Gale Klappa
Executive Chairman at WEC Energy Group
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today as we review our results for the second quarter of 2022. First, I'd like to introduce the members of our management team who are here with me today. We have Scott Lauber, our President and Chief Executive; Xia Liu, our Chief Financial Officer; and Beth Straka, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations.
Now, as you saw from our news release this morning, we reported second quarter 2022 earnings of $0.91 a share. A warm start to the summer, solid results from our infrastructure segment and continued execution of our capital plan were major factors that shaped yet another strong quarter. In light of this strong performance, we are again raising our earnings guidance for 2022. This time by $0.02 a share to a new range of $4.36 to $4.40 per share. We expect to reach the top end of this new range. This of course assumes normal weather for the remainder of the year. Our balance sheet and our cash flows remain strong and as we've discussed this allows us to fund a highly executable capital plan without any need for new equity.
During the quarter, we continue to move forward on major initiatives across the enterprise, including investments in our $17.7 billion ESG Progress Plan. Our focus remains on building and maintaining a highly reliable infrastructure, delivering energy that's affordable, reliable and clean Scott will provide you with the project update in just a few moments.
Now, you may recall, our recent announcement about an adjustment that we made to our schedule of power plant retirements. We plan to extend the operating lives of the four older units at our Oak Creek site. The retirement of units five and six will be delayed by a year until May 2024. Units seven and eight will be delayed for about 18 months until late in 2025. These coal fuel units have a total rated capacity of 1100MW We base this decision on two critical factors. First, tight energy supply conditions in the Midwest power market and expected delays in the delivery of solar panels and batteries. Delays that will clearly affect the in-service dates of renewable projects that are now going through the regulatory approval process in Wisconsin.
Keeping the older units at Oak Creek online a bit longer for capacity purposes, makes great sense for our customers because we can avoid the need to purchase higher cost capacity in the MISO market. But even with the extension of the Oak Creek units, we remain committed to our aggressive environmental goals. Across our generating fleet, we're still targeting a 60% reduction in carbon emissions by the end of 2025 and an 80% reduction by the end of 2030. And by the end of 2030, we expect to use coal only as a backup fuel. And we're aiming for a complete exit from coal by the end of 2035. The capital investments we planned fully support this transition. Of course, for the longer term, we remain focused on the goal of net zero carbon emissions from power generation by 2050. And as you know, we're working to help shape the future of clean energy, engaging in policy discussions and on the ground carrying out innovative projects that can drive decarbonization of the economy.
For example, we've now finalized the test plans for blending hydrogen with natural gas at one of our modern gas fueled units in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We've teamed up with the Electric Power Research Institute for this leading edge project. The field work will take place this fall, and the results will be shared across our industry. Separately, for our natural gas distribution business, we're making great progress and securing supplies of renewable natural gas. Scott will update us shortly, but as a reminder, our plan is to achieve net zero methane emissions from our gas distribution networks by the end of 2030.
Switching gears now, let's take a brief look at the regional economy. The latest data show Wisconsin's unemployment rate at 2.9%. Well, of course, below the national average. And we continue to see major investments from growing companies in our region. For example, Gulfstream Aerospace is expanding its operations at the Appleton airport. That's in Wisconsin's Fox Valley, southwest of Green Bay. The company is planning to build a world-class facility for painting and finishing aircraft exteriors. This expansion is expected to open in the third quarter of 2023 and it could add 200 new jobs to Gulfstream's existing workforce in Wisconsin. And just last month, Komatsu mining celebrated the official grand opening of its new headquarters here in Milwaukee. The campus is already hosting about 600 employees. It includes offices, a training center, and state-of-the-art manufacturing space to build heavy mining equipment.
During the second quarter, groundbreaking also took place for a major expansion of the Georgia-Pacific paper mill in Green Bay. Georgia-Pacific is investing $500 million in its new facility, which is expected to bring about a 100 new jobs to the region. So with a wide range of developments in the pipeline, we remain very optimistic about the long-term future of the regional economy.
And with that, I'll turn the call over to Scott for more information on our utility operations and our infrastructure segment. Scott, all yours.
