Jerry Norcia
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at DTE Energy
Well, thanks, Barb, and good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. This morning, I will be discussing the achievements we've made so far this year and provide a general business update. I'll discuss the progress of our regulatory proceedings including the details of our IRP settlement. Dave will provide a financial update and wrap things up before we take your questions. Before we dive in, I want to take this opportunity to touch on some recent appointments to our regulatory commission here in Michigan. Governor Whitmer extended Chair Dan Scripps term an additional six years to 2029. The reappointment of Chair Scripps provides consistency in regulatory leadership and we appreciate the balance he has always brought to the commission.
We congratulate Chair Scripps and look forward to continuing to work with him, Governor Whitmer also appointed Alessandra Carreon as a new commissioner to the MPSC, filling the vacant role left by Tremaine Phillips. We look forward to working with her as she comes to his position with a strong background in electrification. Moving on to Slide four. We remain committed to supporting and delivering for all our stakeholders, including employees, customers, communities and shareholders. I always say that employee engagement drives our success, and our team continues to operate at top decile engagement levels as measured by the Gallup organization. I'm proud that our team's excellence in this area was recognized by earning the Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award for the 11th consecutive year.
We also received great news that DTE was named one of Metro Detroit's best and brightest companies to work for. The best and brightest program recognizes companies that have a commitment to excellence in their human resource practices and employee enrichment based on categories including work life balance, employee education and diversity. I'm happy to say that yesterday, the MPSC approved our IRP settlement agreement, which outlines our investment in Michigan's clean energy future, two weeks after we filed it. This demonstrates the supportive nature of our regulatory environment. We are proud that this plan puts our customers first by reducing the cost of our clean energy transformation, while reliably generating the cleaner, affordable energy that our customers will rely on for years to come.
I'll provide more details on the settlement agreement in a few minutes. On the community front, DTE was honored to be named to the Civic 50 for the sixth consecutive year. This award presented by Points of Light recognized us as the most community-minded companies in the nation. I am proud that our team continues to put communities we serve at the forefront each and every day in our decision-making and earning this award year after year recognizes that. On the investor front, we are executing on our plan to achieve our 2023 guidance midpoint and our long-term financial growth. As you know, we have been facing headwinds with the weather and storms that we experienced earlier this year. Dave will go into more details on this, but the team has made excellent progress on the cost management work across the entire company, and we continue to find savings with our continuous improvement efforts. As well, we are seeing additional favorability across our portfolio of businesses.
We are well positioned to continue to deliver the strong performance and premium growth that DTE is known for delivering on our 2023 midpoint guidance and also continuing to deliver long-term EPS growth of 6% to 8%. Let's turn to Slide five and discuss the IRP settlement agreement. We want to thank our DTE employees and 21 organizations from across Michigan for their diligent work on this IRP settlement agreement. We completed a comprehensive analysis that reflected insights shared by our customers and other stakeholders to build the plan. The plan offers a balanced and diversified approach for the transition of our generation fleet, complementing our commitment to build a reliable and resilient grid while maintaining customer affordability. A key provision of the settlement agreement is ending DTE's use of coal in 2032. DTE will provide retraining for employees impacted by the plant retirements, and we'll continue to partner with the local communities on new economic development opportunities.
We are continuing our plan to seize coal use at our Belle River power plant in 2026 and convert it to a 1,300 megawatt natural gas peaking resource. We are retiring two coal units at Monroe in 2028 and accelerating the retirement of our two remaining units from 2035 to 2032, which is nearly 12 years earlier than originally planned. To determine the best replacement alternative for the capacity of Monroe, we will be studying a range of possible replacement technologies. Facilitated by these accelerations, our 85% carbon reduction goal moves from 2035 to 2032. To support these retirements, we are transforming how the company generates electricity over the next two decades. We will be developing more than 15,000 megawatts of renewables by 2042 to power homes, businesses and industrial facilities. Additionally, we will build more than 1,800 megawatts of energy storage to support the company's clean energy transformation. Through all of this, our focus remains in providing what our customers and communities need, clean, affordable, reliable energy.
This IRP is also very positive for customer affordability as it provides over $2.5 billion in future cost savings, and we will be directing $110 million to support our most vulnerable customers, including $70 million to energy efficiency programs, $30 million in bill assistance and $8 million in home repairs facilitate cleaner energy for low-income customers. Through this IRP, we will be delivering long-term customer value by investing over $11 billion in the next 10 years in a clean energy transition, supporting more than 32,000 Michigan jobs. Let's move to Slide six to discuss how the IRP fits into our plan. This IRP supports our long-term capital plan as it solidifies a large portion of our planned investment in cleaner generation. As you recall, we will be investing $21.6 billion in our two utilities in the next five years and $45 billion over the next 10 years, all to build the grid of the future, transition to cleaner generation and modernize the gas transmission and distribution system.
The significant additions of renewables and storage outlined in this plan in addition to the renewables investments we are doing through our voluntary renewable program provides surety to our cleaner generation investment plan. The IRP provides full recovery of the net book value of Belle River and Monroe. A portion of the assets are securitized to balance customer affordability with the increased investment in clean energy while supporting our financial plan. For Belle River, we will be depreciating the majority of the asset since it will remain in service earning the authorized ROE currently at 9.9%. A small portion of the net book value will be securitized after 2026. For Monroe, we received constructive regulatory asset treatment for the majority of the undepreciated coal unit investment balances with a 9% return on equity. The remaining portion of the assets will be securitized beginning in 2032. We will receive our full authorized ROE, which is 9.9% until 2032, at which point that portion will be securitized. So this plan is a really great outgo.
Settling this case confirms the constructive nature of the regulatory environment in Michigan and DTE's ability to gain consensus with key stakeholders, including the MPSC staff, the attorney general, environmental, industrial and regulatory groups. It is consistent and supports our five-year financial plan and our 6% to 8% EPS growth rate. It also provides visibility and surety in the long-term capital plan. And this settlement overall is good for customers and aligns with the state's goals to provide clean, affordable, reliable energy in Michigan. We will be updating our full five-year financial plan at EEI. As with any of our plans, we continue to balance increases in investments in clean generation, distribution infrastructure and base infrastructure with affordability for our customers. Now let's turn to our other accomplishments this quarter on Slide seven.
Our team has accomplished a lot so far this year. At DTE Electric, we placed Michigan's largest wind park in service, the Meridian Wind Park, spanning three townships, the 225-megawatt wind park has 77 wind turbines and generates enough clean energy to power more than 78,000 homes. In addition to bringing even more clean energy to the grid and supporting Michigan's overall decarbonization goals, these types of projects help strengthen our economy by creating jobs and by bringing additional tax revenue to our communities. Additionally, last month, Dakota, a native American and women-owned automotive supplier joined our voluntary renewables program. Dakota joins 15 automotive suppliers who are using my green power to make their operations more sustainable.
This continues to demonstrate the success of our voluntary renewable program that currently has over 2,300 megawatts of commitments, including participation of over 90,000 residential customers. making us the largest voluntary renewable program in the state of Michigan and one of the largest in the country. We are continuing our focus on improved reliability of our electric grid. We trimmed more than 25,000 miles of trees over the last five years and will trim an additional 5,000 miles in 2023, of which we have completed 2,800 miles through the first half of this year. The electric rate case is progressing as we continue to pursue a constructive settlement with all stakeholders. At DTE Gas, our main renewal work marches steadily along.
We've completed over 150 miles of renewal in the first half of 2023. Our natural gas balance program also continues to grow. We now have over 12,000 customers subscribed since program inception in 2021. In the second quarter, the city of East Grand Rapids was the first municipality in Michigan to join the program to help lower its carbon footprint, and we invite more municipalities to participate in this great program. Moving on to DTE Vantage. As we mentioned earlier this year, we have placed two projects in service so far in 2023. One RNG and one custom energy solutions project, we are on track to place two additional RNG projects in service by year-end and are in advanced discussions on an additional customer energy solutions project. We also continue to advance our development pipeline with strong opportunities in both RNG conversions and large custom energy solutions projects. With that, I'll turn it over to Dave to give you a financial update. Dave, over to you.
