Climate change mitigation
Climate change mitigation means minimising the negative impacts of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Climate change mitigation is a key issue for the water and sewerage sectors because they are large consumers of energy. Their operational emissions account for nearly 1% of the UK’s total. In addition, as asset intensive sectors they are responsible for significant emissions associated with construction and the manufacture of the products they use. We expect companies to understand their emissions and play their part in the UK’s effort to reduce them.
We are committed to helping to mitigate climate change through our approach to regulation. We currently monitor each company's greenhouse gas emissions annually in line with Government guidance and we publish these figures in our service and delivery reports. This has made sure that companies properly understand their emissions, and that we can monitor their progress in a consistent way.
We continue to develop our regulatory approach to better encourage companies to reduce their emissions.
One way companies can reduce their emissions is by generating renewable energy as an integral part of providing water and sewerage services. The regulated companies now generate over 600GWh of renewable electricity per year.
In the 2009 price review we included a further £57 million for renewable energy projects. These will save the equivalent of more than half a million tonnes of CO2e each year, as well as delivering £8.8 million of operational expenditure savings for customers.
