Bob Blue
Chair, President and Chief Executive Officer at Dominion Energy
Thank you, David and good morning, everyone.
During the first quarter, we delivered financial results consistent with our guidance range and made meaningful progress on regulated investment programs, we decarbonized and add resiliency to our systems. We'll cover those topics in more detail, but let me begin with safety performance, and then address the status of the business review.
Our employee OSHA entry recordable rate for the first quarter was 0.21, a significant improvement relative to historical performance including record-setting results in 2020 and 2021. We have several months left in 2023 to demonstrate our ability to drive injuries toward the only acceptable outcome, which is 0, I thank my colleagues for this remarkably strong start to the year.
Now I'd like to address the business review. Our guiding commitments and priorities are unchanged and replicated identically on Slide 3. We continue to receive valuable feedback from investors, which is affirmed our focus on these principles, we will continue to be deliberate and making ourselves available for input from the company's current and prospective capital providers.
The review timeline shown on Slide 4 is also unchanged. We plan to host an Investor Day in the third quarter during which will provide an updated strategic and financial outlook, based on the results of the business review, which is still underway. We're working expeditiously but conscientiously in recognition of the vital importance of achieving an optimal result. I'm pleased with the progress we're making towards delivering a compelling repositioning of our company to create maximum long-term value for shareholders, employees, customers and other stakeholders. We have great people and great assets and I'm as excited as ever for the future of our company.
Turning now to several noteworthy developments in Virginia, our largest service area. In November, I discussed the need to ensure that near-term economic and customer bill pressures didn't preclude the full realization of the benefits of a long-term resiliency and decarbonization capital investment opportunity before us. And in February, I discussed the need for a durable regulatory construct that provides for a competitive in fair return on utility investments to attract low-cost capital in support of our customer focus programs.
New Virginia law enacted in April and effective July first comprehensively addresses both of those needs. It provides significant bill relief for our customers and supports the long-term stability of our utility. With nearly unanimous bipartisan support, the legislation provides the certainty, we need to fund and execute critical energy investments in support of the Commonwealth's robust electric demand growth long-term energy security and reliability leading decarbonization goals, an impressive economic growth.
Highlights of the law are shown on Slide 5. First, it provides meaningful rate relief for customers. Beginning July one it reduces the monthly bill for a typical residential customer by nearly $7, through the combination of certain existing riders that represent approximately $350 million of annual revenue. And it allows for the commission to approve the securitization of deferred fuel costs, which could provide up to $7 a month, and additional near-term savings. If approved fuel securitization would reduce the standalone fuel charge on customers' monthly bills by allowing the company to spread, fuel costs over a multi-year period. Taken together, these savings if approved would equate to a 10% reduction to the current typical residential customer bill and position us to be around 21% below the national average.
Second, the law simplifies the rate-making process around our base business, which now represents about a third of the EVs total rate base. Specifically, the law reinstates base rate reviews on a biennial schedule as compared to the current triennial cadence, improving the timeliness of operating expense and investment recovery. It's worth noting here, no change to the use of a forward-looking mechanism for purposes of establishing base rate revenues as part of the now biennial reviews. And it retains a modified customer sharing mechanism for base rate earnings that allows both customers and shareholders to benefit from positive financial drivers like improve cost-efficiency.
Finally, the law prescribes certain regulatory parameters for use in rate saving setting for the next few years. It establishes an authorized ROE of 9.7%, up from 9.305% currently. For purposes of the 2023 biennial review, which will determine base rates and rider returns through the next biennial period. It to undertake reasonable efforts to maintain a common equity ratio of 52.1% through 2024. And it preserves the use of the rider recovery construct. As a reminder, riders are filed and trued up annually in single issue proceedings that utilized forward-looking test periods and allow for timely recovery of construction work-in progress. The law complements precedent energy legislation, including the Virginia Clean Economy Act of 2020, the Grid Transformation and Security Act of 2018 and the reregulation Act of 2017, to create a regulated utility framework that has delivered exemplary reliability and resiliency, as well as exceptional customer value. As evidenced by customer rates that are significantly below national and regional averages as shown on Slide 6.
I believe this broadly supported bipartisan legislation strikes an appropriate balance between customer benefit, regulatory oversight and the critical need to position the company to compete for capital to support the significant investment required in Virginia for decades to come. In the words of the State House of delegates leadership, this resolution gives Dominion Energy, Virginia, the certainty and stability to make investments needed to ensure stable, reliable service, long into the future.
That stability and certainty is especially critical now as we ramp into the very substantial and growing multi-decade utility investment required to address resiliency and decarbonization public policy goals plus recently updated independent electric load projections that reflect the very robust demand growth, we're observing in Real-time across our system. I'm referring to PJMs 2023 forecast, that is shown on Slide 7 projects peak summer load growth in the Dom Zone of approximately 5% per year for the next 10 years.
To put that into perspective, the resulting peak load projected for 2033 has increased from 25.8 gigawatts as of the 2022 PJM estimates to 35.8 gigawatts as of this year's estimate an increase of nearly 40%. DEE [Phonetic] weather normal sales growth over the last 12 months was 6.1%. For full-year 2023, we expect the growth rate to moderate somewhat to around 5%. So, this isn't a hypothetical growth it's demand we're seeing and investing to serve every day. On Monday, we filed an updated integrated resource plan with the Virginia Commission that outlines a variety of paths to satisfy these growing service obligations. The plan calls for an acceleration of and long-term increase in our distribution, transmission and generation investment. We look-forward to engaging with all stakeholders in the planning process and we'll provide a refresh long-term capital investment plan as part of our third-quarter investor day.
This unique intersection of industry-leading demand growth and strong policy support for resiliency decarbonization, affordability, and economic growth, combined with the durability of the Virginia regulatory construct represents an unprecedented opportunity for our company, our customers and our shareholders. It will drive growth for many years to come, require prudent capital allocation and rely on a healthy financial foundation, which is one of the reasons we've repeatedly highlighted balance sheet improvement as a key priority of the business review.
With that, I'll turn it over to Steven to address the financial matters, before I provide additional business updates.
