We will never forget that we would not be in the business without our 4.3 million customers; they are our top priority.
We have thousands of employees in Connecticut, who work hard each day to provide our 1.7 million natural gas, water, and electric customers with the most reliable and responsive service possible.
During emergency situations, which we have had far too often over the past year, due to the historic storm levels, they are working up to 16 hours a day for as many days as it takes to ensure that our customers have their service restored promptly and safely, even in a pandemic.
Among many elements, the law will allow each of the state's utilities to build up to 200 -- 280 megawatts of solar generation, NSTAR Electric will be able to increase its level of solar generation in rate base from 70 megawatts to 350 megawatts.
As Phil mentioned during our year-end earnings call, we have budgeted approximately $500 million for this initiative from 2022 to 2025.
The other item with a direct impact on us is a 2,400 megawatts expansion of Massachusetts offshore wind authorization from 3,200 megawatts to 5,600 megawatts.
As you can see on Slide 2, there are now more than 10,000 megawatts of unawarded offshore wind authorizations in Southern New England and New York, with Massachusetts set to award up to 1,600 megawatts later this year.
Late last month BOEM released a schedule for reviewing the 704 megawatt project.
Finally, we expect to receive BOEM review schedule for our 924 megawatt Sunrise Wind project later this year.
The goal was to have about 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind turbines operating in the U.S. by 2030.
Already more than 1,750 megawatts are under contract to serve load in Connecticut, New York, and Rhode Islands.
So I'll start with Slide number 4 and noting that earnings were $1.06 per share in the first quarter, compared with earnings of $1.01 per share in the first quarter of 2020.
Results for both years included after-tax costs associated with our recent acquisition of the assets of Columbia Gas, Columbia Gas of Massachusetts and that's $0.02 per share this year and $0.01 per share in 2020.
Electric Distribution earned $0.27 per share in the first quarter of this year, compared with earnings of $0.39 per share in the first quarter of 2020.
The first is that we recorded a charge of $30 million or $0.07 per share, primarily to reflect customer credits of $28.4 million and an additional penalty of $1.6 million to be paid to the state of Connecticut.
Additionally, Electric Distribution results were negatively affected by approximately $20 million of higher storm-related expenses in the first quarter of 2021 and that's compared to a pretty quiet and warm first quarter in 2020.
And in fact, in this quarter, we experienced 31 separate storm events across our three states versus fairly limited activity in Q1 of 2020.
So, by contrast, our Natural Gas Distribution segment showed a sharp increase in earnings because it's now about 50% larger than it was a year ago.
It earned $0.43 per share in the first quarter of 2021 compared with earnings of $0.26 per share in the first quarter of 2020.
Improved results were due primarily to the addition of Eversource Gas of Massachusetts, which earned $0.14 per share in the quarter.
To date, more than 80% of the business processes have been transferred to Eversource from NiSource's, great progress has been made.
On the Electric Transmission segment, we earned $0.39 per share in the first quarter of 2021, compared with $0.38 per share in the first quarter of 2020.
Our Water Distribution segment earned $3.6 million in the first quarter of 2021, compared with earnings of $2.1 million in the first quarter of last year.
New England service company, as it's called, serves about 10,000 customers in the three states and has rate base of about $25 million.
As you probably noted in our news release and you can see on Slide 5, we are reaffirming our long-term earnings-per-share growth rate in the upper half of the 5% to 7% range.
We now project earnings per share toward the lower end of the $3.81 to $3.93 range and this includes the $0.07 per share impact of the credits.
In addition to the penalty I described previously, PURA also identified a 90 basis point reduction in our authorized distribution ROE.
To help you size that impact currently, CL&P's authorized ROE is 9.25% and we have approximately $5 billion of rate base at CL&P.
I would expect that the New England transmission owners and others will file comments opposing the change, which some see as being inconsistent with the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and with President Biden's focus on building out the nation's electrical infrastructure to bring more clean-energy resources to market.
As a helpful rule from a 10 basis point reduction in our transmission ROE effects consolidated earnings by about $0.01 per share.
In terms of financings, we completed $450 million of debt issuances so far this year, primarily to pay off maturities at Eversource parent and at the Aquarion in Connecticut -- Aquarion company in Connecticut.
However, as you know and we've stated in the past, we continue to expect to issue approximately $700 million of new equity through some sort of after market program and that would occur at various points in time over our forecast period.

Summary:
So I'll start with Slide number 4 and noting that earnings were $1.06 per share in the first quarter, compared with earnings of $1.01 per share in the first quarter of 2020.
As you probably noted in our news release and you can see on Slide 5, we are reaffirming our long-term earnings-per-share growth rate in the upper half of the 5% to 7% range.
We now project earnings per share toward the lower end of the $3.81 to $3.93 range and this includes the $0.07 per share impact of the credits.