Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Welcome to the quarterly earnings conference call. [Operator instructions] Today's call is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I'll now turn the call over to Rich Kinder, executive chairman of Kinder Morgan.

Rich Kinder -- Executive Chairman

Thank you, Ted. And before we begin, as we always do, I'd like to remind you that KMI's earnings release today and this call include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as well as certain non-GAAP financial measures. Before making any investment decisions, we strongly encourage you to read our full disclosures on forward-looking statements and use of non-GAAP financial measures that are set forth at the end of our earnings release, as well as review our latest filings with the SEC for important material assumptions, expectations and risk factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated and described in such forward-looking statements. An analyst recently described Kinder Morgan as a capital-efficient business model leveraged to natural gas infrastructure growth.

I largely agree with that assessment, although it omits our significant steps in our energy transition efforts, including renewable natural gas, renewable diesel and potentially carbon capture and sequestration. I spent the last several quarters on this call, describing that capital-efficient business model. And today, I want to spend a bit of time discussing natural gas infrastructure and the value of our existing infrastructure in today's environment. As we all know, it's become increasingly difficult to build new greenfield pipeline projects, particularly in the Northeast and other areas outside the U.S.

Gulf Coast. While this situation is, in my opinion, unfortunate and poor public policy, it does make existing infrastructure even more valuable. I don't think that value is fully recognized by the equity markets. The difficulty in building new pipeline and ancillary facilities widens the moat to use long bucket sprays around existing assets at a company like KMI.

That's an obvious source of additional value. But beyond that, having such an extensive network already in place affords great opportunity for a company like ours to extend and expand our assets on an incremental basis without the Herculean task of permitting and building a new greenfield project. Those step-out projects can provide great service to our customers and yield a very good return for our shareholders. We're fortunate at KMI that a large portion of our network is in Texas and Louisiana, states that understand and appreciate the need for new energy infrastructure and where so much of the demand for additional throughput, particularly natural gas, is located.