be the most sustainable regulated energy company in the country. We're now ready to take your questions.