Jerry Norcia
President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman at DTE Energy
Thanks, Barb, and good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. Let me start by saying that halfway through 2022, we are on track for another very successful year, and we continue to be well positioned for the future. This morning, I will highlight some of the successes we have accomplished this year, and Dave will provide a financial update and wrap things up before we take your questions. Slide four lays out the topics I will talk about this morning and all are very positive. As I said, we are on track for another successful year at DTE. And it always starts with our commitment to deliver for our team, customers, communities and investors. We continue our journey of transitioning to a clean energy future, highlighted by putting our new natural gas plant in service, on time and on budget. We have made great strides on strengthening our grid, in particular, to prepare for potential severe weather. On the financial front, we are delivering another strong year for investors.
On our first quarter call, we told you we were ahead of plan and we continue track in that way through the second quarter. We are confident that we will achieve our financial goals for the remainder of the year. In fact, we are raising our 2022 operating EPS guidance midpoint from $5.90 per share of $6. This is the second guidance increase for 2022 and provides over 8% growth from our 2021 original guidance midpoint. So we are excited about delivering another successful year in 2022. Let's move to slide five to discuss how we are delivering for all of our stakeholders. You're probably very familiar with this slide by now, which highlights the focus on our four key stakeholders. We know that with our engaged and talented team, we will continue to deliver for our customers, communities and investors. We are working hard on all of these fronts, and I am pleased to highlight some of the recognition we have received.
We continue to focus on improving the health and well-being of our team. I'm proud to say we were recently recognized for our efforts in this area by receiving the Best Employers award from the Business Group on Health for excellence in health and well-being, with an additional notice for excellence in mental health. The award was given to companies that focus on health, equity and the employee experience, and demonstrate the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion. DTE is one of only two utilities to receive this award, which shows our commitment to improve the lives of our team and their families. On the customer front, we received the ENERGY STAR Excellence in Energy Efficiency Award from the EPA and the Department of Energy, recognizing energy programs that demonstrate organization-wide energy savings and best practices. We also continue our efforts to support our communities.
DTE was recognized by Points of Light for the fifth consecutive year as one of the Civic 50. This award highlights DTE as one of the top 50 community-minded companies nation-wide and corporate citizenship. We will continue our efforts in helping to build stronger communities with the many programs we have in place. I'm glad our team gets acknowledged for the great work they are doing. Equally as important is that DTE continues its journey to deliver for our customers and to be a force for good in our communities. So what does that all mean? While I've always said that having highly engaged employees, customers who are satisfied with their service and communities that are resilient and thriving enables us to deliver distinctive value for our investors. And as I mentioned, we are raising the midpoint of our 2022 operating EPS guidance, given the strength we have seen in the first half of the year and the opportunities we have in the second half.
Dave will provide the details on the guidance in a few minutes. Let's turn to slide six. Some of you have recently heard me say that right now is one of the most exciting times in our industry. I recently told a group of new employees that they are joining our company and industry at one of the most interesting times in our history. There is so much opportunity in front of us in transforming the way we produce power, shifting generation from coal to gas and renewables, in modernizing our grid, prepare for worsening weather patterns and preparing for increased demand from emerging technologies like vehicle electrification. The level of investment in our company -- in our industry over the next five and 10 years will rival the original build-outs of power generation and the electric grid. We have made great strides in preparing for these opportunities in a number of key areas.
The Blue Water Energy Center, our new natural gas plant went into service in June. This state-of-the-art facility has an 1,100 megawatt capacity and was constructed on time and on budget. The in-service at this plant was timed with the retirement of our St. Clair and Trenton power plants. Today, less than 40% of DTE's generation mix is attributable to coal. And by 2028, after we cease coal use at our 1,000-megawatt Belle River power plant, coal will represent less than 30% of our generation mix. So we are ahead of our previous plan, well on a path toward our net zero emissions goal. Our voluntary renewables program, MIGreenPower continues to show substantial growth. In fact, we have doubled the number of customers enrolled in the program for the third year in a row. Recently, new contracts with the Ann Arbor School System and Comcast were added to the program. We have nearly 1,100 megawatts subscribed with large business customers and over 60,000 residential customers.
We are also finalizing agreements for over $1 billion of new MIGreenPower investments with additional large customers. We also continue our important main renewal work with the target of completing another 200 miles in 2022, ensuring we can continue providing safe and reliable service to our customers. At DTE Vantage, we have multiple on-site energy projects and very RNG projects coming online in the second half of the year. Additionally, we have a strong pipeline of projects that support growth in this business, including potential additional landfilled RNG conversions. DTE Electric's rate case proceedings are going well, and we are on track to file our Integrated Resource Plan in October of this year. We continue to evaluate the opportunity to exit coal use at the Monroe power plant earlier than 2040. And this filing will begin to address our opportunities on that front.
As I mentioned on our first quarter call, we have been extremely focused on further hardening our grid. And as you know, we experienced extreme weather last year. We have an aging system. We need to replace and upgrade poles, insulators and transformers. As a team, we are committed to building a flawless grid for our customers, and we need to invest to move towards that aspiration. And with the level of investment and energy inside DTE, we will get there. We continue to make progress on further improving the reliability of our system with significant investments in tree trimming. Around 70% of our outages are the result of trees, and we have a very aggressive tree trimming program. We have gone from investing $60 million in 2013 to well over $200 million this year, pushed trees away from our wires. And as we do this successfully and continue to replace and rebuild our challenged circuits, our customers are experiencing the reliability that they expect.
So we are definitely making great progress across all of our businesses in 2022 and continue to be ahead of plan. As I mentioned, we are increasing our 2022 operating EPS guidance midpoint of $6 per share, providing over 8% growth from the original guidance. Let's move to slide seven. We are planning to invest over $40 billion in our utilities over the next 10 years. At DTE Electric, we are investing over $35 billion over this time period, to support reliability by building the grid of the future while adding renewable resources. And as we plan for the cessation of coal use, we will need to invest in renewable resources, short- and long-duration storage, demand response and other dispatchable carbon-free resources. We also see the increased pace of EV adoption that is driving grid investments, support increased sales and a need for additional reliable generation. At DTE Gas, we are deploying significant capital over the next 10 years to upgrade or replace our aging infrastructure and to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This large inventory of utility investment provides the opportunity to pull capital forward into future five-year plans and positions us for sustainable long-term growth. We continue to evaluate our long-term EPS growth target as we update our five-year plan and work through various milestones in our electric rate case, while actively engaging stakeholders as it relates to our Integrated Resource Plan filing. And our total return, which continues to outpace the industry is supported by a dividend that is growing in line of our operating EPS growth.
With that, I will turn it over to Dave to provide a financial update. Dave, over to you.
