John Ketchum
President and Chief Executive Officer at NextEra Energy
Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. NextEra Energy had strong operational and financial performance in 2024, delivering full-year adjusted earnings per share of $3.43, up over 8% from 2023, once again at the high-end of our adjusted EPS expectations range. Since 2021, we have delivered compound annual growth and adjusted EPS of over 10%, which is the highest among all top-10 power companies.
In fact, if you looked over the last five, 10, 15 and 20 years, you will see the same absolute and relative performance. Our consistent financial outperformance is due first and foremost to the efforts and execution by our team. I couldn't be more proud of how our team has continued to deliver, and I firmly believe that our track-record of execution positions us to lead the build-out of energy infrastructure across the country in the coming years. NextEra Energy offers a unique value proposition with two strong businesses that we believe are strategically well-positioned to meet the growing needs of our customers with outstanding prospects for future growth.
FPL is the largest electric utility in the US and Energy Resources is the world's leader in renewables and storage. Together, we operate the largest natural gas fire generation fleet in the country, are one of the largest nuclear operators in the US and are widely viewed as an industry-leader in transmission. We are one of the top-five infrastructure investors in the United States and we have invested more than $150 billion in our nation's energy infrastructure over the last decade, building everything from nuclear upgrades, natural gas pipelines and natural gas fire generation to battery storage and renewables.
Over the next four years alone, we plan to invest roughly $120 billion across the country, which would allow us to grow our combined fleet to roughly 121 gigawatts. FPL and Energy Resources individually have executed well, delivering value for our customers and shareholders. We have one of the sector's strongest balance sheets and between the two companies we placed into service approximately 8.7 gigawatts of new renewables and storage projects in 2024. Let me start by giving you an update on each of our businesses and then provide you with some comments on the state of our industry.
FPL continued to deliver what we believe is the best customer value proposition in one of the fastest-growing states in the US. As we approach our 100-year anniversary at FPL, our vision remains the same to continue making smart capital investments for the benefit of our customers, be an industry-leader on costs and deliver high-reliability and outstanding customer service, while keeping bills as low as possible for our customers. In 2024, we continue to see the fruits of that smart capital spend. For nearly two decades, FPL has invested in-building a stronger, smarter and more storm-resilient grid. The performance of our system demonstrates that FPL's hardening, undergrounding, automation and smart grid investments are providing significant benefits to our customers.
Our investments in smart grid technology-enabled us to avoid more than 2.7 million outages in 2024, and those investments paid-off as our team responded exceptionally well in response to Hurricanes Debbie, Helane and Milton. We are able to deliver this performance and keep our bills 40% below the national average because of our focus on capital and operating efficiency and innovation. FPL continued to make smart capital investments in low-cost solar generation and battery storage, further reducing our overall fuel cost. During the year, we placed into service more than 2.2 gigawatts of new cost-effective solar and we expect to add more than 15 gigawatts by 2033.
When combined with generation modernizations, these additions have saved customers more than $16 billion since 2001. We also continue to focus on running the business more efficiently. In 2024, we improved upon our best-in-class non-fuel O&M cost per customer, which was already 70% better than the industry's national average, saving customers over $3 billion per year versus an average performing utility. Innovation has been one of the keys to our operating efficiency. FPL is the only utility in the nation to remotely operate its fossil fleet.
Our fleet control center is one of the world's largest monitoring and diagnostic centers and the first-in the industry to remotely operate a more than 20 gigawatt natural gas combined-cycle fleet from a single-location, providing real-time troubleshooting with engineering, maintenance and operation support and delivering world-class predictive analytics and diagnostics. This is just one example of the innovative efforts by FPL to reduce costs for our customers while continuing to provide exceptional service. Late last year, FPL filed a test year letter with the Florida Public Service Commission to initiate a rate proceeding for new rates beginning in January 2026.
The stability of multi-year rate plans has allowed FPL to focus on efficiency in the business, which is critical to keeping customer bills as low as possible and has enabled FPL to maintain a strong balance sheet, which allows for consistent access to the capital markets. We look-forward to the opportunity to showcase our long-term track-record of providing low bills and high-reliability for Floridians and our plans to build an even more resilient energy future for Florida. We believe FPL is strategically well-positioned as Florida remains one of the fastest-growing states in the US with a population growth rate that is expected to grow 60% more than the national average by 2030.
We plan to meet Florida's long-term growth outlook with investments in generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure, which we believe will further enhance our best-in-class customer value proposition. Energy Resources had another record year of new renewables and storage origination, adding more than 12 gigawatts to our backlog, which includes approximately 3.3 gigawatts since our last call, a sign of the momentum of demand for new-generation in renewables and storage in particular. These additions to our backlog increased 30% from the nine gigawatts we originated in 2023, our second-best year ever.
To put that into context, 12 gigawatts is the size of a large utility in the US. Energy Resources also had a record year in solar origination and a record year in battery storage origination, again demonstrating the strong demand for renewables and storage because they are low-cost and can be deployed now. Focusing for a moment on battery storage, we have deployed more than 3.4 gigawatts in total and currently have more than 7.2 gigawatts in our backlog. Our extensive portfolio of existing operating sites, which have excess transmission capacity and are nearly 30 gigawatts of standalone storage interconnection queue positions means we can dramatically speed-up our deployments, a distinct competitive advantage that no one else in this industry has.
We also continue to be a leader in serving data center customers with our total renewables portfolio, including assets in operation and in backlog at 8.3 gigawatts. However, one point that I believe is being overlooked is that power demand is everywhere across all sectors and increasingly across utilities, municipalities and electric cooperatives as our 12 gigawatt year of backlog additions reflects. And as demand for power increases across all customer classes as we advance our domestic economic agenda so does the potential price of power unless we bring new-generation online quickly to meet that demand. Customers of all types are looking for low-cost ways to meet their growing power needs while reducing their exposure to higher-power prices over-time. Given the current power demand environment, it is more important than ever to unleash all forms of electric generation, starting with renewables, which are ready now, as I will discuss more in a minute.
There is no better example of this than our own portfolio. We have originated more than three gigawatts in three of the last five quarters and assuming we achieve the midpoint of our development expectations range, Energy Resources will be operating a roughly 75 gigawatt renewables portfolio by the end of 2027, which would be larger than the installed renewables capacity of all but seven countries. In 2024, we continue to demonstrate our leadership as a supplier of choice for buyers of new-generation.
We announced two framework agreements with two Fortune 50 companies that have the potential to develop renewables and storage projects totaling up to 10.5 gigawatts between now and 2030, as well as a joint development agreement with Energy. When combined, our announced framework agreements total up to a potential 15 gigawatts, demonstrating our unique position in the market and our customers' confidence in our ability to help meet the nation's need for power. And we are not sitting still as we think about our value proposition for our customers.
We are constantly looking to make sure we have the most comprehensive solution set. That is why today, we are pleased to announce a framework agreement with GE Vernova, where we will partner to build natural gas power generation solutions. This agreement has the potential to support multiple gigawatts for data centers, the reshoring of manufacturing and the electrification of industry as well as serve investor-owned utilities, municipalities, cooperatives and commercial and industrial customers. Nobody has built more gas-fired generation over the last decade than NextEra Energy and nobody has sold more gas turbines than GE Vernova.
This collaboration brings together the nation's leading operator of natural gas-fired generation and NextEra Energy and the world's leader in natural gas and electrification technology and GE Vernova to jointly develop opportunities that we believe will enable significantly more renewables to meet growing power demand by pairing low-cost renewables for energy with gas fire generation for capacity. Over the next four years, the company's plan to collaborate to identify key locations on the energy grid that would benefit from new-generation.
GE Vernova will incorporate its world-class natural gas generation technologies and critical electric -- electrification solutions, while leveraging its financial service capabilities. NextEra Energy expects to provide customers with integrated renewable storage and gas-fired solutions for large loads, something we can uniquely deliver with our scale, experience, technology and unmatched development skills. This framework agreement is just another example of why we believe Energy Resources has the most comprehensive power generation business in the world and is better-positioned than ever to capitalize on long-term growth prospects. Before I turn it over to Brian, I want to take a moment to make some comments regarding the industry as we look to the years ahead. The need to add to the country's power infrastructure is no longer in doubt. Our industry's mandate is to deliver new-generation and capacity solutions at the lowest-cost possible in order for the US to achieve the new administration's energy dominance agenda. As a leading American energy producer, this is an agenda that we support and believe we are well-positioned to deliver on. At NextEra Energy, we know all forms of energy will be required to meet that mandate.
If we don't build new-generation to keep up with increasing demand for electricity, power prices are going to go up or perhaps worse, new technology or manufacturing load won't be able to connect to the grid, which would slow economic growth and we can miss opportunities to further our leadership in AI. Renewables and storage are ready now to meet that demand and will help lower-power prices. Gas fire generation is moving forward, but won't be available at-scale until 2030 and then only in certain pockets of the US. In addition, gas-fired generation is more expensive than it's been with costs having more than doubled over the last five years due to the limited supply of gas turbines, a constrained supply-chain and much higher EPC costs.
Nuclear continues to be a much longer-term option in our opinion, due to first of a kind risks and uncertainty with near-term opportunities centered on recommissioning and upgrade projects. Nuclear plants across the country are already serving existing demand and there are only a few nuclear plants that could be recommissioned in the near-term in an economic way. We are continuing to make progress in evaluating the recommissioning of our Dwayne Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa.
Recently, we filed notice with the Nuclear regulatory commission to request a licensing change, an important first step-in establishing the regulatory pathway to restore the facility's operating license and potentially restart plant operations as early as the end of 2028. While this is just one part of our broader efforts with regulators, government officials, potential customers and other stakeholders, we are encouraged by the positive responses we have received so-far from all parties involved. We also continue to evaluate alternatives such as SMRs. However, due to the risks and uncertainty, the practical reality is we are unlikely to add multiple gigawatts of new nuclear to the grid over the next decade.
That means we need renewables and storage to meet that -- to meet demand that is here today. And as we move towards the next decade, we can supplement renewables and storage with natural gas fire generation and to a more limited extent, nuclear given the time it will take to develop and build. We know this because we have experience across the entire energy value chain. Our mission is to provide our customers with the lowest-cost, most reliable energy no matter where they are located. We've been doing it for decades in Florida and across the country and are positioned to keep doing it for years to come.
Our scale and experience tells us that all forms of power generation and capacity will be needed as the US tries to keep up with demand. And that same scale and experience also tells us that renewables and storage should continue to be a critical source of new energy and capacity across the country because they are lowest-cost and can be deployed now. With that, let me turn it over to Brian, who will review the 2024 results in more detail.
