Global climate has changed and will continue to change. Greenhouse gases (GHG’s) stay in the atmosphere for up to 100 years, as a result, even if society stopped producing GHG, the effects of climate change would continue to be felt. These changes are likely to result in hotter, drier summers, warmer, wetter winters and more extreme events such as heavy rainfall, storms and snow fall. This will present Severn Trent Water with both positive (opportunities) and negative (threats) effects upon our operations. It is therefore important that we work to reduce the impacts of the threats and maximise the opportunities to enable us to continue to supply quality water and waste water services to our customers.

We have already had first-hand experience of a number of major, severe weather events. For example the hot dry conditions in summers 2003, 2006 and 2010, the flooding in 2007, severe cold in winters 2009/10 and 2010/1. All of these have highlighted some vulnerability of our assets and services. We are already taking these into account in our corporate risk management, business planning and our water resource management plan processes.

Our climate change risk assessment

In January 2011 we submitted our report to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) on the detailed risk assessment of all of our operations, activities and services using the latest climate change projections (UKCP09). This provided further insight into the magnitude of change we can expect and on what timescales. Climate change presents us with both risks and opportunities, the most significant of which are presented below.

The key risks we face from hotter, drier summers are:
• Reduced water availability for abstraction and increased pressure on the ecology in the rivers and reservoirs across our region.
• Increased summertime demand for water e.g. as customers water their gardens more frequently. 
The main risk we face from an increase in winter rainfall and the intensity of summer storms is:
• Increased likelihood of flooding from sewers.

Climate change also provides some opportunities:
• Increased winter rainfall is likely to allow collection and storage of more water during winter to offset the impacts of hotter, drier summers. 
• Warmers winters will help reduced energy demand for heating

Our adaptation strategy

We will continue to build on the outputs of this report in updating our water resource management plan and our future business plans. Key to delivering this will be that we:
• Develop practical flexible, innovative, low carbon solutions that do not contradict our key strategic intention to minimise our carbon footprint.
• Continue to work with our stakeholders to identify and mange any dependencies, enhance and promote sustainable catchment management activities, reduce demand through reducing leakage and increasing water efficiency, and aid sustainable urban drainage and surface water management.
• Find the right balance of taking action to adapt without placing an undue cost burden on our customers, or adopt capital or energy intensive approaches that could adversely impact our commitment to carbon reduction.

You can down load a copy of our report to Defra from the links on the right. We hope that this report will help other organisations consider how climate change may affect their operations.

If you have any questions please contact our press office on 0247 771 5640 office hours or
0845 602 0659 out of hours.