Managing our carbon emissions

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges for humanity. That’s why we’re:

• Committed to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions
• Transforming the way we create and use energy.
• Helping protect our world and water supply for future generations.  

For the last 30 years, we’ve been on a journey to reduce our carbon emissions. We’ve reduced our net market based emissions by 495.4 ktCO₂e. This is in comparison to 1990, despite customer numbers increasing by over 4 million. 

We’ve achieved this drop by:  

• Implementing innovative heat recovery and energy efficiency initiatives  
• Reducing our use of fossil fuels  
• Buying certified renewable energy to power our sites sustainably

In 2023/24 we self-generated 498GWh of renewable energy, covering 27.3% of our own energy needs.

Our carbon management journey 

We pledged to reduce our operational net carbon emissions to zero by 2030. Since then, there have been some material changes to the assumptions used by the water sector. These have a direct impact on the net zero challenge and include: 

• Changes to our understanding of levels of Nitrous Oxide. This includes levels associated with the wastewater treatment process

• Increased operational emissions due to changes in reporting scope boundaries

• Additional carbon impacts associated with increases in treatment standards 

• Government guidance to consider phasing of non-statutory commitments including Net Zero

These developments don’t change our desire to achieve Net Zero which we'll update in 2025. This will be after we have agreed funding and priorities with our regulators. As our understanding evolves we’ll continue to update on progress, challenges, and opportunities.