Carbon - The Challenge
Barry Oliver, Technical Director at Imtech Process discusses the impact of the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) regulations and how Imtech Process can work with the water companies to help them meet their targets.
Introduction
Water companies have recently stated in their strategic directions statements their commitments to achieve 25-30% reductions in carbon usage by 2020. AMP5 Business Plans are even being carbon costed and they will come under CRC regulations, which will include carbon trading, which comes into force in 2013.
Trading of carbon means that what ever tonnage of CO2 a company uses will be given a cost. Therefore, if a company uses one megawatt an hour – as well as costing approximately £80 for the actual material, there will be an additional cost of £10-20 per megawatt. When you consider the high energy costs we are already looking at – just think about the additional impact this will mean! 2013 is still five years away, but shadow accounting will probably come in as early as the start of AMP 5.
What is the current situation?
Over recent months water companies have been carrying out and updating baseline studies to identify their carbon footprint – the carbon impact of their overall company activities. For example, Dwr Cymru Welsh Water currently use about 350,000 tonnes of CO2 in providing its service to approximately 3 million customers and Anglian Water uses in the region of 450,000 tonnes of CO2 for almost 6 million customers.
By far the largest contributor to footprint for both these companies, and all water companies, is power use, which represents 40-50% of carbon impact.
Severn Trent has already taken steps to offset this usage, and to date 18% of its power needs are being met by renewable power generation, which is mainly from aerobic digestion of sewer sludge and Combined Heat and Power (CHP) units, which use digester gas, of which approximately 60% is methane. UUOS has also achieved similar levels of offset energy.
It is clear that different water companies are at different stages, and some have made more progress than others – Anglian Water are on track to achieve 20% savings on energy use compared to its reference level of 1990.
And, the challenge for all new investments is to take full account of the carbon impact to a scheme and identify smarter solutions which will help drive towards providing customers with the lowest sustainable cost of service.
A particular challenge for water companies is to understand and account for embedded carbon associated with manufacture and construction. This requires working closely with the whole supply chain. In order to play our part in moving towards a lower carbon society we have measured the carbon footprint of our own business, and in turn we encourage our supply chain to measure their carbon footprint and the embedded carbon associated with manufacture and construction.
Imtech Process’ carbon usage is approximately 900 tonnes a year, which is the equivalent of 4 tonnes per employee – which excludes carbon impact from commuting, but includes business mileage.
Due to the nature of the business – engineering service providers, construction management and the co-locating in long term frameworks with clients, it is unsurprising that the preliminary results show that two thirds of our carbon footprint is associated with business mileage. The remaining third is 90% power, will small amounts for paper, water and waste.
The company has set itself a target, which we agreed at Board level, to reduce business mileage by 5% in 2007. To enable us to achieve this target, we have committed to improving our conference facilities.
Other initiatives underway include incentives for car sharing and regional environmental co-ordination meetings, office Green teams, senior management support and leadership. Competitions and reward programmes are being developed to reward best practise and innovation across the company.
Stuart Bell, Technical Manager based in Burntwood and Greenhill, has taken on the responsibility of providing a standard approach to carbon accounting across the business and promoting best practise and I have taken on Board level responsibility, encouraging the company to become ‘Carbon Conscientious’.
Examples of the way forward
Anglian Water
The AMP 4 Biosolids programme we have completed for Anglian is an industry leading example of delivering lowest sustainable treatment and reuse of sewage sludge.
This programme has replaced energy and resource intensive treatment processes with an advanced digestion facility which gives the benefit of high volatile solids destruction (55-60%), high efficiency CHP to maximise renewable power generation and six log pathogen destruction, allowing a very high quality stabilised biosolid to be recycled to local agriculture in an environmentally safe and economic manner. Overall, this programme will deliver sustainable reductions in operating costs and more than seven megawatts of additional renewable energy generation. This has helped Anglian Water reduce their operating costs by approximately £6 million/year. Well done to Tim Speakman and Graeme Pugh, who worked so hard on this scheme.
Dwr Cymru Welsh Water
Imtech Process has also worked closely with Welsh Water to develop the company’s sludge strategy, taking into account the increasing energy prices and the technical advances demonstrated in Anglian Water.
The programme of work is now underway to replace the energy intensive treatment plants such as thermal drying, with advanced digestion facilities including CHP. This programme is targeted to deliver more than £7 million reduction in operating costs – approximately seven megawatts of renewable power generation and carbon footprint reduction of approximately 50,000 tonnes/year.
The long term goal is to provide carbon neutral service, particularly at large centres, such as Cardiff East Wastewatwer Treatment Works.
Through our understanding and early adoption of carbon accounting practises in capital delivery we have been able to identify lowest whole life cost and low carbon wastewater treatment solutions.
An example of this is the recently completed project in South Wales – Crynant, which has included RBCs and nitrifying reed beds and has helped to halve the power costs of sewage treatment compared to the conventional process. Well done in particular to Joe Merry, who was fundamental to the success of this scheme.
Next steps
There is still a lot more to do regarding the minimising of waste and the carbon impact in construction through reuse and recycling of material, such as carbon absorbing concrete additives etc. Our goal is to be the industry leader in delivering lowest carbon water services.
It is still a developing field and we all need to work together to enable us to achieve significant savings in carbon – at home and at work. Remember, if Admans can produce a carbon neutral beer, then I am sure we can help our clients provide a carbon neutral waste and wastewater service.
If you are interested in getting more involved in the challenge to become carbon neutral by becoming Carbon Champions, not carbon copies of our predecessors, then please contact Barry Oliver at barry.oliver@imtech.co.uk