Water Authority keen to engage with Warwickshire businesses
Extreme weather, water scarcity and flooding can all be felt within the same season as weather systems and consumption trends become more erratic. This means that businesses need to carefully consider the impact their actions can have. Businesses need to find a clear, sustainable path forward and Severn Trent, sustainability commitments running throughout, is keen to engage with business across Warwickshire. Severn Trent’s Ria Gaffney explains.
Severn Trent constantly strives to be sustainable and is keen to work with other local companies to support them with their sustainability goals.
The company is aiming for a net zero future and to help protect the environment in which it operates. To help do that, we are striving to meet firm commitments like our Triple Carbon Pledge. That is three clear net zero goals where we are committed to sourcing 100% of our energy from renewable sources by transitioning away from fossil fuels, for a cleaner energy grid and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We are planning to transition its entire vehicle fleet to electric vehicles (EVs) which aligns with the commitment to reduce emissions associated with transportation.
The final part of the pledge is that by 2030, we aim to achieve net zero carbon emissions. This means that the company will reduce its carbon footprint through various measures, including renewable energy adoption, energy efficiency improvements and various cutting edge innovative solutions.
But to go even further and faster with our net zero ambitions, we have also unveiled plans to create the world’s first net zero hub. The groundbreaking project, which is backed by all UK and Irish water companies and the international Net Zero Partnership with Aarhus Vand in Denmark and Melbourne Water in Australia, will transform a large, carbon intensive Wastewater Treatment Plant into the Net Zero Hub in Strongford. For the first time, the Net Zero Hub will see the most promising technologies being integrated on one site to reduce and remove carbon – eradicating 34,000 tonnes of carbon per year, which is equivalent to a person flying return between London and New York, 34,500 times. In addition to technologies to reduce and remove greenhouse gas emissions from the site, it also includes the installation of cellulose recovery from Dutch company Cirtec, which is a long-held ambition in the UK to remove toilet paper from sewage and recycle it into a valuable, sustainable material that can be used for other purposes such as insulation or in construction products.
Based at one of Severn Trent’s biggest sites that serves Stoke-on-Trent, the hub will not only put the Midlands on the map for innovative wastewater management but also support Severn Trent’s commitment to reducing its carbon footprint and protecting the environment by creating a ‘blueprint’ that it plans to implement at all its larger sites, including those in Warwickshire.
With its experience in this space and being a local company itself, Severn Trent is looking to working with Warwickshire businesses to help them reduce their own carbon emissions and share best practice. We are keen to meet with businesses across Warwickshire to highlight the value in aiming for net zero and how carbon can be reduced and changes made to turn more businesses sustainable.
Across Warwickshire the company is continually striving to reduce its impact on the environment. Regarding the health of the county’s rivers, we have introduced challenging targets that go beyond what the government or others have set. The goal is that none of our storm overflow operations will cause any harm to rivers by 2030.
We have also set the goal of halving the amount of spills into rivers from our overflows by 2030. And by 2045, five years ahead of Government targets, we aim to reduce spills to an average of 10 or less in any typical year. To help get us there, we’ve recently announced that we will invest over £300 million on our storm overflows in Warwickshire alone, going even further to improve local river health.
The investment for Warwickshire forms part of a wider £4.4bn injection into the 2,472 storm overflows across the Severn Trent region, as part of our Storm Overflow Action Plan (SOAP). A total of 141 storm overflows across Warwickshire will undergo investment which could range from increasing the capacity of its storage tanks to introducing green nature-based solutions. Severn Trent is also investing to ensure rivers are monitored closer than ever before with 100% of its storm overflows with monitors - and the company is now analysing around 300m pieces of data a year helping to prioritise investment.
The investment into overflows complements the work already taking place across Warwickshire, including a £78m project to improve the water quality along more than 50km of river in Shropshire and Warwickshire and help move two stretches (on the rivers Teme and Leam) towards bathing quality by 2025. This project will not only benefit the River Leam, but surrounding rivers such as the Avon will benefit from investment such as trialling ozone waste water technologies, something not seen in the UK before. It will also enable us as a business get to know our local Warwickshire community groups, engage with those who use and rely on the rivers where we even have a dedicated River Ranger who’s role it is to help protect Warwickshire’s waterways.
As a business, the river and environment are literally at the heart of everything we do. It helps us supply water to millions of people every single day. So healthy, thriving rivers and environments are in our very best interest and making sure there’s water for everyone.
While we’re going ahead with our river commitments, we’ve always been doing what we can to help create a sustainable future. In Coventry and Warwickshire, we kicked off our smart meter programme – as part of a £566m Green Recovery investment where our smart meters will help save water, help us find and fix leaks faster, while giving customers better control over their water bills. A more sustainable way of using water that helps make sure it gets to everywhere we need it to.
The golden thread to everything is the obvious need for, and the enduring power of, collaboration. To be sustainable, we need to work together as businesses and share expertise. All businesses can find their role in creating a more sustainable future, strive for net zero ambitions, and learn from one another. And in doing so we create opportunities for the customers and communities they serve.