Reducing our greenhouse gas emissions

Greenhouse gasses contribute to climate change and we contributed around 0.06% of the UK's total greenhouse emissions in 2018. We have now fully committed ourselves to achieving zero net emissions by 2030 to help meet the UK’s stretching targets.

How are we performing?

We’ve been reporting our performance for more than a decade and have made significant headway in reducing our carbon emissions by

Each year, we report on our emissions in our regulatory performance reporting, in our annual report, and the data is also available in our new sustainability report, and in our submission to the carbon disclosure project. We have held the Carbon Trust Standard since 2009 in recognition of consistent emission reductions and effective carbon management processes. Our performance against the standard is in the top 15% of all organisations.

What we are doing

Reducing our energy use and self generating renewable, green energy tackles the main sources of our emissions and brings financial benefits for both ourselves and our customers.

We had committed to generating 50% of our electricity consumption via renewable sources by 2020. As we are on course for achieving this milestone we have now committed to going further by targeting 100% renewably source electricity by 2030.

In addition to our operational emissions, there is also ‘embedded’ carbon from construction activity such as building treatment works and laying pipes. We champion improvement in these areas by working with our supply chain to bring about positive change.

We also work closely with our customers to help them use water more efficiently. Reducing consumption means we would need to produce less water and therefore use less energy and chemicals.  

The future

We are one of a few UK companies to have signed up to the triple pledge of

We are aiming to tackle this through innovative means such as energy generation from sewage, food waste and energy crop in addition to sources such as solar, wind and hydroelectricity. We are also investing in infrastructure across some of our large sites to support the widespread adoption of electric vehicles.

We are determined to do even more. That is why we have created the World Water Innovation Fund. We’ve joined forces with like-minded companies across the globe to find new ways of working – pooling resources and ideas to develop and accelerate new technologies to tackle some of the challenges faced by the global community.