Robert Frenzel
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Xcel Energy
Thanks, Paul, and good morning, everybody.
Let's start with the quarter. We had solid results, recording ongoing earnings of $1.23 per share for 2023 compared to $1.18 per share in 2022. As a result, we are narrowing our '23 -- our ongoing earnings guidance to $3.32 to $3.37 per share. We're also initiating 2024 ongoing earnings guidance of $3.50 to $3.60 per share, which is consistent with our 5% to 7% long-term EPS growth rate. Consistent with past practices, we've reviewed our customer and operational needs and have updated our infrastructure plan for 2024 to 2028. This revised forecast reflects $34 billion of needed capital investment, an increase of $4.5 billion from our previous plan.
This base infrastructure investment plan includes substantial resiliency investments in both transmission and distribution, including additional upgrades required to support the Colorado Energy Plan. However, it does not include clean energy generation investments that could result from the resource plans in Colorado, Texas and New Mexico or in the Upper Midwest. If approved by our commissions, these cost-effective clean energy generation investments could result in an additional capital needs, totaling $10 billion from 2024 to 2028, and dramatically reduce carbon emissions in various states.
Xcel Energy's resource plans also demonstrate the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act, our state's geographic advantages that enable high-capacity renewable generation and our operational expertise and commercial acumen can bring to our customers. In September, we filed our recommended plan in Colorado. This plan seeks to double the amount of renewable energy in the state, making it the largest clean energy transition ever in Colorado history and demonstrates our strong alignment with the state's environmental goals. Our proposal contemplates the shut-down or conversion of our remaining coal units, replaces them with approximately 6,500 megawatts of renewable energy and battery storage and 600 megawatts of dispatchable gas resources to ensure system reliability in times of low wind or solar conditions. These amounts include 4,800 megawatts as proposed to be owned and operated by Xcel Energy for the benefit of our customers.
Including the approximately $3 billion in required transmission investment to ensure deliverability and reliability, this Colorado Energy Plan represents nearly $11 billion total investment by Xcel Energy. In addition, this portfolio also includes $10 billion in IRA savings to customers. It creates local jobs, promotes economic development and provides over $2 billion in tax benefits to local communities in the coming decades. At the same time, it will reduce carbon emissions by over 80% from 2005 levels in Colorado, while having expected annual rate impact of only 2.3%. This competitive portfolio provides our Colorado customers an industry-leading opportunity for a cleaner economy at a fraction of the cost most other states would incur.
Moving the Minnesota. In September, the Commission approved 350 megawatts of new renewable generation, including an additional 250 megawatts at our Sherco facility. This brings the total amount of Company built solar at Sherco to over 700 megawatts, making it one of the largest solar facilities in the country. In October, we also issued an RFP, seeking 1,200 megawatts of wind that will utilize our transmission interconnect at our retiring Sherco coal facility and we'll be issuing additional RFPs to fulfill the remainder of the approved Upper Midwest resource plan in 2024.
Finally, in October, we filed a resource plan in New Mexico. Based on our filing, SPS could required additional 5,000 megawatts to 10,000 megawatts of new generation by the end of the decade to accommodate increasing demand, plant retirements and ensure resiliency and reliability of the grid. We've already proposed 418 megawatts of Company-owned solar and battery projects that are pending commission approval. And we anticipate filing another RFP in 2024 for the additional generation resources.
Shifting to our clean energy innovation projects. The Department of Energy recently announced nearly $1.5 billion in awards to support multiple Xcel Energy affiliated projects. Starting with the Heartland Hydrogen Hub, this estimated $5 billion initiative, which includes multiple projects from Xcel Energy and others, received an award of up to $925 million by the DOE. This game-changing funding will serve as a catalyst for clean hydrogen ecosystem in the Upper Midwest and the foundation of our clean fuels efforts at Xcel Energy. Unfortunately, the Western Interstate Hydrogen Hub in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah, was not successful in this round of DOE funding. And that said, we remain committed to working with policymakers and federal offices with the hopes that our projects can progress to advance our shared clean energy goals.
The DOE also awarded Xcel Energy up to $70 million to support two 10 megawatt, 100-hour battery pilots with Form Energy. Combined with the grants from Breakthrough Energy's Catalyst Fund, we secured up to $90 million to support these long-duration energy storage pilots, a critical asset class to ensure cost-effective reliability in a high renewable grid.
With respect to DOE's Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships program, Xcel Energy was selected as part of two different awards. First, the DOE awarded Xcel Energy a $100 million to support projects to mitigate the threat of wildfires and ensure resiliency of the grid through extreme weather. Projects include vegetation management, selective undergrounding, advanced infrastructure technologies, drones and several additional resiliency projects. Xcel Energy was also a party to GRIP's $464 million grant to expand transmission as part of the MISO and SPP Seams program to fund high voltage transmission to improve interregional transfer capability, reliability and resolve grid constraints.
We're appreciative of the DOE support as well as many of our partners in these projects, including our states and regional transmission organizations. Funding support helps us accelerate critical carbon-free technologies, enhance safety and resiliency, while keeping costs low for customers.
Turning to our natural gas utility. In August, we filed our Clean Heat program in Colorado. This first of a kind plan provides a framework to reduce greenhouse gas emissions consistent with state goals in our net-zero emissions target. The planned fast track solutions, such as electrification, demand-side management, clean fuels and certified natural gas. The proposed Clean Heat Plus portfolio reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 28% by 2030, insurers customer reliability and choice, while optimizing customer bill impact. We plan to file our natural gas innovation plan, a corresponding framework for our Minnesota gas utility in the fourth quarter.
In September, Meta announced construction of a $700 million datacenter and Minnesota, which eventually could be one of our largest customers in the state. We continue to evaluate a number of additional datacenter and commercial opportunities that will further support low-growth and economic development in our communities.
Finally, there are not many new material developments with the Marshall wildfire litigation. We currently have 14 complaints with 675 plaintiffs, which have been consolidated into a single case. For the past four years, Xcel Energy has been operating under a Commission-approved wildfire mitigation program in Colorado. We intend to file an updated wildfire mitigation plan next year, which will include a wide range of options for stakeholder consideration, including new technologies, undergrounding, additional vegetation management, composite poles, selective use of covered conductor and preventative power system shut-offs.
Let me wrap-up with just a few summary comments before I turn it over to Brian. As we look forward across the next five years and beyond, we see a future that is bright for our communities, our customers and our investors. Xcel Energy is committed to providing clean energy economy in our regions, and it will require a meaningful investment to accomplish. For our customers, we have the potential to deploy 15,000 megawatts to 20,000 megawatts of new clean generation on our systems by 2030, dramatically lowering our emissions profile, affordably powering our customers' homes and businesses, while ensuring 99.99% reliability that they come to expect from Xcel Energy.
And through leveraging the benefits of the IRA in IIJA, we we're able to accelerate deployment of renewable resources, and pairing them with affordable energy storage assets in other firm dispatchable clean fuel resources to provide reliability. We continue to invest in and innovate our transmission and distribution systems to ensure reliability and resilience, and provide for regional and interregional deliverability. We're laying the framework to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions on our natural gas system. All the while our residential customer electric and natural gas bills are amongst the lowest in the country, 28% and 14% below the national average. And given that the regions where we serve customers are the most resource-rich in wind and solar, we believe that we can lead this clean energy transition for our customers more cost-effectively than almost any other company.
With that, I'll turn it over to Brian.
