Joe Nolan
Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer at Eversource Energy
Thank you, Bob, and thank you everyone for joining us on this call this morning. Hope that you're all having a good summer and can take some time off after earnings season.
Today, we'd like to update you on our commitment to deliver value to our customers, to achieve important objectives on both ESG and diversity, and our progress to close out the offshore wind sale process.
Starting on Slide 3, here at Eversource, we are working tirelessly to deliver energy and clean water safely and reliably to our 4.4 million customers. Our steadfast focus on serving our customers well continues to deliver superior results in all aspects of our businesses in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. As you can see from the bottom of this slide, investments we have made over the past decade are greatly benefiting customers. The average months between interruptions has increased significantly from 12 months in 2011 to nearly 20 months at the end of 2022, in over two years through the first-half of 2023.
As a result, this high performance level puts Eversource's reliability in the top decile, compared to industry peers. In addition, when an outage occurs, the average duration experienced by customers has improved dramatically. Our relatively short average duration of outages also puts Eversource in the top decile compared to industry peers. This top decile level of reliability is a result of years of investment in the states in which we operate and the dedication and the high work of our skilled employees.
Turning to Slide 4 on the energy supply side of our customers bill. We're pleased that our customers have experienced some improvement in supply, pricing in New England. Challenges due to natural gas, supply constraints because of the war in Ukraine, and the global market dynamics led to last winter's historically-high energy prices here in New England. This summer, natural gas prices have moderated nicely and we're seeing much lower electricity prices as a result. In Connecticut and Massachusetts, new supply rates went into effect on July 1st and will remain in-place through the end-of-the year. Supply rates for residential customers in Connecticut and Massachusetts decreased approximately 40% per kilowatt-hour from January of this year to July 1st of this year. In New Hampshire, residential customers will see a decline of approximately 40% per kilowatt-hour in the supply rate effective August 1st.
As a reminder, we purchase power on behalf of our customers in accordance with guidelines set by our state regulators, and we do not earn any profit from this portion of our customers bill. We are very pleased that our customers have seen some cost relief this summer, as it helps to offset customers' usage that is much higher in the summer than in the winter. And while 2023 prices have come down in recent months, we expect another seasonal increase of supply prices for this coming winter. Therefore, we remain focused on our industry-leading energy efficiency programs and we're continuing to engage with policy makers to discuss long-term solutions.
To that end, in June, senior leaders actively participated in the FERC-sponsored forum in Portland, Maine, on gas and electric reliability matters. The topics discussed include retaining existing natural gas infrastructure and new electric transmission infrastructure needed to connect onshore and offshore generation and other renewable energy resources. This was a very well-attended meeting that included all four FERC commissioners and the state energy policy leaders from across New England. We look-forward to continuing engagement with FERC and other key stakeholders to continue to advance this energy resource challenge for New England.
Turning to Slide 5, in June, we posted on Eversource's website our 2022 Sustainability Report, along with our standalone Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report. These publications highlight our commitment to leading environmental, social, equity and governance practices. We continue to make strong progress towards our 2030 carbon-neutrality goal with a quarter of the emissions already cut from our baseline year of 2018.
To continue progressing toward this target, we're focused on five key sources of emissions: line loss, natural gas leaks, energy use across our facilities, fuel use by our fleet, and releases of sulfur hexafluoride that is used as an insulator in electrical equipment. The many initiatives we have implemented to drive emissions down are showing results. In fact, through 2021 to 2022, we've seen a 15% overall emissions reduction. These efforts have ranged from enabling more capacity for renewables on the grid, to replacing aging, leak-prone natural gas pipes, to investing in hybrid vehicles, and procuring renewable energy for our buildings. We're also pursuing innovative solutions such as a pilot project featuring a first-of-its-kind sulfur-hexafluoride-free breaker used in our electric system. And we continue to explore solutions that will enable a decarbonized heating sector; these include our geothermal pilot, and evaluate the potential to replace natural gas with low- or zero-carbon molecules.
As many of you know, we're also expanding our emission reduction efforts through the commitment to adopt an ambitious Science-Based Target. Committing to a Science Based Target is a best practice that places us among a handful of industry leaders in the U.S., and we plan to have our targets submitted by 2024.
Turning now to our clean-energy effort, in 2022, we invested nearly $800 million in clean energy including offshore wind, battery storage, electric vehicle charging, and first-of-a-kind utility-scale Networked Geothermal Energy Pilot in Massachusetts. Although we announced our plans to divest of offshore wind assets, Eversource remains committed to supporting the development of important regional clean-energy solutions.
Slide 6 reflects the many clean energy initiatives underway in Massachusetts to enable the clean energy transition. As you can see on this slide, Massachusetts has a constructive regulatory framework that will facilitate over $2 billion of clean energy investments over the next five years. This includes approximately $200 million of FERC-approved transmission projects that would enable offshore wind generation to interconnect to our grid. We could potentially see an additional $350 million of transmission investment when Massachusetts issues its next RFP for additional offshore wind generation. Certainly, we can expect this transmission interconnection need to grow as additional offshore generation is procured for the region. We continue to emphasize the need for system investments to support increased electrification and distributed generation to help ease the current reliance on natural gas generation in the region. Here at Eversource, while we're focused on enabling clean energy transition, we're also focused on enabling an equitable transition. This means protecting communities, industries, and people that are at risk of being disadvantaged in the clean energy transition.
Now, moving to offshore wind, as you see here on Slide 7, we continue to make progress in the development of our offshore wind projects through our joint-venture with Orsted. We recently achieved some major milestones with the South Fork Wind project. Construction of the project's U.S. built onshore substation and transmission cable is complete; and the installation of the offshore substation and the subsea transmission cable were recently completed. Additionally, wind turbine pre-assembly is underway in New London, Connecticut, and installation of offshore towers will begin soon. South Fork Wind is on track to become the nation's first completed utility-scale offshore wind farm-in federal waters and will soon deliver enough clean, renewable energy to power nearly 70,000 homes.
Also, we continue to make good progress on our Revolution Wind project. As on July 17th, we've received the Environmental Impact Statement from BOEM, setting the process for our record-of-decision and construction and operations plan approvals over the next few months. In May, we announced the sale of our uncommitted lease area to Orsted for $625 million in an all-cash transaction. Last week, we've received federal approval on the lease transaction, clearing the way toward closing. We are now working on finalizing the transaction for the sale of our interest in the three development projects. We have substantially completed the due-diligence phase and commercial terms on this transaction. We are now truly near the goal line of wrapping up this deal. We are now working through the various agreements needed to complete this transaction and expect to make an announcement soon.
Moving to Slide 8, as you can see here, the expected spending and in-service dates have not changed for the three offshore wind projects. But what has changed is that our procurement costs for the three projects are now at 93%, as we are getting close to commencing construction activities on Revolution Wind. John will discuss the path-forward toward our sale of these projects, as well as some visibility on the impairment charge on the offshore wind investments.
In closing, as we continue our focus toward enabling a clean energy future, our nearly 10,000 employees and I have one goal in mind, to serve our customers well. That means making sure we understand our customers' needs, continuing to provide reliable and safe service, and making the necessary investments to deliver energy and clean water today, tomorrow, and for the years to come. We've made a commitment to make the appropriate investments to enable the transition into clean energy future. I couldn't be proud of the effort that the Eversource team performs every day and I look forward to the future with great excitement.
Thank you, again, for your time, and I will now turn the call over to John Moreira.
