1. Carbon Accounting and Management in the Water Industry Carbon Accounting Conference 11 th March 2009 Heriot Watt University Dr Mark Williams Business Strategy and Climate Change Manager
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7. From “Carbon accounting in the UK water industry: Guidelines for dealing with ‘embodied carbon’ and whole life carbon accounting”, UKWIR 08/CL/01/6 CO2 from direct and indirect energy use See Phase 1 First Construction See Phase 2 (Section 2 + Section 3) N 2 O, CH 4 from processes See Phase 1 Capital maintenance and renewal See Phase 2 (Section 4.3.4) Construction – Embodied emissions Operation and Maintenance – Operational emissions Embodied Emissions DEFRA Guideline Emissions Non - Defra Emissions FF CO 2 emissions* Other GHG emissions + *CRC, ROCs and EU ETS all only consider Fossil Fuel CO 2 but their rules differ in detail. + + Home water heating Local customer water recycling or harvesting investment Water N 2 O emissions downstream of effluent discharges See Phase 2 (Section 5) Excluded emissions (examples) Embodied Emissions CO2 from direct and indirect energy use First Construction N 2 O, CH 4 from processes Chemicals for Treatment Capital maintenance and renewal Construction – Embodied emissions Whole Life Carbon Emissions Operation and Maintenance – Operational emissions Embodied Emissions DEFRA Guideline Emissions Non - Defra Emissions CO 2 emissions* Other GHG emissions + *CRC, ROCs and EU ETS all only consider Fossil Fuel CO 2 but their rules differ in detail. + + Home water heating Local customer water recycling or harvesting investment Water N 2 O emissions downstream of effluent discharges Excluded emissions (examples) Embodied Emissions
8. Operational Boundaries (adapted from Figure 5.2, UKWIR, 2007) Operational activities from leased buildings Sludge transport and disposal Waste water treatment Water treatment Sludge treatment PFI Company Direct and indirect emissions Scottish Water
13. Capital Emissions: First construction Site Preparation Commissioning Construction Demolition Clearance Waste Transport Concrete Steel Aggregates Waste Plant Pumping Sampling mileage Non Infrastructure Site Preparation Commissioning Construction Demolition Clearance Waste Transport Concrete Steel Aggregates Waste Plant Pumping Sampling mileage Excavation Pipe work Waste Transport Materials Waste Infrastructure Excavation Pipe work Waste Transport Materials Waste
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Editor's Notes
From our perspective the challenge is massive I mentioned earlier the £4bn programme to 2010. As well as significantly improving service, this has (and will continue to) deliver massive quality improvements to meet the various EU led regulatory standards. However, meeting the quality outputs has a cost. The water industry has dramatically increased its energy consumption in recent years to meet regulatory standards. We are currently on track to increase consumption further to 2010 to meet enforceable standards. In many cases these require a step change in technology which is difficult to avoid.
Over the past few months we have completed, in partnership with the Carbon Trust, the first carbon footprint of Scottish Water. Our 2006-2007 carbon footprint from operating our service is 461,000 tonnes, equivalent to the emissions from a town the size of Perth. By 2010m it may be 0.5m. On a per capita basis it is almost the same as E&W companies, perhaps slightly larger owing to the land area we cover.
How does that break down?
You will see that electricity is over 2 thirds of our footprint and that, as hinted earlier the energy used in treating wastewater is almost half of our electricity bill. Water treatment and supply is comparatively less, one of the reasons being that a lot of our network is gravity driven. Transport emissions are small in spite of the size of our fleet. In trying to manage this we are not suggesting a backtrack in quality, but we need to focus on better ways of delivering future improvements. We need to be much more open to innovation – in low energy treatment, prepared to take chances and try new things and different ways of meeting the standards, to look at optimising the running of our works to their environment. We need to pose questions that can only be answered in partnership with regulators and stakeholders: - should the water industry invest to remove phosphate or should we ban their use? Why do regulations require us to run the treatment works to meet standards that may not be applicable all year round from an environmental perspective? There is a clear need for the cost of carbon to be taken into account when setting environmental standards and when designing and building our works. We must seek to deliver solutions that offer the best ‘net’ environmental benefit.
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