Leo P. Denault
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer at Entergy
Thank you, Bill, and good morning, everyone. Today, we are reporting first quarter adjusted earnings of $1.32 per share, a very good start for the year. With favorable weather and higher-than-planned retail sales, we are ahead of schedule and solidly on track to achieve our 2022 objectives. And we remain on track for our longer-term outlooks. During the quarter, we continued to execute on both our near- and long-term deliverables, just as we have over the last several years. We've made demonstrable progress on our operational, strategic and financial objectives. Operationally, I'll start with some notable regulatory updates. We've continued to make meaningful progress on storm cost recovery. Texas is done and Louisiana's securitization proceeds from the 2020 storms, plus $1 billion towards IDA will be completed in the coming weeks. Entergy Louisiana's filing for the balance of IDA will be completed within the coming days, and the Entergy New Orleans filing will follow later this year.
A financially strong utility is important for customers. Drew will discuss how securitization progress supports our balance sheet strength. As expected, Entergy Mississippi filed its annual formula rate plan which enables continued customer-centric investment and supports our financial outlook. We're continuing to drive progress on enhancing the resilience of our system, which benefits customers that supports local economic activity as well as our growth plan. Entergy Louisiana completed an important transmission upgrade in the southern part of the state. This $86 million project replaced approximately 80 structures to increase resilience along several miles of critical path transmission in La Pouch Paris, an area that was severely affected by Hurricane Ida last year. To create a solid foundation, the new infrastructure is placed in steel cases. The line was built to withstand wind speeds of 150 miles per hour and will improve the resilience of the electric system. Entergy Louisiana also completed a $100 million project in North Louisiana, that positions the region for economic growth. The West Monroe project will provide additional transition capacity, improve reliability and is built to withstand extreme weather events.
What that means for customers is enhanced reliability and resilience, better integration of clean generating resources and economic benefits through improved access to lower cost of power. Bottom line, the Entergy team continues to focus on delivering operational excellence across all facets of our business. Strategically, I'll start with our merchant business wind down. The last step in our merchant nuclear exit nearly complete. Palisades is on track to shut down at the end of May with the sale to Holtec following around mid-year. The Palisades team is fishing strong, and I would like to thank them for their dedicated service. We have worked to help employees with their career goals beyond the plant shutdown. Many will continue to work for Entergy at other locations. Some will continue to work for Holtec on decommissioning and others are retiring. As you know, DOE recently announced a program to save nuclear plants that are about to shut down. Michigan's governor issued a letter encouraging utilization of this program to keep Palisades open. We are supportive of federal initiatives to keep nuclear plants operating. However, we are five years into Palisades shutdown process.
We're far down the path. There are significant technical and commercial hurdles to changing course at this point. That said, alongside Holtec, we will work with any qualified party that wants to explore acquiring the plant and obtaining federal funding. But I do want to be very clear, this does not change our strategy. Entergy is exiting the merchant nuclear business, even if Palisades continues to operate as a part of Entergy. Across all of our operating companies, we continue to be a critical partner to support strong economic development, bringing new businesses, new jobs and new tax base in the communities we serve. For example, Entergy Arkansas, along with the Wynne Economic Development Corporation announced completion of the select site certification for a 37-acre industrial site. Certification streamlines site selection process. Initiatives like this help track new businesses and new projects like the U.S.
Steel expansion that was announced earlier this year. Over the past five years, our economic development team has helped bring to provision close to 300 announced projects, $42 billion of capital investments, and more than 25,000 jobs. These outcomes have been critical to the economic health of our communities and have been a significant factor in the 9% cumulative industrial sales growth we've achieved over the past five years. And we continue to expect significant industrial expansion in the next several years. As we have discussed, growth from our industrial customers has been driven in large part by cost, labor, logistics and regulatory advantages of the Gulf Coast as well as favorable commodity spreads, which continue to support expansion. Further, the current geopolitical state of the world makes the U.S. and the Gulf Coast in particular, a top choice for stability. LNG exporters in the Gulf are being called on to expand production to help reduce Europe's reliance on Russian energy influence.
This opportunity represents a win for our customers, communities and owners, have to mention the community. To help support our customers' growth and the decarbonization objectives are driving progress to expand our renewables footprint. As of today, we have approximately 650 megawatts of renewable capacity in service. 625 megawatts of solar projects approved by regulators, 725 megawatts of announced projects and up to 4,000 megawatts of RFPs. That's more than half of the 11,000 megawatts of renewable resources in our supply plan through 2030. We've made progress identifying new resources and active RFPs. Since our last call, Entergy Texas concluded evaluations of its 2021 solar RFP. Several resources were selected totaling at least 400 megawatts from owned and contracted proposals. We also made selections from the Louisiana and Arkansas 2021 RFPs earlier in the year. We will provide additional details about the resources selected from these proposals once parties reach definitive agreements.
We are also soliciting the next round of renewables. Entergy Arkansas recently issued its RFP seeking up to 500 megawatts of renewables to provide cost-effective clean energy, which furthers fuel diversity. Entergy Louisiana also issued notice to proceed with renewable RFP seeking up to 1,500 megawatts in Louisiana. Our customers' demand for decarbonization solutions, including green products is not slowing down. The long-term solar market continues to look favorable based on an improving technology curve and higher natural gas price scenarios. However, we fully recognize the near-term cost and schedule pressures that solar projects are facing. Supply chain constraints have been exacerbated by the Department of Commerce investigation, which we expect will drive additional delays and the potential for further cost increases. These dynamics are affecting the entire U.S. solar industry, but we are continuing to work through these constraints and are executing on our solar expansion plans. It's important to note that not all of our projects are affected. For example, Sunflower solar in Mississippi are roughly up [Indecipherable] online this year as its panels on site installation is nearly complete.
Entergy's owned solar represents a relatively small portion of our 3-year $12 million capital plan. Roughly half of owned projects in the 3-year horizon are not experiencing impacts of recent marketing constraints. A greater portion of our own projects are expected in the latter half of the decade, which would be past the current working insurance. As we've said before, we have a large backlog of customer centric investments with the ability to rotate capital into our plan as an opening presents itself. The bottom line is that we recognize the near- and medium-term constraints, still see strong market fundamentals in the long term supports our supply demand and customer objectives. On our last call, we told you about the new U.S. Steel expansion. In support of this project and the customers' decarbonization goals, Entergy Arkansas filed for approval to acquire the 250-megawatt driver solar facility. Driver solar is an example of how we can partner with customers with their sustainability needs while accelerating the growth of our renewable portfolio in our regulated framework.
It also highlights our unique growth strategy to help customers achieve the outcomes they desire, which in turn drives the outcomes for all interested stakeholders through more jobs and economic activity in our service area, increased capital deployment to support electrification, low growth to offset costs and higher rate of change towards societal decarbonization. Nuclear also plays a critical role in our customer decarbonization strategy. Entergy has one of the cleanest large-scale fleets in the nation due to our nuclear fleet. Customers are increasingly highlighting access to carbon renewable resources is key to economic development. They are looking to reduce their carbon footprint and many are indifferent to the type of carbon-free technology. We continue to see examples in the industry that reinforce the need to balance reliability, supportability, environmental sustainability. Entergy's resource planning has always balanced these objectives. Our baseload plays an important role. We have discussed the sizable long-term opportunity for Entergy to help our industrial customers decarbonize and achieve their sustainability goals.
We had estimate an addressable market of approximately 30 terawatt hours by 2030. To put that into context, that's about 25% of our 2021 total [detailed] savings. That's not to say that we capture the entire market. But we're working how to serve our customers' needs and maximize this opportunity. With many carbon reduction goals coming past 2030, achieve greater opportunities beyond the next 10 years. Realizing this growth requires significant investment benefits to all stakeholders. This will include meaningful transmission and distribution investments to reliably serve the expansion of our renewable beyond the [Indecipherable] our current 2030 resource. Financially, we continue to strengthen our balance sheet. Beyond the securitization progress that I mentioned, also significantly reduced our [Indecipherable] through 2020. Currently, only 25% of the original amount discussed at 2020 onset remains. We are on track to achieve steady predictable growth adjusted EPS in dividends, the opportunity to do even better.
We're very excited about our upcoming Analyst Day on June 16. We'll use that opportunity to provide a closer look into our multiyear strategy and financial plans. That includes our plans to quickly advance resilient investment in our coastal region to lower storm risk for our system, our communities and our customers. And to further expand our renewables portfolio to support our customers' decarbonization goals. As I said, we've had a productive start to 2022, and we will continue to successfully achieve the milestones that keep us on track to deliver steady, predictable earnings and dividend growth while maximizing operating efficiencies and investments to make our system most resilient, reliable, clean and affordable it can be. These are the outcomes our customers want by delivering them to create sustainable value for all our stakeholders. Before I conclude, I encourage you to see our recently released 2021 integrated report, "The Future is on". The report lays out how we delivered results in 2021, discusses why we're optimistic and excited about Entergy's future. You can see how we integrate the environmental, social and governance objectives to all we do. I'll now turn the call over to Drew to review our first quarter results as well as our financial strength and outlooks.
