Progress on our strategy
Our carbon management strategy is beginning to make headway and this year we have increased our renewable energy generation from combined heat and power (CHP) from 62.37 GWh in 2006/07 to 80.5 GWh in 2007/08. Please see performance table.
We have developed a new assessment mechanism called CAST (Carbon and Sustainability Tool) to help us make our capital investment programme more sustainable and carbon efficient. We will be using CAST in our forthcoming price review submission, setting out our investment plans for the next five years. CAST has been endorsed by the Scottish Institute of Sustainable Technology as “a commendable attempt to develop a standard tool and methodology”.
Making carbon integral to the way we do business is critical to the delivery of our strategy. We have set up a 'Carbon Champion' network of 23 employees who will work with their business areas to put our carbon plans into practice. To help with these plans, we have allocated £1 million to a carbon funding scheme which will help make projects with a carbon benefit become a reality. The first project to receive funding from the scheme is a motor replacement programme, focusing on replacing wastewater pumps with more efficient equivalents.
Our senior leadership team continues to promote our carbon strategy and this year has approved a ‘Think Carbon’ employee engagement programme which is also supported by the Carbon Trust’s Low Carbon Culture Company. This is already showing results with the creation of our carbon champion network and the development of a company-wide programme focused on leadership, ideas implementation and engagement which will be launched this year. We have also been running a poster campaign in our offices, to remind employees how they can help support our objectives and do their bit, which has proved very popular.
Our communications with our customers has focused on the link between water efficiency and carbon reduction. Using less water has benefits both in terms of reducing the amount of fuel used to heat water for domestic use and in cutting our carbon footprint for the production and supply of water to people’s homes. We have developed an online water meter calculator which helps customers monitor and understand the impact their water use has on carbon emissions.
We continue to work with our key stakeholders to ensure we play our part in reducing carbon emissions. With our water regulator, OFWAT, we are exploring how we can maximise renewable energy generation and minimise emissions. We are working closely with ‘Business in the Community’ to ensure that the link between the consumption of utility services and the related carbon impact is made across other sectors.
To deliver the longer term target set out in our strategic direction statement we are pursuing a number of projects including expanding our renewable energy generation (investigating the potential for wind turbines to power our assets and increasing the number of hydro-turbines), exploring how we can make greater use of sewage gas as a heat, energy and fuel source and carrying out research to understand what low carbon utility service provision might look like for our communities in 2050.