Scott Lauber
President and Chief Executive Officer at WEC Energy Group
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today as we review our results for the second quarter of 2024. Here with me today are Xia Liu, our Chief Financial Officer; and Beth Straka, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations. As you saw from our news release this morning, we reported second quarter 2024 earnings of $0.67 per share.
We're firmly on track to meet the full year 2024 guidance of $4.80 to $4.90 a share. This, of course, assumes normal weather for the balance of the year. We continue to see strong foundational growth in our regional economy. The unemployment rate in Wisconsin stands at 2.9%, continuing a long-running trend below the national average. The pipeline of economic activity is particularly strong in what we call the I-94 corridor between Milwaukee and Chicago.
For example, just last month, WestRock broke ground on a new facility at the former site of our retired power plants. WestRock is a leading company in paper and packaging solutions with 50,000 employees and 300 plants worldwide. The company called the cutting-edge facility, a super plant, stating it will be one of their largest and most advanced plants. And Microsoft is making good progress on the construction of a large data center complex in Southeast Wisconsin.
In May, Microsoft announced a broad investment package to strengthen our region as a hub for AI economic activity, innovation, and job creation. These investments include a planned $3.3 billion to be spent in cloud computing and AI infrastructure between now and the end of 2026. Microsoft has stated that it expects to bring 2,300 construction jobs to the area by 2025 and 2,000 permanent jobs over time.
These developments highlight the strength and the potential of our local economy and underscores the need for the investments in our capital plan. During the second quarter, we continued to move forward on major projects in our capital plan. It's the largest 5-year investment plan in our history totaling $23.7 billion for efficiency, sustainability and growth.
As we've discussed, the plan is based on projects that are low-risk and highly executable. At the end of May, we closed on our second option at West Riverside Energy Center for $100 million. This adds 100 megawatts of efficient combined cycle natural gas generation to our portfolio. You'll recall that last year, we discussed several filings or last quarter, we discussed several filings for major projects to support economic growth and reliability in Wisconsin.
This includes approximately 1,200 megawatts of efficient natural gas generation at our Paris and Oak Creek sites as well as two billion cubic foot liquified natural gas storage facility, and a 33-mile gas lateral to serve the Oak Creek site. In total, these projects combined represent $2.1 billion of investment. Our proposals were submitted to the Wisconsin Commission in April, and we expect the decision in approximately a year. Also under review, we filed an application in February to purchase a 90% ownership interest in high-noon solar energy center in Southern Wisconsin.
With an expected investment of approximately $580 million, the facility is expected to provide 300 megawatts of solar generation. We have asked the commission to make a decision before the end of the year. As a reminder, we expect these investments to earn AFUDC during the construction period after commission approval. And in our WEC Infrastructure segment, the Delilah I Solar is now expected to go into service at the end of the year, delayed from June due to a weather event.
We plan to invest approximately $460 million for a 90% ownership interest in this project in Northeast Texas, and we still expect our Maple Flats Solar Project to be in service by the end of the year. As you recall, we're investing an additional $560 million this year in our Infrastructure segment. We reallocated away from our operations in Illinois, a total of $800 million in our 5-year capital plan.
Overall, our plan fully supports our long-term earnings growth rate which we project to be in the 6.5% to 7% range on a compound average annual basis. We're also on schedule with the development of our next five-year plan. And as usual, we expect to share the details with you in the fall. Now I have a few updates on the regulatory front. In Wisconsin, we filed new rate reviews for test year 2025 and 2026 on April 12.
Our request focused on addressing three major areas of need: first, improving reliability and reducing outages from increased storm activity; second, supporting Wisconsin's economic growth and job creation through investments in new generation and distribution projects; and lastly, continue the transition from coal generation to renewables and natural gas.
Commission staff and intervener testimony is scheduled for August 21, we expect the decision by the end of the year with new rates effective January 1, 2025. We have smaller rate reviews and progress at Michigan Gas Utilities and Upper Michigan Energy Resources. We also expect decisions on these reviews by the end of the year. And in Illinois, we've been engaged in three dockets. The Illinois Commerce Commission issued its decision on the first of these, a limited rehearing of the commission's rate order for Peoples Gas at the end of May.
The commission had agreed to reconsider our request to restore $145 million for Safety Modernization program in 2024. This is mostly related to emergency work, unfinished projects, and work driven by public entities like the city of Chicago. The commission granted $28.5 billion sic $28.5 million concentrating on what they deemed emergency work. We have appealed this decision to the Illinois Appellate Court along with other items in the rate order, including the commission's previous disallowance of investments in new service centers.
We are also actively involved in two remaining dockets. One is the review of the Safety Modernization program, staff and intervener rebuttal testimony are expected by August 21, but the commission's decision expected in the first quarter of 2025. The other docket is the evaluation of the future of natural gas in Illinois, which is expected to conclude in about a year.
Of course, we'll keep you updated on any further developments. Across our business, we continue to make good progress towards our goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In May, we retired units five and six at our Oak Creek power plant. Together, those made up over 500 megawatts of coal-fired generation. Including these units since 2018, we've retired nearly 2,500 megawatts of older fossil fuel generation.
Finally, a quick reminder about the dividend. We continue to target a payout ratio of 65% to 70% of earnings. We're tracking in that range now, and expect the dividend growth will continue to be in line with the growth of our earnings per share. Now I'll turn it to Xia to provide you more details on our financial results and our guidance for the third quarter.
