Good morning, and welcome to the Southern Company 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Tom Fanny, the Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Southern Company. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Leslie. Welcome, stockholders and guests, to our 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. We're hosting this meeting online again for the second year in a row to help ensure the safety of our employees, stockholders and other meeting attendees.
We're pleased that you've joined us for today's virtual meeting. We had hoped to return to our customary in-person format this year, but we felt that the virtual format was still the most prudent choice in our current environment.
We're cautiously optimistic that we'll see many of you in person next year. But in the meantime, we trust that you will remain safe and continue to observe the latest guidance from the CDC and your local civic and health authorities. If you've not done so already, we encourage you to get vaccinated at your earliest opportunity. And I guarantee you, in person next year, should we have the fortunate circumstance of being -- meeting again, we will have a wonderful time together.
In the unlikely event that today's meeting cannot be completed due to technical difficulties, please check the Investor page of our website for information about reconvening the meeting. We also refer you to the agenda and rules of conduct for today's meeting. They are posted on the virtual meeting web portal at the bottom of your screen.
The order of the meeting, as noted in the agenda will be as follows. We will first conduct the formal business portion of the meeting in which we will introduce the director nominees, present the items being voted on today and provide preliminary voting results. I will then provide a business update followed by a stockholder question-and-answer period to conclude our time together. Our intent for this meeting is to provide the same level of transparency and accountability that our stockholders would experience at an in-person meeting, including answering all stockholder questions. [Operator Instructions]
We will now move to the formal business portion of the meeting. The meeting is called to order and the polls are open. Most stockholders voted in advance of the meeting. If you have not already voted, you may submit your vote now through the Vote Here button on your screen. Voting will close at the end of the presentation of the items under consideration.
All of our nominees for director are participating remotely in today's virtual annual meeting. Deloitte & Touche has been appointed by the Audit Committee as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2021. John Black and Tom Eichelberger of Deloitte & Touche are participating remotely in today's meeting. We offer them the opportunity to make a statement, and they advised me in advance of this meeting that they do not wish to make a statement.
The Board has appointed Broadridge Financial Solutions to serve as independent inspector of elections for today's meeting. Belinda Massafra, on behalf of Broadridge, is participating in today's meeting as the independent inspector.
Myra Bierria, Corporate Secretary of the company, has confirmed that approximately 882 million shares, representing approximately 83% of the issued and outstanding common stock on March 29, the record date for this meeting, are represented in person or by proxy at the meeting. We have a quorum necessary to conduct business.
There are 5 items that we are voting on today. The first item is the election of 13 directors. I will introduce the individuals who, along with me, have been nominated for election to the Southern Company Board of Directors: Janaki Akella, Digital transformation leader of Google; Juanita Powell Baranco, Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of Baranco Automotive Group; Hal Clark, retired senior adviser of Evercore; Tony Earley, retired Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Pacific Gas and Electric Company; David Grain, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Grain Management; Colette Honorable, partner at Reed Smith LLP; Don James, retired Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Vulcan Materials Company; Johnny Johns, retired Chairman of DLI North America; Dale Klein, Associate Vice Chancellor of Research of the University of Texas System and former Commissioner and Chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Ernie Moniz, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems Emeritus, Special Adviser to the MIT President and former U.S. Secretary of Energy; Bill Smith, Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer of Capital City Bank Group; and Jenner Wood, retired Corporate Executive Vice President, Wholesale Banking of SunTrust Banks.
Steve Specker and Jon Boscia are both retiring from our Board of Directors. Their retirements are effective as of the conclusion of this meeting. Steve has served on our Board for over 10 years and has served as our lead independent director for the past 3 years. He has also served as Chair of the Operating, Environmental and Safety Committee and as a member of the Compensation and Management Succession Committee and the Nominating, Corporate Governance and Corporate Responsibility Committees.
Jon has served on our Board for over 13 years. He has chaired the Nominating, Governance and Corporate Responsibility Committee and the Audit Committee, and he has also served as a member of the Operating, Environmental and Safety Committee. Much of the success that I will discuss later today can be credited to their thoughtful leadership and service on our Board. I want to sincerely thank Steve and Jon for the commitment, leadership and expertise that they have provided to Southern Company. We are grateful and honored that they've remain friends and invaluable resources to us.
The second item is an advisory vote on executive officer compensation, also often called a Say On Pay. The third item is the approval of the 2021 equity and incentive compensation plan. The fourth item is the ratification of the appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2021.
The fifth item is the approval of an amendment to the restated certificate of incorporation to reduce the supermajority vote requirement to a majority vote. We have finished the presentation of the 5 items up for vote at today's meeting, and the polls are now closed. And I understand that Broadridge is going to disable voting at this point.
So now I will provide a preliminary voting report that reflects the votes submitted prior to this meeting. For item 1, all 13 nominees for director have been elected with each director receiving between 92% and 99% of votes in favor. For item 2, the Say on Pay vote has been approved, receiving 95% of votes in favor.
For item 3, the 2021 equity and incentive compensation plan has been approved, receiving 96% of votes in favor. For item 4, the appointment of Deloitte & Touche as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2021 has been ratified, receiving 99% of votes in favor.
And finally, for item 5, the amendment to the restated certificate of incorporation to reduce the super majority vote requirement to a majority vote has not been approved, receiving 63% of the issued and outstanding shares in favor. Now to be clear, the Board of Directors supports this proposal. The shares that were voted were overwhelmingly positive, 98% for the amendment. But not enough votes were cast on this item to reach the requirement of 66 and 2/3 percent of the issued and outstanding shares required to amend our certificate of incorporation.
The shares represented by votes submitted during this meeting will be included in the final voting report, which will be filed with the SEC in the next few days. With that, the formal business portion of the 2021 Annual Meeting of stockholders is hereby adjourned. Now I'd like to offer some comments on the state of our company, after which, we'll have our fun stockholder question-and-answer period.
But before I begin, let me remind you that I will make forward-looking statements today in addition to providing historical information. Said plainly, various important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in these forward-looking statements, including those discussed in our Form 10-K, 10-Qs and subsequent filings.
So now let's turn to the CEO update. Across the Southern Company system, we worked hard to serve our customers, communities and each other over the past year. In the face of enormous challenges, we never stopped serving our 9 million customers every day, either on site, the field or while working remotely. During these unprecedented times, our employees kept the energy flowing and continued building the future of energy while maintaining the highest safety and health standards.
We took swift action and employed new work practices to safeguard our employees, the communities we serve and our customers. Over the past year, our business demonstrated resilience, achieved remarkable customer satisfaction, progressed towards a net zero future, formalized our commitment to racial equity and delivered a historic response to a sizable storm season, all the while upholding our values of safety first, unquestionable trust, superior performance and total commitment. As shareholders, in my opinion, you should be very proud of the performance of our nearly 28,000 employees during this most challenging of years.
Recently, the Board of Directors approved an $0.08 annual dividend increase. Southern Company has now raised its annual dividend for 20 consecutive years. For more than 70 years, we have maintained or increased our annual dividend. Our objective is to provide superior risk-adjusted total shareholder return with a high degree of financial integrity and strong investment-grade ratings.
We also seek strong sustainable returns in our invested capital and regular, predictable and sustainable earnings per share and dividend growth, supported by premier state-regulated utilities and energy infrastructure under long-term contracts. As so many of you know, the total shareholder return for those who buy and hold an investment like Southern Company, taking advantage of the compound interest opportunity afforded by reinvesting those dividends, increase the value of the investment by more than 2/3 and expanding the time line to a 20-year horizon. Southern Company has outperformed the Philadelphia Utility Index and the S&P 500, making Southern Company a premier long-term investment during this period.
And beyond performance, we seek to create value. As I often note, value is a function of the risk and return relationship in any undertaking in business. Over the long term, Southern Company has consistently performed well by having one of the lowest levels of volatility in the entire S&P 500 index.
And moreover, we have managed our portfolio of assets incredibly well, including improving our business mix and balance sheet through such thoughtful acquisitions and divestitures while maintaining that low level of volatility. And we've done this during some pretty stressful times in America and very complex undertakings over the last 10 years at Southern Company. The combination of our share price appreciation and lower risk profile creates real value. Once again, we rank among the best value creators among all companies in America.
Turning now to COVID-19. Our focus during the pandemic has always been and remains keeping our employees and communities healthy and safe while sustaining our essential business operations. For those employees who could work remotely, we effectively transitioned to a remote posture in March 2020. For employees required in the field, we established protocols and procured the supplies and materials they needed to safeguard both themselves and our customers.
In addition to physical health, we prioritized the emotional and financial health of our employees and their families by expanding benefit offerings. As I'll discuss in greater detail below, as co-owner and the operator of Georgia Power's Vogtle 3 and 4 expansion project, the largest jobs producing construction project in the state of Georgia and one of the largest construction sites in the country, the project team has been able to remain working amidst the pandemic due to several precautionary measures that were put in place to preserve the health of the workers.
We opened an on-site medical clinic accessible to all personnel. The clinic is staffed with medical professionals who can administer tests for many illnesses, including COVID-19, and it currently is administering vaccines. The free on-site services provided workers convenient medical solutions and quick care. The fact that the construction site has remained active and productive and continues achieving milestones is a remarkable testament to everyone on the project.
Not only did we care for our own, early on, we recognized the difficulties the health crisis was creating for segments of our customer base. Our state-regulated subsidiaries took action and worked with regulators to temporarily suspend late payment fees and service disconnections for customers during the most challenging times. We have also worked diligently to enroll customers in special payment plans, alternate billing options and financial assistance programs to avoid the disruption of service.
Overall, I continue to be proud of the dedication, determination and thoughtfulness our employees have displayed on behalf of our customers, neighbors and communities. As community health factors and vaccination rates continue to improve, we are taking a responsible, measured and flexible approach to workplace entry. As we anticipate a transition to a post-COVID workplace later this year, we are examining the lessons learned from this experience in order to capture the long-term opportunities to improve service, enhance our work environment and drive maximum benefit for our customers and employees.
Now while contending with the pandemic, we continued to prioritize operational performance, which has been exceptional. The 2020 hurricane season was record-breaking, producing 30 named storms. The teams that are operating companies in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi quickly and safely restored electricity of millions of customers within our service territory and supported peer utilities and restoration efforts across the eastern half of the country.
Our natural gas companies likewise responded to thousands of repair calls quickly and safely in the wake of severe weather. They all did an outstanding job implementing measures based on guidelines from the CDC and others to help workers and customers stay safe and healthy while quickly restoring service.
Let's turn now to an update on the progress at Vogtle Units 3 and 4, home of the first new nuclear units being built in the United States in more than 30 years. The carbon-free generation project continues on the path towards the start-up and operation of Unit 3 and the completion of construction and continuation of testing on unit 4.
I want to highlight our commitment to the safety of our workforce on-site and the surrounding community. We continue to prioritize safety and quality. And as the operator of Vogtle 3 and 4, we are working to confirm that our safety and quality standards are met prior to significant testing and operations activities. We will not sacrifice that goal to meet schedule or milestone dates.
Vogtle Unit 3 reached many major milestones in 2020. The site is currently undertaking the last major test for Unit 3, hot functional testing, ahead of initial fuel load. Unit 3 hot functional testing began on April 25, marking a significant step towards the operation of Unit 3 and ultimately providing customers with a reliable carbon-free energy resource for the next 60 to 80 years.
Hot functional testing places the plant systems into normal operating conditions and demonstrates the integrated operation of the primary cooling system and steam supply system at design temperature and pressure. We took additional time for construction remediation work to confirm installed commodities were aligned with our quality standards and engineering requirements before commencing testing activities.
Over the past 4 weeks, as hot functional testing has progressed and as anyone would expect during significant testing activity, the site has worked through numerous start-up and operational type items, including refinements to control system logic and plant chemistry. The types of findings were addressed during testing are not at all unexpected and are related to operating systems together with temperature for the first time. We will take the time to get it right. And taking that into account, we expect the hot functional test sequence may take a few weeks longer than our original plan.
Accordingly, our current site work plan indicates a January completion date for Unit 3. While there is some flexibility in our schedule that could accelerate this timing, considering the scope of work remaining prior to fuel load, a completion date for Unit 3 during the first quarter of 2022 is expected.
Unit 4 continues to work at an aggressive site work plan focused on maintaining margin to the regulatory approved in-service date of November 2022. We continue to manage through an unprecedented global pandemic that impacted our time line by an estimated 3 to 4 months. With Unit 3 hot functional testing underway and Unit 4 construction ongoing, our progress on both units is evident.
The project team continues to show exceptional adaptability and commitment, and we will continue to prioritize safety and quality over schedule. These priorities help to ensure that customers will be served by a reliable, carbon-free energy resource for the next 60 to 80 years.
In 2007, just a few years before I became CEO, nearly 70% of our annual energy supply came from coal resources and our percentage of solar and wind renewable resources was almost 0. So over the course of my tenure, working closely with our regulators, we have significantly transformed Southern Company systems electricity generation mix.
Since 2007, we have retired or converted 56 coal units, representing 9,600 megawatts of generating capacity. Across our state-regulated utilities in Southern Power, we now have more than 18,000 megawatts of carbon-free resources currently operating, approved or under construction.
Southern Company has 2 primary goals related to our greenhouse gas emissions. Our long-term goal is to achieve net 0 emissions across our gas and electric operations by 2050. We are also working constructively with our partners and government and other stakeholders to potentially accelerate this time frame as policy evolves.
Our interim goal was to achieve a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. We met our 2030 goal in 2020, a decade before our original goal was put in place, with greenhouse gas emissions down by 52% compared to 2007 levels now certainly, 2020 was an unusual year, and we may see emissions bounce around that 50% level. But we believe we'll be sustainably above a 50% reduction in the 2023 to 2025 time frame.
Notably, we have established both our 2030 and 2050 greenhouse gas reduction goals in the absence of any state or federal mandates. Rather, we pursue these goals because they are good for the customers and communities we are privileged to serve. Lowering carbon emissions in ways that make technical and economic sense for our customers is a key element of our current and long-term business strategy.
Our approach to reducing carbon emissions includes adhering to 3 pillars: one, pursuing a diverse energy resource portfolio that includes low-carbon and carbon-free resources, negative carbon solutions and energy efficiency resources; two, continuing our industry-leading research and development efforts, focusing on innovative solutions and breakthrough technologies; three, constructively and transparently engaging with policymakers, regulators, investors, stakeholders, customers and communities to support outcomes that lead to a net zero future.
Southern Company's success in decarbonizing our system depends on supportive and constructive regulation and public policy. We have long been a leader in the advancement of ideas and positions in the private and public arenas that are beneficial to our customers, communities and employees.
In our continued active and constructive engagement with government officials, investors and a wide variety of public and private stakeholders, we will be fixed on the idea of yes-and. Yes, we support decarbonization, we acknowledge the challenges we face and we are committed to finding the right solution.
Importantly, our engagement and advocacy has evolved over the past decade to better align with our clean energy goals. Over the past 12 months, Southern Company has joined as a founding member of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Net Zero Business Alliance, the Zero Emission Transportation Association and the Electric Highway Coalition. We also joined the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, the American Clean Power Association and Resources for the Future.
We are constantly reviewing the organizations we choose to be involved with and have terminated relationships such as -- we did not renew our membership in the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, with those groups that we determine no longer support our overall business strategy. While we are aggressively advocating for effective policies that could help our industry decarbonize quickly and affordably, we also remain an industry leader in research and development.
We are working on solutions that can help foster the change on a massive scale required to meet our goal in time. To tackle our interrelated climate, energy and affordability challenges, America must rediscover the moonshot ambition and the collective sense of urgency that allowed us to put a man on the moon in less than 10 years. I am proud of our continued engagement in the work planning, transitioning and operating our system to meet our decarbonization goals.
The significant progress we have made in reducing emissions and developing strategies to prepare us for the future have occurred under the guidance and oversight of our competent and engaged Board of Directors and a committed management team. Together, we are keenly focused on the planning and execution required to meet our greenhouse gas reduction goal. I remain confident that this combination of a portfolio approach, industry-leading research and development and constructive engagement and strong governance will continue to support outcomes that lead us to a net zero future.
Let's turn now to our efforts on racial equity. In 2020, the killings of George Floyd and far too many other Black Americans awakened a growing recognition of the cumulative and compounded effects of systemic racial barriers and bias across institutions and society. We are seeing that the business community, not the government, will be the lead change effort for this movement. And I will do everything in my ability to have Southern Company and all of its subsidiaries viewed as role models among the private entities forging change.
It is my commitment that we will put in the hard work necessary to help ensure sustained racial equality and inclusivity for people of color at Southern Company and within the communities we serve. I don't want our work to be reactive, a one-off event or some short-term episode. We must fully institutionalize our commitment and actions and our efforts to prevent racism and help make them an enduring reflection of our values.
Some of the actions that Southern Company has taken along our racial equity journey include joining forces with Apple to unveil the Propel Center, a new digital learning hub, business incubator and global innovation headquarters in Atlanta for students of historically black colleges and universities. The Propel Center is part of our $50 million multiyear investment in HBCUs throughout our system footprint.
Internally, we continue to foster community across the Southern Company through dedicated employee resource groups for employees who have a connection to the African American, Asian American, Hispanic and Latino, LGTBQ+, veteran or any disability communities to name just a few.
Externally, we are elevating partnerships with organizations working towards racial and social justice in supportive initiatives focused on education equality, criminal justice and economic empowerment such as the National Urban League and the Equal Justice Initiative. Last summer, we used our sponsorship with the PGA Tour and the Tour Championship to shine a national spotlight on racial equity issues in which we are engaged.
Locally, some of our work included advocating for hate crime legislation in Georgia and removing confederate imagery from the Mississippi state flag. To further define our actions and commitments, in 2020, Southern Company created a framework that is guiding our businesses in the continuing work on racial equity and racial justice. The framework confirms our collective commitment and helps ensure a continued and coordinated focus on this work. It also makes clear our beliefs and formalizes our commitment to preventing racism and racial in justice and works to align our volunteer giving and community investment strategies.
A few specifics of that framework I want to highlight. First, Southern Company and its charitable foundations are committing $200 million over 5 years to advance racial equity in social justice in our communities. Of that, $100 million will go to promote educational equality through direct community investments, scholarships for underrepresented groups and investment in HBCUs. We will also commit to providing 5,000 employee mentors within the communities we serve.
Also, $50 million will be dedicated to criminal justice reform organizations working to lower criminalization rates, support transition and reentry into society and to create pre-arrest diversion options and reduce racial profiling. And finally, $50 million will support economic empowerment through grants and help impact investments.
We will invest in communities to build social and economic opportunity for black-owned businesses and individuals and to create a just transition as we seek a net zero carbon future. Second, our political engagement is informed by our values of unquestionable trust and total commitment. They help ensure that honesty, respect, fairness and integrity drive our behavior that we fully embrace, respect and value diversity both internally and externally.
We will leverage our political influence to advocate for policies that address systemic racism across our social justice pillars: education, criminal justice reform and economic empowerment. We will make political and policy decisions using a consistent process that incorporates our values.
Our belief in government, the democratic process and the rule of law has always been at the core of our engagement. We are constantly evaluating our efforts to ensure that they are informed by those ideals and adhere to the uncompromising values we follow as a business: honesty, respect, fairness, integrity and the value of diversity. We will discontinue support for any official or organization that does not act in a manner consistent with those values.
Third, Southern Company has a goal of increasing our minority business enterprise to spend 20% and total diverse spend to 30% by 2025 and is committed to developing and doing business with more black-owned businesses in our industry and communities both as prime suppliers and subcontractors. We're also exploring how we might expand on these commitments and framework to address energy equity and environmental justice as we transition to a net zero future.
Again, we will work towards these goals because they are good for the customers and the communities we are privileged to serve. I am very proud of the organic work that has been driven by the engagement of so many employees from across our company and even more encouraged by our future possibilities. Striving for equity will be an ongoing journey, and our work will continue into 2021 and the years beyond.
Let's turn now to cyber activities. The recent cyber attack on a gasoline pipeline has generated major headlines about the cyber and physical security of our nation's most critical assets. As an owner and operator of many of those critical assets, Southern Company has been a consistent leader on issues related to cyber and physical security.
We've been working in leadership roles in our industry as well as in conjunction with other critical infrastructure owners to prevent what I call the existential threat, protecting the American way of life against those who seek to cause chaos and havoc in and among our energy, financial, telecommunications and other critical infrastructure systems in America. We are reimagining our national security for the digital age.
In the cyber realm, there are no oceans east and west of this nation that protect us. There are no friendly nations north and south of us that prevent the bad guys from trying to enter the telecommunication networks, the electricity grid or our cyber systems or other critical systems that relate to our national security. That is why Southern Company views cyber defense as a business requirement, not an option.
We recognize the interconnectedness shared by our nation's critical infrastructure and are collaborating with our partners in government and business to protect American assets. We view this as a joined aspiration to protect this nation's national security for the future. We must reimagine the private and public partnership in this critical endeavor.
Now let me turn to a fun part of the presentation I like to do, and that is to present some of the accolades to this company. In September, the Electric Institute -- the Edison Electric Institute awarded Southern Company the electric industry's most prestigious honor. That is the EEI Edison Award for our leadership of key energy storage system initiatives, including the development, commissioning and operation of our energy storage research center in Birmingham, Alabama.
Storage systems will help pave the way for the future of energy. They will provide the potential to add more renewables, improve resilience and reliability, increase the implementation of distributed energy and microgrids and improve the operational flexibility of the grid. Not only will these developments create value for customers, these technologies become increasingly important, considering our GHG reduction goals. It is the fifth time this company has won that award.
Across Southern Company, we continue to receive third-party recognition as a superior company with outstanding performance. Earlier this month, we were named among the top 50 companies for diversity by DiversityInc, ranking #20 on its 2021 list for our efforts to hire, retain and promote women, minorities, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ personnel and veterans. This is our sixth consecutive year to be recognized by DiversityInc for all companies in America.
Our corporate culture has also been recognized again nationally by the Human Rights Campaign, Fortune's Most Admired Companies list and as the top utility among Forbes Magazine's 2021 list of America's Best Large Employers. Also, Southern Company earned a score of A- from the CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project, for our management of and disclosures around carbon and climate change risk. We are recognized as a leader in environmental transparency within the North America region and thermal power generation sector.
Our workplace programs are recognized as among the very best for corporate disclosure and transparency, corporate equality, military hiring, disability inclusion, diversity, customer satisfaction and environmental stewardship, just to name a few. Our own compromising values are the key to our sustained success and we put the needs of those we serve at the center of everything we do. We are committed to helping ensure that all groups are well represented, included and fairly treated within all levels of our organization and that everyone feels welcomed, valued and respected.
And now with a final note, a bittersweet announcement today. In late October, we announced that Chris Womack, a long-standing Southern Company executive and a tremendous leader to us all internally and externally, as the successor to Paul Bowers at Georgia Power Company. Currently serving as President, I can now announce today that Chris will assume the additional titles of Chairman of the Board and CEO effective June 1 of this year.
Now let me talk about Paul for a minute. For more than a decade, Paul Bowers has led Georgia Power to be the premier energy company that it is today. Paul and I came to Georgia Power around the same time. And I have always considered him not only an invaluable colleague and confidant and just a top performer whatever job he's been asked to do, but a personal friend of mine for more than 40 years. And he has always excelled whatever he's been asked to do and has always given more than he has ever taken from this organization.
And so on behalf of the entire organization, I want to thank Paul for his dedicated service and wish that he and his wife, Karen, the very best in his well-deserved retirement and in this new chapter in their lives. Paul, nothing but the best to you.
It will take an extraordinary person to follow Paul. But I am supremely confident that Chris Womack is that leader. His depth of experience across our system, the energy industry as a whole and his record of public service within Atlanta, the state of Georgia, the entire Southeast and nationally will prove incredibly valuable as Georgia Power continues to provide clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy for millions of Georgians.
And you should all recognize that the mission that we are undertaking, whether it is Vogtle 3 and 4 or the broader activities led by Georgia Power, have application not only in electricity, in our national energy security and our national energy policy, and Chris will be a terrific leader in carrying those important initiatives forward. I certainly look forward to working with Chris as he bolsters Georgia Power's great legacy of service and citizenship in that regard.
So in closing, I am proud as you should be of our employees' performance at what has undoubtedly been one of the most challenging years in our company's history. In 2020, we met a set of unique challenges dealing with issues that have fundamentally changed the way we live, work and view societal progress.
I remained exceedingly confident in the positioning of this company for the future. Because it's Southern Company, we see beyond the challenges to the opportunities to build the future of energy. Our solid financial outlook rests upon the foundation of continued investment in our state-regulated utility franchises that remain among the industry's leaders for operational performance and customer satisfaction.
We certainly appreciate your continued interest in Southern Company. We welcome your feedback, and I look forward to continuing our engagement with all of you. As I'm sure I'll say at the end of this upcoming Q&A session, you all, as shareholders and stakeholders in this company, have helped us move the ball for the better of our company, our industry and the economy of the United States. I thank you for your engagement.
And now my favorite part of the meeting, I'd like to address your questions. With me today is Schuyler Baehman, Vice President of Communications for Southern Company. He will be reading your submitted questions. Schuyler, let's go. First question, please.
Okay. Tom, thank you very much. I know you would like to start. Colonel Sam Booher of Augusta, Georgia has 4,400 shares, and he asked this question. Tom, I love my solar panels. I say it every year. Thank you for installing them on my roof. You know I love having a low electric bill. It's around $15 a month. But as a shareholder, I worry that if we don't get in the business of installing solar on homes fast, other companies will do it. As the power company, we can finance the cost of these panels on the power bill as another profit center. Not everyone can write a check upfront for their panels, but everybody pays their electric bill.
Yes. Sam, thanks so much for the question, and it's always fun having you. I think I think historically, you're generally our first question. So we always appreciate it, buddy. And I got to tell you, I love the idea behind the question. It's very clear that as we transition our fleet to a zero carbon future and we have specific plans, a lot of those plans, and I'm sure I'll get to this later in the Q&A, are part of regulatory proceedings, like these integrated resource plans that we have in all of our states, that I never want to front-run kind of the submittal and review and approval of those plants.
But I will say this. In order for this company to achieve net zero by whatever time frame, whether it's 2050 or in working with the aspirations of the Biden administration to make that date 2035, it's very clear we're going to do it with an enormous penetration of renewables. And most likely, the vast majority of that is going to be solar here in the Southeast.
And I'm guessing by the time we reach our own aspiration of net zero, that penetration could meet or exceed 50% of our generating capacity as measured by energy delivery by solar. So we're going to need solar wherever we can get it. The requirements for that are going to be enormous in a short amount of time. And so we look forward to however we can put those kinds of assets in play.
Now whether that means residential rooftops -- and it's kind of fun to think about that one. Sam, both you and I, you have it, I had it. I just moved, frankly. So I don't have them on my new house. I did in my old house. I'll be working on that. Not all houses are suitable to have residential solar. We really want to encourage new building standards to consider things like suitability for solar panels to be included on rooftops or however solar panels may be brought to bear.
So aside from residential, let's think about commercial purposes. Can we put solar facilities on warehouses or factories or parking lots or other things? And of course, we could and should. One of our leading subsidiaries in this regard, we made an acquisition in the 2015, '16 time frame of a company called PowerSecure, and they are, by far, the leading market share owner of what I call distributed infrastructure. So that could mean distributed generation like solar, but it also includes things like proprietary switch gear, microgrids, a whole variety of other things.
And in fact, I have an old data point. This came from a magazine that we represented -- somewhere over 80% of the microgrids in America were done by Southern Company through PowerSecure. I think that number has dropped a little bit. It's still, I think, in the 60s. But still, to have a 60-something percent market share of this kind of infrastructure in America, I think we are looking at the future here. And our intention in pursuing this business was not only to take what comes, but rather help to invent this future infrastructure in America. And so putting solar panels in conjunction with industrial and commercial processes in play is a big deal.
And then finally, thinking about how we're going to hit 50% of solar for this great company by 2050, 2035, you tell me, I think we're going to have to have utility scale solar in play as well. That's going to be, in my opinion, probably the most important in terms of size and capability to add renewables to our generating capacity.
But Sam, let me go back to your specific question. Said short, solar will be a dominant solution for this company in the future. And I guarantee you, we've already demonstrated a willingness and commitment to play in the development of that important infrastructure.
And as you have helped us move the ball, I have picked up that ball and we have encouraged strategic plans in place to pursue those options in the future as they make sense. I guarantee you this company will lean into that problem in the future. Sam, thanks for your question. Always great to have you with us.
Great. Eleanor Hand of Atlanta, Georgia who has 405 shares asked, Tom, I'd like to thank you, Southern Company and Georgia Power for the ongoing commitment to the voluntary tariff-based efficiency pilot program. As far as I can tell, Georgia Power's RISE pilot is the first investor-owned utility to lead a program such as this, and I hope it becomes a national model.
I'm hopeful to see the program expand into a wider range of ratepayers with varied energy bill sizes, which would make new profit centers for the company. It is fully conceivable that the company could make a return on investment installing energy efficiency measures as well as the solar panels Colonel Sam Booher mentioned.
The company sells customers 2 types of energy, the energy they need and the energy that gets wasted on leaky houses and old equipment. This waste is a drain on customers in our region. Financing energy-efficient structures across the service region frees up their money while saving peak load periods when the cost to produce energy is high.
My question is in 2 parts. Is the company considering expanding availability of this program into a wider range of income levels? And what can shareholders do to support and expand the company's on-bill tariff finance efficiency programs?
Elanor, thanks for the question. And I got to give credit to another guy that is always after me to include -- when I think about our energy policy going into the future, it's clearly going to be renewables led by solar. It's going to be gas to support intermittent resources. And in large part, what gas -- if it still produces effluent and carbon, we're going to put carbon capture and sequestration technology on it. And where we still emit some carbon, we're going to do net zero strategies to take carbon out of the atmosphere, so we can reach net zero.
Storage is going to be a big deal. Fourth-generation nuclear is going to be a big deal. Hydrogen may be something, and we're spending a lot of research and development dollars on this. And I kind of finish there -- and Ralph Cavanagh, a leader in energy thought in America, always reminds me to say, and it is true, energy efficiency is going to be just as important as any of those other arrows in the quiver in order to achieve a net zero future.
And what's interesting is, as you point out and as we've been targeting with the RISE program, a lot of the energy efficiency needs are the function of people that live in substandard housing. They require the most energy efficiency, but those people may not have the economic means day-to-day to make those investments happen.
And so we've been looking at a lot of different programs at all of our subsidiaries, the one you mentioned was really started, I guess, at Georgia Power. And so we're in the early stages of thinking about how do we provide balance? There's this idea that can be thought of broadly in the energy justice idea. How do we bring the benefits of clean, safe, reliable, affordable energy to everybody along the economic spectrum of America?
I was on the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank for 6 years, chaired it for 3 years. I chaired the big advisory board to the big Fed, the conference of chairs for a year. And one of the things I've learned is that we're very mindful when we think about economic recoveries this nation has been through. Fully half to 2/3 of Americans, over, say, the last 10 years, didn't participate fully in whatever economic recovery showed up.
And when I think about energy policy going forward, it's very clear that all Americans get the benefit of excellent energy policy by making sure that they provide for their children a future, a better place to live, better food on the table, better education, better medical care. Expanding, balanced energy benefits to everybody along the economic spectrum makes sense. Coincident with that, providing everyone along that same spectrum the ability to enjoy energy efficiency measures is something that we have been about.
So it's not just in the state regulatory plan. So we're looking at that. We continue to follow. We continue to tweak that idea and other ideas to make it better and to make the take rates more successful. But as I have already said, kind of an important statement, if we reimagine, just take that word for a minute, whether it is the public-private partnership and enjoining this nation's national energy security or whether it is reimagining the public and private partnership in helping all Americans enjoy the fruits of excellent energy policy at the lowest possible level, we are working to do that.
And in the legislation that we may see in the future in Congress, there's a lot being talked about right now. Within that gumbo of ideas, there may be incentives that we could use to bring more benefit along the lines of energy efficiency to all the customers we serve. So we're pushing on a lot of different buttons right now. And we remain committed to making this idea a great idea for the future. Thanks, Eleanor.
As long as we're talking about the portfolio, Scott Presson of Lawrenceville, Georgia, is asking about participating in the expansion -- possible expansion of offshore wind. His question specifically, how is Southern Company planning to participate in the expanding use of offshore wind and to expand onshore wind capacity?
So Scott, thanks for that. Boy, what comes around -- what goes around comes around, I guess. I can remember as a very junior analyst working in corporate finance, helping to prepare guys like Ed Addison or Bill Talbert or Alan Franklin, as I got older, to prepare for the annual meeting and questions like that. And I can remember preparing statements that described our relationship with Georgia Tech, among others, to think about offshore wind. And in fact, we have looked at stuff for decades now, offshore wind, kind of off-savanna, out that area. And more recently, we've actually looked at stuff in the Gulf of Mexico, certainly when we had Gulf Power Company.
We continue to look at that. And as we have seen, a constant theme of ours is the power of research and development. The mission of research and development broadly is to work on ideas that today may be, finance jargon, out of the money. That means they don't make economic sense today, but work on developments to make those out-of-the-money investment someday in the money to make them economic sometime into the future.
And certainly, technology has advanced with offshore wind, with the new blade technologies and the more resilient structures that in this hurricane-prone area we are in the United States that they have more survivability. So we continue to look at those things. I would say right now that still, there are other ideas that frankly hold more promise in a scale sense. In other words, we're going to need -- you think about it.
I always love to use this example. It's probably out of date and whatever. But Southern Company energy production-wise is a little bit smaller, but just to use your imagination, we're about the size of the nation of Australia, okay? We're big. And when I think about turning over the generation requirements for this company, we have to think in enormous scale terms.
Offshore wind can certainly be a player. And it will be important, and we certainly will consider it and we are looking at it from an R&D standpoint. I just believe from a scale standpoint, there will be other things bigger. As I mentioned, storage; as I mentioned, hydrogen; as I mentioned, gen 4 nuclear; as I mentioned, carbon capture on some gas assets; and clearly, the solar question. These are -- and energy efficiency, Ralph.
These are things that will require, I think, the most amount of our research and development to get them in the money by the time we need them. We will include offshore wind, so rest assured of that. We're looking at it. It's in our evaluation. So thanks for the question, Scott.
Next, Brionté McCorkle of Atlanta is asking about the American jobs plan, which proposes to reimagine and rebuild a new economy. It's a major investment that promises to create millions of good jobs and rebuild our country's infrastructure while addressing the climate crisis. Some of the things the plan -- that will impact Southern Company include investment in more resilient electric grid, energy efficiency and electrifying vehicles.
The plan also includes a focus on workforce development, especially in the clean energy sector. How is Southern company positioning itself to receive the maximum benefits from any events that may emerge from this initiative?
Brionté, I hope you're doing well. Great to reconnect with you. Always fun to bounce these things back and forth. We'll have a giant party for everybody here on the call, our next annual meeting. I'm going to think it's something great to do for us all.
Anyway, boy, that piece of legislation has so much benefit for us. It may have -- if I just kicked off broad categories, I would say that broadly, the infrastructure elements of that, the tax provisions that may be associated with that, the widened tax bill in the Senate.
But if you think about broadband deployment, if you think about EV, electric vehicle infrastructure and incentives, if you think about the elements of the plan to provide for more research and development, if you think about the incentives to build more transmission. And I think that is so important for everybody to remember, and that's why we're in such a good place here in the Southeast to consider this transformation.
It's not just about generation. You have to iterate -- transforming your generation, yes, but you must iterate it also with transmission solutions for the future. That must be done jointly. You can't do that in the other parts of the United States that are structured in the so-called organized markets. They really don't work. Ours does.
So we can think about provisions in the bill that relate to transmission incentives. And then finally, things about gas incentives and infrastructure that relate to hydrogen. And you think about hydrogen and carbon capture, we're going to need to source hydrogen, we're going to need to move it. We're going to need to -- in the place of carbon, sequester it somewhere, we're going to need to move it. So you're going to need more pipes. Pipes have been so hard to build here lately.
So the infrastructure bill, broadly, the Jobs Act has so much good stuff in it. But I just want to -- and we're working on all these fronts. I just want to caution everybody that this is an idea at this point. We all know how difficult sometimes the political discourse in America has been. And for some years now, we've been in this divisive environment where the discourse is guided not by the constructive middle but by both ends of the spectrum.
And what we got to do -- and this is where I think business can play such a constructive role. Whether it is in the political discourse around these important issues or whether it's in societal discourse to work constructively, quietly and effectively to create the constructive middle that will bring both ends of the spectrum together to create real practical solutions for Americans. That's what we need to do.
So my point is Southern Company is engaged. In my opinion, we have, by far, not even close, the best Washington group that helps us marshal the vast resources of this great company. To weigh in on these important issues like this Jobs Act plan. But any other plan that goes forward to help shape it and provide real thoughtful contributions to creating a better future for this country.
We're working on it right now. It is a it is a lengthy put to consider where we are to where we will be with something coming into law through Congress. But rest assured, Brionté, we will work on it, and there's a lot here to like. So we'll put our best foot forward. We'll keep swinging.
Thanks, bud. Norman Slawsky of Atlanta, Georgia wrote in asking, when planned Vogtle Units 3 and 4 are fully operating and our dispatch cost is much lower than a coal-fired plant, is there a compelling reason not to place coal plants in inactive reserve?
Norman, yes, look, I mean, I've said this publicly, when you look at all the issues going on -- I don't know, certainly over my time frame as Chairman of Southern, say, over the past 10 years, but you look forward, not only have there been all sorts of outside influences, but also even internal influences, and they will continue beyond where we are. This is part of our risk disclosure also. I think the days of coal are numbered in America.
That's just the truth, and it's very hard truth for those people that are involved in that industry. And we've got to find ways -- this is part of energy justice, to be honest with you. We've got to find ways to retrain workforce in America and make this transition clean, safe, reliable and affordable and fair for everybody.
But the solid truth is coal is going away. And I think we've already demonstrated our willingness to get ahead of that curve in working with our jurisdictions. I think I made news some years ago in announcing kind of before anybody forced us to, to start working on closing all of our ash ponds. And frankly, we're well on our way to committing every bit of that being done.
I think the latest thing we have going, this October, we have to give a response to the effluent limitation guidelines around our coal plants, and we'll have to make some declarations with each of our commissions about what to do for all of our coal plants. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at the cost that we see currently to see what else may be coming from this administration.
I've been working with people, not only within the administration, but also in Congress about -- you've heard a lot of talk, not action yet, but a lot of talk about a clean energy standard or proposal to think about net zero aspirations. We're going to have to move on, and we're going to have to move on quickly.
If we're going to achieve that aspiration, we need the government in the boat with the private sector in order to make that happen. A lot of the failures we have in reimagining our future is to think about a structure burdened by or guided by regulation or coercive legislation where the mindset in the reaction of the private sector becomes one of compliance not aspiration. And what we have to do is not think about from a regulator in the administration or a legislator in Congress to think about not only sticks but carats, incentives.
If, in fact, these aspirations are so worthwhile, how can we make the transition better for all of our customers? These are ideas that we are floating right now. And what I'd like to do rather than front-run those conversations to say that, in fact, yes, the heart of your plan, the heart of your question is something that is, I think, obvious to us all. And the real hard work now is in order to achieve the time frames that we are focused on to reimagine how that should happen so that we get the best balanced outcome for all of our stakeholders.
Sam Collier wrote in. He's got more of a comment than a question, but something that you talked about. He said, I want to applaud the company for its annual reporting to CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project. Reporting to an organization which companies around the world report to is one of the surest ways to assure everyone that Southern Company is a leader in reducing its climate risk. To get an A- from CDP is third-party validation that investors everywhere notice. So thank you and congratulations on the recognized progress.
Sam, thank you, and you've been a friend for years and years, and thank you for weighing in with those wonderful comments. I just want to tell you, I always give credit to folks like you and others have already mentioned on the call, and I'll probably mention more as we go forward, that you guys have helped us move the ball here and shaped our thinking.
I can remember, when I first took this job and really prior to my [indiscernible] job, we felt -- and I'm being a little broad here, so excuse my broad brush comment. But I think we felt that some people like the Carbon Disclosure Project weren't fair, that they really didn't give us a way to describe what we were really doing that we were really very proud of, and we just chose not to participate. My little funny kind of metaphor is we were given the [ hyphen ] when you think about how that trophy looks.
And I think what I've tried to do is reflect back on the great work that this company has been doing for decades and certainly during my time here and to really embrace those kinds of things. And instead of just saying they're not fair or they're mean or whatever they are, to really lean in and work with those folks. And now we have participated and gotten progressively better grades.
But I think more than kind of studying for the test, we really have changed the way we think and the way we disclose, the way we act. And now I am very proud to say that we have an A-. How can we do better? I think people want more specific plans and everything else. I think that's going to require some time. We will not front-run our regulators here in the Southeast or elsewhere.
We have specific plans, but it's better for us to work quietly, constructively and effectively in the right forums, that those specific plans will see the light of day at the right time with the imprimatur of the people that helped regulate our work in the southeast. But look, we're already at an A-. I'm not satisfied with that. We need to do better. Thank you for your comment, thank you for your advice over the years and thank you for your friendship.
I've got a statement and a question here. It's a little bit long. I'll get through it, so bear with me. I beg your pardon here, Tom, but this comes from Max Dulberger who's writing on behalf of the Office of the Illinois State Treasurer, a long-term shareowner of Southern Company and on behalf of a group of fellow investors who for years have joined us in the Climate Action 100 engagement of Southern.
Climate Action 100 is an investor initiative that seeks to partner with companies like Southern to address climate-related business risks through submissions, improve corporate government practices and strengthen climate-related disclosures. To date, over 575 investors with $54 trillion in assets under management [indiscernible] Climate Action 100, equivalent to nearly half of all assets under management globally.
These investors recognize that to mitigate climate risk and maintain sustainable long-term returns, the companies they own must take the decisive action now and in the immediate years before us to capitalize on the transition to net zero by 2050 or sooner. Our group has engaged Southern since 2018 when it was selected as a focused company given its relatively high greenhouse gas emissions.
This March, the Climate Action 100 net zero company benchmark was published, offering the first detailed assessment of company performance against 10 key indicators. Looking at Southern's performance against the benchmark, we first want to commend the company for its actions taken to address risks and harness evolving opportunities.
In particular, we commend the following: number one, Southern's commitment to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which was announced at the company's annual meeting last year; number two, Southern's first step initiated in 2019 to link the CEOs paid to progress made achieving greenhouse gas emission targets; and number three, Southern's development and disclosure of an enterprise-wide decarbonization strategy.
While we are encouraged by Southern's progress over the course of our engagement, we firmly believe that additional steps are necessary to better position the company for long-term growth. We encourage Southern's board and senior management on to consider the following actions: number one, accelerate the company's medium-term greenhouse gas emission target for 2030, which currently sits at 50%.
Greater ambition is necessary given that Southern is positioned to achieve its medium-term target well ahead of 2030, and peer companies like Xcel Energy and AES maintained 2030 targets of 80% and 70%, respectively, which better align with the International Energy Agency's recent call for the elimination of fossil fuel power generation in OECD countries by 2035.
Number two, strengthen the company's executive compensation plan to ensure management is effectively incentivized to achieve Southern's climate transition goals. Given that the company's climate transition goals represent a core business objective, it is fully warranted to consider increasing the portion of executive pay linked [indiscernible] in this area and to increase the set of hurdles that trigger the maximum payout.
And number three, establish an enterprise-wide lobbying position that aligns with the Paris Agreement and applies to both direct and indirect lobbying activities through trade associations. Good policy is essential to mitigate the consequences of climate change and better position Southern Company for long-term growth. As such, investors seek a commitment for Southern Company to conduct all its lobbying in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement to establish Paris-aligned lobbying expectations for its trade associations and to disclose a clear strategy for addressing any direct or indirect lobbying that falls out of alignment.
Again, our investor group sincerely appreciates our constructive engagement with Southern. We look forward to future progress on these areas of mutual interest, and we invite the company to respond to the 3 recommendations provided. Thank you.
Max, thanks for that. And here, again, another example, very thorough, thoughtful thinking. So I think I made some notes here along the way. Got your lengthy question, but that's okay. It was good stuff. So let's go through them.
First, with respect to the 2030 goal. Yes, so we no longer have a 2030 goal of 50%. I mean, as a matter of fact, we achieved that a decade earlier than we thought we would. And yes, it will bounce around maybe a little bit because that was kind of a weird year last year. But we're by 2050. We're through thinking about 2030 at 50%.
And so the question is, so what's the goal for 2030? All right. I've already said in my remarks and probably to open the tent, open a little bit wider. I have been working with the Biden administration, people like Gina McCarthy, others to think about shaping what may come out that will be supportive of their aspiration maybe to a 2035 goal.
Now I don't know if that's where we end up, but what will be required. And in fact, we've already been very detailed in working with Gina and others, the kinds of specific plans that will be necessary to hit 2035 or if they decide 2040 or '45 or whatever.
We've given them sensitivities about the economics and the requirements in order to hit those kinds of goals. For example, let me just give you one that will whet your appetite, I think, is in order for us -- remember, our position here is yes, and. Can we achieve a 2035 target? Yes, and the policy recognition we will have to make is this.
Number one, in order for us to replace the amount of generation and transmission, frankly, necessary to hit 2035 net zero, we will triple in any other 15-year period in our corporate history the amount of CapEx deployment we have ever done. And you're talking to a company that is building presently a nuclear plant.
So this is big money, big effort. When you think about that, we're not going to be the only one in the box. It will be all the other utilities faced with similar situations. Where are we going to get the personnel involved? There's going to be an enormous challenging opportunity in redeploying the workforce of America to make that work happen.
Two, we're going to need to create strategic supply chains necessary to procure the equipment to deploy at the scale we need it. Three, in order to -- what's the right word here -- manage the economic impact to all of our customers, we're going to need to reimagine a public-private partnership between the federal government and the private sector to make this noteworthy accomplishment of reality.
And so we've been having this conversation. It would be easy for me to just jump out there with a new goal for 2030. But what I would rather do than front-run the administration is in working with folks like Gina McCarthy, the other administration people involved in this important issue, people in Congress. I'd rather kind of follow their lead, knowing that I'm working with them along the way to set a goal that will ultimately be consistent.
I would hate to come out and just put a goal out there that may be completely inconsistent with where this administration or Congress wants to go. So please, rest assured, we've already met that tough goal a decade early. We have, in our minds, what will be required, but I want to do that in concert and in a constructive way so we don't front-run the policymakers in America today.
So got it, rather than put a goal out right now, I want to do that in concert with the folks in the administration and in Congress. So stay tuned.
Your second question really dealt with the compensation, the incentive compensation I had to achieve net zero. You all know my age, right? I guess I'm 64 years old. And so I'm at least rounding third base on my trip, hopefully, to hit a home run with Southern. So I have some time left. I haven't announced any plan to retire, but you know how old I am.
My sense is that my focus right now, along with structuring this company to meet the critical climate goals of this country. It is to bring this nuclear plant online successfully and the next 2 years. So we hope what do we say, by the first quarter of 2022, we will bring Vogtle Unit 3 on. And by year-end '22, I guess, November is our regulatory approved date for Unit 4 to bring that online.
It is so important that one of my principal areas of focus must be getting that done. And so you see a lot about my compensation, frankly, performance of stock price and everything else that is tied to successfully completing that important leadership activity.
And so we have talked about this a lot. I can tell you, the Board that serves you stockholders serves you very well. There is no rubber stamp among any of the folks that sit in those chairs, and we have had vigorous conversations about the right way to accomplish not only the tasks ahead of us through the end of my tenure but also for my successor in the next 5 to 10 years. So they view, I think, first, a strategic issue; and secondly, the tactics. We start with strategy and then we make sure that the tactics work.
I think it's appropriately structured right now. Now of course, that's the Board's call. But I think I agree that right now, it's given where Vogtle is, I feel pretty good about that. I am sure that in the years past Vogtle, we will reconsider the whole mix of executive compensation and consider any other alternatives like this or anything else.
Recall the importance of compensation, and I chair the Comp Committee at Vulcan Materials. Compensation systems should be designed to align the people involved to do the right things on behalf of all stakeholders, but particularly shareholders. And I think ours do that right now. As events change over time, there will be new challenges that people will have to face. Let's make sure that our comp programs are resilient enough to accommodate the changes that are going to be required in the future and certainly, per your suggested, we will consider those types of changes as time warrants. Right now, feel pretty good. Stay tuned, okay? It's a very good question. Now, it's a question really that we ask ourselves every year.
Finally, lobbying activities. Man, they have really changed over my tenure. I'll say that. And we even had -- I'll go back to an embarrassing episode -- I don't know, I was some years in. I didn't even know, but way down in the organization, one of our -- I guess, it was kind of a mid-level manager guy had a consultant on a payroll. I mean we're paying him to do studies that didn't really meet our long-term philosophy. And when I found out about it, I just put a stop to it immediately. And I can assure you, over time, that we have really taken a much harder look as we have changed our philosophy, and as you have helped us think differently about how this company should be run and how the priorities should change over time. I think our political and lobbying activities have changed with them. For example, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, we did get out of ACE. We do also struggle with some other issues, like I know some people have challenged us in the past with the United States Chamber of Commerce, and they came out with certain climate positions that we didn't necessarily agree with. We still participate with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because they do good in so many other areas. And so it's hard to somehow kind of complete segmenting what big organizations do. But I'll say this.
As I said in my remarks, when you look at what we have done recently, so the American Clean Power Association, the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, resources for future, the Zero Emission Transportation Association, helping folks like the Net Zero Business Alliance with the Bipartisan Policy Center, those folks. I'm also on the Board of the American Energy Innovation Council with Bill Gates, John Door and others. Look, we are putting an enormous amount of focus, effort and funding on those kinds of activities. So -- and you know, we also have engaged our stakeholders. We've done that, I guess, during my tenure now. I guess we just did our 11th meeting. And we do things around the clock, but we have a big kind of 2-day session in D.C. where everybody comes in the room. I remember some of our predecessors in the past, I used to want to do this, and they said, "Well, you just want to feel better." No, I, a, want to listen and learn how we can be better. And number two, I want to also be able to engage in a very candid direct way what this company is doing and why it matters and why we don't have inconsistent positions. And so I'm always willing to consider, listen and change, okay?
I think our participation in lobbying and a variety of other things reflect that stance, and I think we've made great progress. Certainly, we will continue to do that as long as I'm in this seat, and I feel confident also given this Board and the kind of quality people that will carry this company forward in the future, they will have that same stance.
Okay, Tom. We have a handful more, so we'll try to get to as many as we can here. Next question, how is Southern Company working to make sure what happened in Texas in February will not happen in Georgia? And is it true that renewable energy was to blame?
Who said that?
This one doesn't have a name attached.
Okay. Well, thanks for the question. Hey, nobody is immune to that kind of thing. And I guess you're talking about the ice storm that went through and shut down. I went on TV, I guess I was on Squawk Box and talked about that a little bit. There's a lot of factors at play. The number one factor, in my opinion, was industry structure. ERCOT, the Energy Reliability Council of Texas, is a unique animal that essentially segments a large part of Texas away from an intimate interconnection with the rest of the United States. There are a very limited interties there. And it's an energy-only market. They don't pay for reward people for having capacity, that is the ability to generate electricity. All of the profits of the participants get paid only by energy. And I guess under normal circumstances, an energy market works. But the difference between reliability and resilience is exactly that.
Reliability is how your system operates under normal conditions, normal hurricanes, normal winter storms, normal, normal, normal. And you normally have outages, and so you develop an optimal portfolio of participation. Energy markets work pretty well in those kinds of normal places. But where they don't work is where you have abnormal conditions. And frankly, the winter storm that went through Texas was historic in its magnitude. And not only did they have a lot of physical problems, which the system wasn't designed for, so we'll get to operational here in a minute, they had market problems that didn't contemplate this kind of duress in their market. And so the market didn't work.
In the southeast, we have an integrated, regulated market, which, in a much better way, is able to contemplate issues relating to the price of energy and the availability of capacity to meet the needs of customers during abnormal conditions. Now let me get to the operational issues. Every system is designed. So the idea of reliability as you design to a normal variance in weather or demand or whatever, and you create your portfolio. Resilience matters taken to designing the system for things that are abnormal. What can you do if you lose gas supply for a week? What can you do, if you lose transmission lines from one region to another? Those are matters that go to resilience.
Our structure lends itself to a constructive conversation with regulators about the value of resilience relative to reliability. And I feel very good about our ability to think through those issues to recommend solutions to regulators that, at a lowest cost perspective, can promote resilience of the transmission and generation systems during those crazy periods of duress. So market structure was a problem.
Number 2 was the operating nature of the system. We don't -- we have a very different operating nature of our system here in the southeast. Are we immune? No. Are there things we can do? Yes. Are we having those conversations with regulators? Yes. In fact, Stan Connolly, effectively our Chief Operating Officer, he's the EVP of Operations. But we are creating kind of our wish list of these are things we could do to make ourselves even better. If we design our system to manage 10 degrees average temperature over some time frame, how much would it cost to go to 0? Those are the kinds of conversations we would have. How much more transmission should we have? How much backup gas or oil supply should we have? What should we do with our coal fleet, maybe to take it out of, retire it in terms of economic dispatch, but otherwise make it inactive reserve to be called upon only in the event of effectively a regional emergency?
So there's a lot of different things we're thinking about. I guess that scratches that itch. I hope if you have a follow-up question, please let me know. I guess, the short answer is this. Are we immune from Texas? No. Are we better positioned? Absolutely. And are we thinking about ways to get even better? Yes, we are.
Okay. A couple of quick financial questions here from [Mark Zashen]. Does the company look at buybacks and special dividends? And is there an opportunity for the company in M&A or tuck-ins in 2021 or 2022?
Yes. Buybacks have gotten a bad name in financial discourse in the past 2 to 3 years. I mean, in my opinion, a lot of that conversation is a little bit silly, but let me tell you how I think about buybacks. These are equity buybacks, stock buybacks. We haven't done them in a long time. I could remember, Southern has done them before. In fact, Schuyler, I think I was in the Corporate Finance Department, Larry Westbrook, was the CFO. One time we did a buyback. That was -- we had Southern Energy in play. Stock price got beaten up, and we bought back stock when we thought it was way undervalued. We had Drew Evens as my Chief Financial Officer. He and his team established, with my input and with the Board's review, an optimal capital structure for the company, taking into account all sorts of activities along the way. And along that way, we have what we call a credit profile. We have bond ratings. We have certain metrics that we follow along this capital structure that tells us how much equity we should have, how much debt we should have. And we have a balance that contemplates a plan over certainly 5 years, and we really have a longer-term plan than that.
Part of that is taking into account expected cash flows, to the extent you have unexpected cash flows, positive or negative. So let's just say, that we had an unexpected influx of cash, something in the $5 billion, $10 billion range of cash. We would have excess cash flow. Rather than letting it fit in a checking account, what we would do most likely is consider things like buying back the capital structure of our company. That would mean buying back some stock, retiring some debt, so that we keep the capital structure constant over time. Likewise, if we saw an opportunity to invest in something that was not contemplated in our financial plan, we would probably issue bonds and stock to keep the capital structure constant, okay? So a buyback simply is the opposite of issuing stock. And it is designed to keep your capital structure constant over time.
All right. The second thing you ask is always my favorite question about mergers and acquisitions. And if the financial community is listening, their ears just perked up. It is management's responsibility to evaluate on an ongoing basis, all efforts related to mergers and acquisitions, whether they relate to assets or whether they relate to companies, okay? And certainly, during my administration here at Southern, during my 11 years now, my 11th year, we've done both buy and sell. The idea is M&A is to think about different combinations of assets or companies where you structure transactions to put those assets or companies in the hands of the best owner. Big stuff we did. We bought a whole lot of renewable assets over time. And in fact, at one time, we were the largest owner of solar assets in America. We've since recycled some capital, and we've sold off some renewables. To now, I think we're third or fourth biggest owner of solar in America. So we've done it all the time through our vehicle Southern Power, right?
We bought PowerSecure as a very small but strategically important asset to get a window on the world of the future, okay, and we're exercising that. We have this enormous market share in microgrids. We bought AGL resources, okay? That is now Southern Company Gas. It was a terrific company that filled out a whole lot of needs we had in the natural gas space. There was a whole lot of synergy and overlap here in the southeast, plus they had a far-flung operation that since we have decided to put some of those assets in the hands of, frankly, better owners. We sold off our gas assets in Maryland and in New Jersey and in South Florida. We still have Nicor, we have Virginia, and then we have -- Virginia Natural Gas and, of course, we have our assets here in the southeast. And they are significant critical mass. They're wonderful companies, and they make sense with us now.
We bought SONAT at the right time. We bought half of that with our good friends at Kinder Morgan, Rich Kinder, great guy. And that is a pipeline that has enormous synergy into effectively our northern gas late. So we bought half of that. So it has made great sense for us to both buy and sell. And if you look at what we have done, I'm very proud, we bought low and sold high that when we sold Gulf Power, that was a hotly debated issue inside the boardroom at Southern and even in the management team. And I can tell you, I used to be CEO of Gulf Power. My family lived in Pensacola, many great friends, many retirees of Southern live there. I can't say that was really socially popular. But from a shareholder's standpoint, it was the highest value ever gained from a multiple standpoint in the history of the utility industry to anybody's knowledge. Nextera valued that company in tangible terms way higher than it was getting credit for in our stock price. And so therefore, it made sense. When I look at the sale of Elizabethtown, up in New Jersey. At that time, it was the highest multiple ever paid for a gas property. And so we made tremendous shareholder value.
And so those are the kinds of analysis we will do. Do we have our radar still ongoing for purchases and sales? Absolutely. That is something we will always do. A big ongoing joke at Southern is called Project Dragon. And the book that is in Project Dragon has an oriental dragon on the cover of it. And people always say, "Oh, it's a dragon." No. Dragon stands for drag on. That is -- this analysis is ongoing and exhaustive, and it only manifests its stealth every so often. So we keep looking but that's about all I want to say about what's happening in the world of M&A. Thanks for the question.
We had a couple of questions, one from someone who didn't give their name, but Joyce Bevec said -- was talking about Colonial Pipeline. And what are we doing to ensure our energy facilities are not hacked or held hostage like that pipeline was? We talked about a little bit earlier. I don't know if you want to say anything additional.
Yes. A little more. Yes, Colonial, very interesting thing. I hate that happen to them. Let me keep with my broader discourse here rather than comment too much on Colonial. And that is, you all know that I've been a national voice on reimagining the relationship of the private sector in America with government in America and to align the intelligence community, our sector-specific agencies, for example, ours would be Department of Energy, the private sector. And those that will hold the bad guys accountable, whether that's the Department of Defense, FBI, United States Cyber Command. And to create a much more resilient, use that word again, framework to protect our national security interest. You know I'm the only CEO, was appointed by Mitch McConnell on the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. And the idea is simply this. The original Solarium Commission was put in place by Dwight Eisenhower post World War II. The imagination of conflict was the Soviet Union to the East and essentially NATO to the West, with the battle being a tank battle on the planes of Poland.
In the world of cyber, as I said in my prepared remarks, it is not the tank battle on the planes of Poland we're worried about anymore, it is the bad guys getting into our information networks, our electricity grids and our financial systems than anything else, and so we have to really think differently. 87% the estimate is, let's say, over 85% of the systemically important critical infrastructure in America is owned by the private sector, and the battles are happening on our assets, and so we can't just let the government do for us. We must join with the government. There's been no company like Southern, in my opinion, that has taken a leadership position in thinking through with people in government about how that ought to happen, whether that's through the Cyberspace Solarium Commission or through Congress or through this administration. And I'm very proud to say that a lot of the friends I have made over the years working on this, and I helped chair the electricity sector, we call it the ESCC, Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council, the electricity sector effort to help secure this nation's electricity grid. You get people like Chris Inglis has now been recommended to help lead the administration's cabinets on assuring a single voice and vision for how to array our cyber defenses across the administration. We have folks like Anne Newberger. I've been working with her recently at the National Security Council level, and I think I'm on a panel with her or maybe a couple more CEOs tomorrow, to think about from a national security council standpoint how best to operationalize the defense of critical infrastructure with government. And I can tell you, these people have been terrific. These people are thought leaders, and they are very capable patriots in reimagining this relationship.
Look, Southern Company has a great, big company with vast resources. Tom Wilson is our Chief Information Security Officer, he's one of the best in the United States, depth of personnel, depth of capability. We make it a point to reach across the aisle to folks like the FBI and the NSA and the CIA and all the 3-letter agencies and also with our sector-specific agencies, we are well positioned. Companies like ours get attacked 3 million times a day, round numbers, and I use that a little loosely. But I just want you to get the view that this threat is always there, it's always changing. We always have to have the mindset of skating to where the puck will be, not to address what happened to them, but to think about where the next attack is going to come from. And I think we do a darn good job. But nobody in America is immune. There's a lot of important work that needs to happen. And I'll just say one more comment. Jan Easterly going to run -- she's been appointed to run CISA. She's another one that's terrific. We have to work with government, Homeland Security, et cetera, to make sure that we are as safe as we can be. The nation needs to get better. Private industry needs to get better. We're very focused on that.
Great. Next question comes from [Judith Short]. Talking about our community and corporate leadership and was wondering what Southern is doing about -- to support rights for voters, in particular, with the legislation in Georgia?
Yes, Judith. Well, here, again, I think I spoke to a lot of those comments in my prepared remarks. It's very careful that -- we're very mindful of this issue has just become, if you're talking about the Georgia legislation, so emotional, so political. I always have this principle in management that where there is essentially a void of activity, you work strongly to create action, and that's one way to create value. And where there is chaos, the best posture for management is to bring order to chaos, not to throw gasoline on the fire, so to speak. And so when you think about the history of Atlanta, go back to the civil rights era in the 60s, where Atlanta earned the -- what is it, the nickname, the moniker, a city too busy to hate. And unlike other Southern cities, the business community, the civil rights community and the political powers that stayed at that time and in the city worked very hard together to create constructive outcomes for everybody. And I think Atlanta earned its reputation of being a place where constructive outcomes can happen.
I think the last thing we want to do right now is to add to the chaos and pick sides in the fight and add to the rhetoric in the public discourse rather, and we do this all the time. As I mentioned, not getting ahead of our regulators, we don't want to get ahead of our politicians. But what we will do, are doing is having private, constructive conversation where I have said for a long time, the right way for business to act, certainly during periods of chaos and during periods of divisiveness, is to create a constructive middle. So that we can find a way to move forward in the years ahead that benefit the most people for the years ahead. That is kind of where we are right now. It does not behoove us to make these virulent rhetorical statements right now. We will work quietly wherever we need to, administration, Congress, region, states, cities, neighborhoods, churches, to make sure that we lessen the temperature, we create a constructive middle, and we move ahead in a constructive way.
Great. We've got just a few more. I know we're rounding in about 2 hours here, so we'll try to get through as many of these as we can. From Julian Lyon. We appreciate the opportunity to engage Southern on important climate and human rights concerns. Southern projects that by 2050, approximately 40% of its generation will still come from natural gas, which has disparate impacts on the health and livelihood of communities of color. How is Southern ensuring that it's net 0 by 2050 plan is aligned with its commitment to racial equity, supporting community environmental stewardship? Lisa submitted -- oh, no, I'm sorry, that's all.
Julian, thank you. Yes, if I opened the [kamona] completely, I would show you all these plans. Let me give you a little more flavor for what you're seeing. And I don't think the number is 70 -- 40%. It's something way less than that. If I just thought about my 2050 plan right now, I'm going to say 50% or more is coming from renewables, by far that's solar. There's still a slug of nuclear in there, and I'm going to say it's 17% to 20%. Let's just use 20% as a number, okay? So down to about 30%. 30% is going to be comprised of a variety of things. Let's say that a slug of that, so let's say, 20% to 25% may be gas. But now let me parse that down a little bit. So the number is far less than your 40%, okay?
Even with the gas in that slug, the contemplation is that -- remember, there's 2 types -- 2 big slugs of gas generation. One is what we call combustion turbines, okay? Those are really cheap in capital costs, and they run only 3% to 4% of the time. So they only run during peak periods. Those are the ones that we think may emit some carbon. The other slug of capacity is what we call natural gas combined cycle. That is by far the bigger slug. And right now, those are running at capacity factors, not 3% to 4%, but in the 50% to 60% to 70%. And what we will do to that, say, so let's just call that, let's say the number is 25% and let's say 20% is combined cycles. What we'll do is attach carbon capture sequestration technology, where they will not emit carbon, all right? So it will look to you like it's natural gas, oh, but we're going to stop the carbon at the source, okay?
So only a very small fraction of gas-fired generation would emit, so it's only -- and again, don't hold me to these, I'm giving you 4 examples, 5% of our generation emitting only at a combustion turbine rate of 3% to 4%. That may emit some carbon molecules. Offsetting that will be net negative technologies we put into place, whether that will be direct air capture, we're experimenting with that right now in our research and development facilities at Wilsonville, or whether it is the other kind of carbon capture, whether it is bio-oriented, forests, switchgrass, things like that, or whether it is the hybrid, where we take bio applications and you combust those in generation applications and put carbon capture on the end of those things.
So we have a specific plan in place, I'll call it, a scenario that we can achieve. When I say yes and, yes, we can do it, and we're going to need some public policy positions to help us achieve these things, whether it's funding for research and development to improve storage, to improve Gen IV reactors, to improve the efficiency of solar or wind or -- and let's not forget Ralph Cavanagh, the importance of energy efficiency and how that may work, building codes, a whole variety of other ideas. All of those things are going to be brought to play. The plan we have will protect our citizens from carbon emissions. Thanks for the question. Because I know on the surface, that sounds kind of odd, but we will speak to every carbon of -- every molecule of carbon in this net 0 approach.
That's the -- of all the questions that we still have submitted, we -- they're on topics that we've already discussed. So I think that will wrap up the Q&A. If for some reason we haven't gotten to your question during the call, please follow up with us. We will be happy to follow up with you online to make sure that everybody feels that their question has been answered.
Yes. And thanks, Schuyler. I guess this is the end. Let me just say that, too. We have this big stakeholder. We have developed so many friends over the years, about people that weigh in all the time. And you know what, I answer the phone, I answer my e-mails, and we have so many wonderful resources here at Southern. If you have good ideas, you've already helped us. You've helped us from a vision standpoint, you've helped us from a practical standpoint. And I think this company is better off for its engagement. And what we have developed is trust and a constructive environment in which we engage with everybody, whatever the issue. We are not perfect. We can always be better. And my admonition to people at Southern as good as we are is to essentially eat humble pie. We can always be better. Today can be better than yesterday. Tomorrow can be better than today. And we've always got to have this burning desire to make that future a reality. We can't rest on our laurels when you think about the big objectives we have now of completing Vogtle 3 and 4.
And then thinking through how to undertake this transition to get to a net 0 future. Man, these are big issues. Oh, and let's overlay, a societal effects of racial justice and equity for all. And when I think about energy justice and making sure that the clean, safe, reliable and affordable, oh, and let's add fair deployment of our critical product to society happens, we're going to need everybody's best thoughts.
So thank you for your engagement today. I'm so proud of this company, our results. I hope you are, too. Let me know if you have any questions going forward. We'll see you soon. Take care.
