Garrick J. Rochow
President and Chief Executive Officer at CMS Energy
Thanks, Sri, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today.
I'm excited to share another strong quarter at CMS Energy and a great first half of the year, bolstered by favorable weather and higher weather normalized sales at the utility, great tailwind, and over the course of the quarter, two outstanding regulatory outcomes which provide further evidence of the top-tier regulatory jurisdiction in Michigan and give us continued confidence in our plan.
First, our integrated resource plan. If I could open this up for just a moment. 18 months of sophisticated supply modeling, thousands of pages of testimony, 10-month schedule, alignment across dozens of stakeholders, from interveners, the Attorney General, business stakeholders, and the Commission staff to reach a settlement with close to 20 parties. This plan, approved at the end of June, solidly positioned us to lead the clean energy transformation. Outstanding.
Next, our gas rate case. Important investments to ensure a safe, reliable, affordable, and clean natural gas system; settled with many of the same parties, and approved on July 7, a $170 million increase over 95% of our customer investment approved. Excellent. Both outcomes demonstrate the quality of our regulatory environment in Michigan and increase our confidence in delivering the rest of the year and our long-term plan.
I want to emphasize why we continue to be confident in our plan. Delivering is not new for us. We have nearly two decades of commitments made and kept for all our stakeholders, including you, our investors. A key element in our performance is strong energy law in Michigan. We have a productive and solid energy law passed in 2008, which was enhanced and updated in 2016, both with bipartisan support. This allows for timely recovery of investments which we've outlined through long-term plans, such as our IRP, as well as our electric and natural gas distribution plans, which we filed in our rate cases. This, coupled with separate mechanisms, allow us timely recovery of fuel and power supply costs as well as attractive economics on renewable energy investments and energy waste reduction programs. And uniquely position Michigan as one of the safest places to invest capital.
But let me be clear, we don't take this for granted. We continue to improve our processes for stakeholder alignment, testimony development, and business cases, so we are confident that our proposed customer investments deliver measurable benefit, while keeping bills affordable. At CMS, we deliver. Our productive and supportive environment and our deliberate approach ensure that no matter the conditions, we are positioned to deliver industry-leading result.
We remain committed to leading the clean energy transformation. On the solid foundation of strong energy law, we delivered and settled our IRP. This makes us one of the first utilities in the country to completely exit coal. As of the end of second quarter, we have nearly eliminated our long-term economic exposure to coal, which is now less than 2% of property, plant, and equipment.
Not only have we reduced our long-term financial risk, but we have significantly mitigated our operational risk as well. The acquisition of simpler, more flexible natural gas units means fewer people to operate, a better heat rate, and less maintenance. The ability to quickly ramp up and down the dispatch of these units will allow us to flex with changing market conditions and to better support the intermittent nature of renewables.
The acquisition of Colbert combined with the RFP for 700 megawatts of capacity through PPAs, the build-out of 8 gigawatts of solar, and our ongoing energy efficiency and demand response programs ensure that we have sufficient capacity to meet the needs of our customers. This plant improves reliability and limits our customers' exposure to potentially volatile capacity and energy prices. The IRP strengthened and lengthened our financial plan, eliminates our exposure to coal, improves reliability, and is a solid win for everyone.
Strong execution and constructive regulatory outcomes lead to strong financial results. And I couldn't be more pleased with the first half of 2022. As I stated in my opening remarks, a strong quarter and a great first half of the year, where we delivered adjusted earnings per share of $0.53 for the quarter. We remain confident in delivering full-year adjusted earnings per share of $2.85 to $2.89. And we continue to guide for the high-end of our long-term adjusted EPS growth range of 6% to 8%, which as I noted, is strengthened and lengthened by our IRP.
We continue to guide for long-term dividend growth of 6% to 8% with a targeted payout ratio of about 60% [Phonetic] over time. And we'll update our current $14.3 billion, five-year customer investment plan on our year-end call to include the anticipated upside from the approval of our IRP. We are strongly positioned to deliver in the remainder of the year.
With that, I will turn the call over to Rejji who will offer additional detail.