Today, we announced second-quarter reported earnings of $0.45 per share.
Adjusting for special items, second-quarter earnings from ongoing operations were $0.55 per share, compared with $0.58 per share a year ago.
This included shifting about 35% to 40% of our workforce or more than 4,500 employees to work from home, and creating additional separation for those who must still report to a PPL facility due to the nature of their jobs.
While the most recent tropical storm Isaias, impacted about 70,000 of our customers in Pennsylvania, we were able to restore power to most of them within 24 hours and all of them within 48 hours, reinforcing again, little to no impact from COVID-19 on our ability to serve our customers even in the worst of conditions.
Finally, from a financial perspective, we've maintained a strong liquidity position of over $4 billion.
We've seen some recent developments pertaining to the next price control period, RIIO-2.
Ofgem has been very clear about three things in their RIIO-2 messaging.
On average, Ofgem cut the gas investment plans by about 20% and cut the transmission plans by about 45%.
We've led the way in RIIO-1 in terms of stakeholder engagement and we'll continue to lead in this area as we begin our business planning process toward the end of this year.
Therefore, we reiterated our earnings guidance range for 2020 of $2.40 to $2.60 per share, with results expected to track toward the lower end of our forecast range given COVID and unfavorable weather in the first half of the year.
Regarding 2021, we are withdrawing our prior 2021 forecast as a result of today's announcement regarding the potential sale of the U.K. business, and we will provide an updated 2021 forecast at the conclusion of the process, which we expect to occur in the first half of 2021.
First, I'd like to highlight that the estimated impact from COVID on our second-quarter results was about $0.06 per share, which was primarily due to lower sales volumes in the U.K. and lower demand revenue in Kentucky.
As we outlined in our projections on the first-quarter call, about two-thirds of the impact or $0.04 per share is recoverable through the U.K. decoupling mechanism on a two-year lag.
During the second quarter, we experienced a $0.01 favorable variance due to weather, compared to the second quarter of 2019, primarily in Pennsylvania.
Compared to our forecast, weather in the second quarter was about $0.01 unfavorable variance with stronger load in Pennsylvania being offset by more mild weather in the U.K. and Kentucky versus normal conditions.
In terms of dilution, we saw a $0.03 impact in the quarter primarily driven by the November 2019 draw on our equity forward contracts.
Moving to the segment drivers, excluding these items, our U.K. regulated segment earned $0.33 per share in the second-quarter 2020.
This represents a $0.01 decrease compared to a year ago.
These decreases were partially offset by higher realized foreign currency exchange rates compared to the prior period, with Q2 2020 average rates of $1.63 per pound, compared to $1.36 per pound in Q2 2019.
I'll note that we layered on additional hedges since our last quarterly call and are now hedged at 95% for the balance of 2020 at an average hedge rate of $1.47 per pound.
Moving to Pennsylvania, we earned $0.15 per share, which was $0.02 higher than our comparable results in Q2 2019.
We earned $0.10 per share, a $0.03 decrease from our results one year ago.
Results at corporate and other were $0.01 higher compared with a year ago, driven by several factors, none of which were individually significant.
For example, in Kentucky and Pennsylvania, we went from 15% to 20% C&I load declines at the peak of the lockdowns in April to more modest declines of 8% and 2%, respectively, for the month of June.
In the U.K., we saw some positive momentum as the U.K. government downgraded its alert level midmonth, although the recovery was more modest with June demand down about 11% versus the prior year.
We expect the annualized load sensitivities by segment that we provided last quarter will remain as good guide as we move through the balance of the year.
We've already communicated our targets of reducing CO2 emissions by at least 70% by 2040 and at least 80% by 2050.

Summary:
Today, we announced second-quarter reported earnings of $0.45 per share.
Adjusting for special items, second-quarter earnings from ongoing operations were $0.55 per share, compared with $0.58 per share a year ago.
Therefore, we reiterated our earnings guidance range for 2020 of $2.40 to $2.60 per share, with results expected to track toward the lower end of our forecast range given COVID and unfavorable weather in the first half of the year.
Regarding 2021, we are withdrawing our prior 2021 forecast as a result of today's announcement regarding the potential sale of the U.K. business, and we will provide an updated 2021 forecast at the conclusion of the process, which we expect to occur in the first half of 2021.
We expect the annualized load sensitivities by segment that we provided last quarter will remain as good guide as we move through the balance of the year.