Carbon management

To be a sustainable water company, we need to decarbonise our operations and investment as much as we can. Our long-term aim is to be carbon neutral by 2020.

Our carbon management strategy was developed in 2001. It is based on the hierarchy of emissions avoidance, energy efficiency and renewables and we are taking concerted action in each of these areas.

We are increasingly focusing on energy efficiency particularly where aeration and disinfection are part of sewage treatment.

We have been increasing renewable energy generation from the biogas produced by sludge digesters and have planning permission for four large wind turbines at one of our sites.

We have done work to assess other renewable energy generating potential and have the engineering expertise to take concepts forward to capital investment. The result is that we have generated 15% of our total electricity use – of which we exported 5GWh.

The forthcoming Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) – a UK-wide emissions trading scheme – is becoming a bigger issue as its first year approaches.

The combination of this and higher energy prices means that we are improving measurement and management of energy and fuel use, while our understanding of process emissions and supply chain impacts is also improving.

We have also been developing tools for working out the carbon footprint of capital investment, including construction impacts as well as the operational use of our assets.

This work was included in the business plan submitted to Ofwat for investment during 2010-15.

We also need to think about how to adapt to the effects of climate change. This includes:

• measures to improve our security of supply – so that we ensure we can provide water in the event of a major incident, eg, flooding, pollution or catastrophic failure of one of our sources
• working in partnership with other groups to prepare for and find solutions to flooding.