Now, I've been with the company for 18 years, much of it in operations.
It's our 8,500 coworkers who are committed to excellence, delivering the highest value to our customers at the lowest cost possible.
Our adjusted earnings per share growth of 6% to 8% combined with our dividend provides a premium total shareholder return of 9% to 11%.
In 2020, we delivered adjusted earnings per share of $2.67, up 7% from 2019 and achieved operating cash flow of almost $2 billion, excluding $700 million of voluntary pension contributions in 2020.
Today, we're raising our adjusted earnings per share guidance for 2021 by $0.01 to $2.83 to $2.87 with a focus on the midpoint.
This reflects annual growth of 6% to 8% from our 2020 results.
Last month, we announced our 15th dividend increase in as many years, $1.74 per share, up 7% from the prior year.
We continue to target long-term annual earnings and dividend per share growth of 6% to 8%, again with a focus on the midpoint.
Today, we're also increasing our five-year capital plan to $13.2 billion, up $1 billion from our prior plan.
18 consecutive years of industry-leading financial performance.
We were able to provide over $80 million of support to our customers and communities in 2020 through support programs, low-income assistance, donations to foundations and reinvestment to improve safety and reliability.
This quite change in our work practices as a result of the pandemic, we maintained first quartile, employee engagement, achieved first quartile customer experience and attracted 126 megawatts of new load to our state, which brings with it significant investment and over 4,000 new jobs.
We added over 800 megawatts of new wind and are executing on 300 megawatts of new solar.
Furthering our commitment, over $700 million of investments were made to advance our clean energy transition, additionally, our demand response and energy efficiency programs continue to save our customers money, reduce carbon and earn an incentive.
And last but certainly not least we finished the year with more than $100 million in cost savings driven by the CE Way.
We will continue to lead the clean energy transition with support from our new five-year $13.2 billion capital investment plan, which translates to over 7% annual rate base growth and focuses on enhancing the safety and reliability of our systems, as we move toward net zero carbon and methane emissions.
In fact, 40% of our plan directly supports our clean energy transition and includes our renewable generation, electric distribution investment to support this generation, grid modernization as well as programs like our main invented service replacement programs which reduce methane emissions.
We have unique cost saving opportunities relative to peers and two above market PPAs, Palisades and MCV, which will generate nearly $140 million of power supply cost recovery savings.
This coupled with the future retirement of our remaining coal facilities provides over $200 million or 5% cost savings for our customers.
What makes us unique is our engaged coworkers, we value our best-in-sector employee engagement and our 8,500 coworkers who work every day to deliver the best value for our customers.
We're pleased to report our 2020 adjusted net income of $764 million or $2.67 per share, up 7% year-over-year off our 2019 actuals.
To avoid being repetitive with Garrick's earlier remarks, I'll just note that we invested $2.3 billion of capital in our electric and gas infrastructure to the benefit of customers, including investments in wind farms, which add approximately $500 million of RPS related rate base, which I'll remind you earns a premium return on equity of 10.7%.
I'll also note that our treasury team had a banner year successfully raising approximately $3.5 billion of cost effective capital which includes roughly $250 million of equity while navigating turbulent capital market conditions over the course of 2020.
Turning the page to 2021, as mentioned, we are raising our 2021 adjusted earnings guidance to $2.83 to $2.87 per share, which implies 6% to 8% annual growth off our 2020 actuals.
All in, we will continue to target the midpoint of our consolidated earnings per share growth range of 7% at year-end, which is in excess of the sector average.
To elaborate on the glide path to achieve our 2021 earnings per share guidance range, as you'll note in the waterfall chart on Slide 15, we'll plan for normal weather, which in this case amounts to $0.06 per share of positive year-over-year variance given the mild winter weather experienced in 2020.
Additionally, we anticipate $0.41 of earnings per share pickup in 2021 attributable to rate relief net of investment costs largely driven by the orders received in the second half of 2020.
As we look at our cost structure in 2021 you'll note approximately $0.27 per share of negative variance attributable to incremental O&M approved in our recent rate cases to support key initiatives around safety, reliability customer experience and decarbonization, needless to say we have underlying assumptions around productivity and waste elimination, driven by the CE Way and we'll always endeavor to overachieve on those targets while delivering substantial value for our customers.
And as usual, we didn't make excuses instead we offer transparency, devise our course of action and counted on the perennial will of our 8,500 co-workers to deliver for our customers, the communities we serve, and for you, our investors.
To summarize our financial objectives in the near and long term, we expect 6% to 8% adjusted earnings per share and dividend growth and strong operating cash flow generation.
Given the increase in our five-year capital plan, we anticipate annual equity need of up to $250 million in 2021 and beyond, which we are confident that we can comfortably raise through our equity dribble program to minimize pricing risk.
And two additional items I'll mention with respect to our financial strength as we kick off 2021 that are not on the page but no less important are that we concluded 2020 with $1.6 billion of net liquidity, which positions our balance sheet well as we execute our updated capital plan going forward.
The latter of which benefits roughly 3,000 of our active co-workers and 8,000 of our retirees.

Summary:
Today, we're raising our adjusted earnings per share guidance for 2021 by $0.01 to $2.83 to $2.87 with a focus on the midpoint.
Turning the page to 2021, as mentioned, we are raising our 2021 adjusted earnings guidance to $2.83 to $2.87 per share, which implies 6% to 8% annual growth off our 2020 actuals.