Our route to net zero carbon emissions
We are comitted to reducing the impact of our operations and continue to implement more sustainable ways of pumping, treating and distributing millions of litres of water every single day.
We are an energy-intensive business abstracting, treating and pumping 160 million litres of water each day to 745,000 customers in parts of Surrey, south London, Kent and West Sussex.
We operate a network of 62 operational assets and 2,000 miles of water mains across 322 square miles. Each million litres of water we supply produces around 55kg of CO2e and we currently produce around 9.5 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions every day through our day-to-day operations.
Over the last ten years we have cut our operational greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 90% through increasing our use of renewable energy, becoming more energy efficient and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.
By 2030 we are committed to achieving net zero operational carbon emissions, in-line with the Public Interest Commitment made by all English water companies. Find out more about the industry's commitment here: Water UK - Net Zero 2030 Routemap.
We've developed our own routemap to get us there focused primarily on managing the demand for water and energy. We will:
- Become more energy efficient
- Reduce demand for water
- Generate more energy from renewable sources
- Decarbonise our fleet of vehicles
- Phase out our use of fossil fuels
We'll work with our employees, supply chain and customers to help us achieve our target and, in the longer term, we'll also take steps to reduce the embodied carbon - carbon produced as we build and develop assets, such as new treatment works and pipelines.
What happens next?
Achieving our net zero carbon ambitions is not something we can do on our own. We need to take our customers, communities and supply chain partners on this journey too because they can influence the carbon emissions produced by supplying water.
This is the approach we will follow to implement our net zero routemap:
- Involve customers and employees
- Consider carbon reduction in our short-term decision making
- Develop our longer-term plans with carbon reduction at the heart of our sustainable approach
- Measure and report on our progress annually