John M. Moreira
Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer and Executive Vice President at Eversource Energy
Thank you, Joe, and good morning, everyone. This morning, I will review our earnings results for the third quarter of 2022, discuss recent regulatory developments and review our finance and activity. I will start with slide five. Our GAAP earnings were $1 per share in the third quarter of 2022 compared with earnings of $0.82 in the third quarter of 2021. Third quarter results in 2021 included a charge of $0.19 per share to reflect last year's settlement agreement that resolved a number of regulatory issues at Connecticut Light and Power. Both years included the impact of $0.01 per share of charges related to transaction and transition costs associated with the former Columbia Gas asset acquisition.
Excluding these charges, we earned $1.01 per share in the third quarter of 2022 compared with earnings of $1.02 per share in the third quarter of 2021. For the first nine months of 2022, we earned $3.13 per share on a GAAP basis compared with earnings of $2.65 per share in the first nine months of 2021. Excluding charges related to transaction and transition and the CL&P settlement charges that we recorded last year. We earned $3.17 per share in the first nine months of 2022 compared with earnings of $2.95 per share in the first nine months of 2021. Looking at additional details on the third quarter earnings by segment, starting with our electric transmission segment, which earned $0.44 per share in the third quarter of 2022 compared with earnings of $0.40 per share in the third quarter of 2021.
Improved results were driven by a large level of higher investments in our transmission facilities. Moving on to our electric distribution segment, which earned $0.65 per share in the third quarter of 2022 compared with earnings of $0.62 per share in the third quarter of 2021. Again, excluding the settlement charges I previously talked about. The improved earnings were driven largely by higher revenues and lower pension costs, partially offset by higher O&M, property taxes and depreciation expense.
Our natural gas distribution segment lost $0.07 per share in the third quarter of 2022 compared with a loss of $0.06 per share in the third quarter of 2021. The increased losses were due to a higher nontrack O&M, property taxes, depreciation and interest costs, which was partly offset by higher revenues and lower pension costs, primarily at Yankee Gas. Our water segment earned $0.05 per share in the third quarter of 2022, the same as the third quarter of 2021. Eversource parent and other companies lost $0.06 per share in the third quarter of 2022 compared with earnings of $0.01 per share in the third quarter of 2021, excluding the transaction and transition costs that I mentioned earlier.
The decline was due largely to two factors: higher interest expense, primarily related to new parent company issuances, which lowered the results by $0.04 per share; higher income tax expense of about $0.03 per share, which was specific to the third quarter results as this is when we finalize our annual corporate income tax returns. Despite the headwind from higher interest costs, we continue to project our full year 2022 earnings of between $4.04 and $4.14 per share, excluding transaction and transition costs that I spoke about earlier. Turning to the longer term. As you saw in our news release, and as you can see on slide six, we are reaffirming our long-term EPS growth rate in the upper half of 5% to 7% range through 2026.
We also reaffirm our $18 billion five-year regulated capital program that we discussed during our February earnings call, including our $3.9 billion regulated capital investment projection for this year. We will provide you with an updated five-year forecast when we report our year-end results in February. As we mentioned during prior earnings calls, there continues to be an even increasing need for Eversource to make capital investments in our transmission and distribution systems that will enable our region to achieve its aggressive clean energy targets more rapidly.
As a result of this strong public policy imperative and our ongoing focus on improving our systems to address agent infrastructure, we estimate that at least $3 billion of additional investments above our current $18 billion capital forecast will be required through 2026. In July, we discussed the need to invest up to $500 million in our transmission system on Cape Cod to enable approximately 2,000 megawatts of offshore wind generation to be connected into the New England grid.
We also noted that ongoing regulatory reviews of our advanced meter infrastructure proposals. At this time, regulators in both Connecticut and in Massachusetts are actively working through dockets, which decisions are expected later this year in Massachusetts and either at year-end or early next year in Connecticut. Moving to slide seven. We want to highlight some new infrastructure needs to enable clean energy distribution resources to connect to our grid.
Our proposals are currently before the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities. Massachusetts has very ambitious carbon reduction goals, an 85% reduction by 2050, and two cornerstones of efforts to achieve those reductions are embedding -- enabling offshore wind and solar generation. Joe discussed the offshore wind earlier, now on the solar front, a growing number of solar distributed energy resources are awaiting connection to the grid.
In certain areas of our state, particularly in Southeastern Massachusetts, we are at a standstill in connecting new solar resources because there is a very little available grid capacity. Under the current existing model, the developer whose project is the last draw triggering the need for a significant upgrade to infrastructure pays the full cost of resolving this capacity issue of bottleneck. When large T&D equipment limits are reached, the cost to resolve such bottleneck could become cost prohibitive for these developers. So the project will not likely move forward nor will other projects behind it, and thereby stall in the interconnection queue. That has created a backlog of construction of about 350 megawatts of distributed solar generation in the state, a figure that is growing.
The map on slide seven shows the six areas of Massachusetts with the greatest bottleneck. We have proposed a resolution whereby we would build out the system in advance, and recover some of the costs from solar developers as they tie their projects into the grid. slide nine shows the upgrades would be a combination of transmission and distribution infrastructure needs. Together, they would total about $900 million under our proposal. Developers would pick up about 1/3 of those costs over time and the associated rate base would be adjusted accordingly. A DPU decision on the first of the six projects is expected later this year, with decisions on the remaining five projects to follow in 2023. We view our proposal as an innovative solution to a vaccine issue that has slowed the build-out of third-party solar expansion in Massachusetts.
On the regulatory side, we are nearing the end of one general rate review with hearings on another one about to commence. A summary of these two cases can be found on slide 10. Briefing in the NSTAR Electric rate review concluded late September, and a decision is expected on December 1, with new rates going into effect January 1, 2023. We feel very good about the strength of our case as well as our proposals to enable the Commonwealth's clean energy goals. Moving to our new rate review. On August 29, Aquarion Water connected -- of Connecticut filed its first rate review application in about 10 years. Key elements of the three-year plan are shown on this slide. Aquarion Connecticut's case is a result of significant infrastructure, investments made over the past several years to enhance the water service reliability for its customers.
Evidentiary hearings will start in about three weeks, and a final decision we expect in mid-March. Turning to recent financings. We completed our fourth green bond issuance at NSTAR Electric in September, selling $400 million of 30-year notes at 4.95%. That issuance helped pay off a similar size issuance that matured in mid-October. With that issuance now behind us, we have completed our long-term debt issuance program for the year.
In terms of equity issuances, as you can see on slide 11, we have now issued about 2.2 million shares through our at-the-market program at a weighted average price of $92.31. Through October, we also have issued approximately 810,000 shares of treasury stock this year to fund our dividend reinvestment and employee equity plans. The impact of those issuances reduced EPS by approximately $0.01 per share in the quarter. Finally, in terms of credit metrics, as you will see shortly, when we file our 10-Q, our cash flows from operations totaled $1.7 billion in the first nine months of 2022 compared with $1.5 billion in the first nine months of 2021.
The improvement was primarily -- this improvement was primarily driven by higher net income, higher depreciation and amortization and lower pension plan contributions since our plan is essentially fully funded as of the end of 2021. Thank you very much for joining us this morning, and we look forward to seeing many of those on the call at our Annual EEI Finance Conference in Florida later this month.
I will now turn the call back over to Jeff for Q&A.