In an Expert Focus article for Waterbriefing, Adrian Johnson, Technical Director and Sustainability Leader at Stantec, discusses why the path to demonstrating more social value and natural capital benefit in the water sector, for net zero carbon emissions, must be fit for purpose – and how to get there.

Adrian Johnson: Delivering better and more sustainable outcomes for customers, communities and the environment has become central to the success of water companies. Indeed, in addition to delivering excellence for customers within their regulatory framework, they must now demonstrate wider social value and environmental benefit. This is driven by government, customer bodies, regulators and the investment community, all of whom want to see that companies are truly operating in the public interest.

The language of sustainability may change – climate emergency, net zero carbon, natural capital, single use plastics, etc. – as the urgency, understanding and approaches to addressing the issues mature, but the ever-increasing need to deliver more for less is inexorable. The complexity and uncertainty of problems continues to increase, and the definition of value now encompasses much more than direct performance against cost.

We now firmly talk of value in social and environmental terms. More than ever, we must ‘co- create’ evidence-based approaches to deliver that value. Together we need to work out how to deliver solutions that provide the service customers and communities want in ways that protect and enhance ecosystem services, benefit communities, are resilient to system shocks and environmental change, avoid greenhouse gas emissions (or better still remove them from the atmosphere) and all for a price society can afford!

Water sector National Environment Programmme set to drive substantial investment in AMP7

We could get our heads round this if we were merely trying to stand still. However, the water sector is under unceasing pressure to improve and enhance its service provision. The scale of the water industry’s National Environment Programme, for instance, is considerable and is set to drive substantial investment in AMP7. Many areas are subject to significant growth pressures too.

This is alongside the need to keep investing to maintain the vast array of pipelines, pumping stations and treatment works to ensure system resilience to the risks from increasing drought, more extreme floods, sea level rise and higher temperatures.

We know that conventional approaches to maintaining resilient services are no longer good enough; we just cannot afford (financially or environmentally) to keep putting more concrete and steel in the ground and using more energy and chemicals, particularly when we look up from a 5- year short-term view to longer-term sustainability. How do we meet all these competing priorities without unacceptable trade-offs?

This is not new. Momentum to do things differently has been building for years. But now it’s different, for two reasons:

• firstly, the urgency of the need to change has increased substantially;
• secondly (and more optimistically) we are getting better at assembling the evidence we need to justify doing things differently, to work together to make better choices.

We must embed lifecycle carbon management as a standard. The climate emergency is the primary example of this. To meet the Government’s target to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 (by 2045 in Scotland) will require transformational change across the economy. In making its public interest commitment to achieve net zero emissions zero by 2030, the water industry recognises it must play its part.

Creation, use & maintenance of infrastructure is associated with more than half of the UK’s GHG emissions 

The science of carbon accounting is becoming more robust and it is now more commonly used to help compare alternative interventions in terms of their carbon impact. But this commitment must extend across the asset lifecycle; the UK’s Infrastructure Carbon Review told us that the creation, use and maintenance of infrastructure, as well as its operation, is associated with more than half of the UK’s GHG emissions and so we need an integrated approach.

PAS 2080 Carbon Management in Infrastructure provides a comprehensive framework for doing this but requires leadership, good governance, consistent quantification and reporting, and innovative application of the carbon reduction hierarchy.

In short, if we are serious about carbon reduction, about achieving net zero emissions, we must embed it in our collective DNA. This means challenging the need for carbon-intensive concrete and steel, for increased energy and chemicals use at every turn. Asking the carbon question at every decision point, at every point of approval, in the board room, the design office and on site, must become as natural to us as has an uncompromising approach to health and safety.

Challenge for water sector is to develop its natural capital account & integrate this approach into investment decisions

We are now taking steps to account for natural capital. Significant work has been undertaken by the UK’s Natural Capital Committee and others in setting out the need to understand better stocks of natural capital, the services they provide, their worth and the costs to maintain them.

The challenge for the water sector is not only to develop its natural capital account but to integrate this approach into investment decisions. For example, a natural capital approach can help stakeholders to understand the current health of a catchment – in terms of land and water stocks and services – and how different types of environmental change and human intervention will impact it.

For example, natural capital accounting can help in comparing the wider costs and benefits of traditional end-of-pipe solutions for removing phosphate from water courses with those of local land management and agricultural measures. Such accounting can help us to identify the best combinations of these types of measures.

But undertaking this type of multi-dimensional accounting can quickly become complicated, particularly when we seek to extend the capitals approach to encompass wider social, human and intellectual dimensions. Identifying meaningful metrics and then obtaining evidence for valuing them can be difficult and we often do not have the time to collect the data and undertake the analysis to everyone’s satisfaction.

What we need is a practical uncomplicated approach that focuses on the issues that are material to each decision, engages stakeholders and helps to reach consensus whilst avoiding overly detailed and time-consuming valuation.

Driving new approaches

Traditional ‘grey’ infrastructure solutions have grown out of the fact that engineers and scientists have been employed by society to deploy safe solutions to meet its needs – in the water sector this means supplying clean water and removing wastewater, reliably, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The urgency of addressing the issues mentioned above is changing this. It is leading to different attitudes to risk and potential challenge to tried and tested standards. Alternatives such as wetland treatment systems, sustainable drainage and other nature-based approaches, as well as advanced technologies to recover as much energy and resources as we can, are being considered more seriously. Such approaches have the potential to deliver multiple benefits – for example, greater biodiversity, improved water quality and better flood protection – that enhance natural capital and deliver carbon reduction.

Towards collaborative decision-making and adaptive management in the face of uncertainty 

The adoption of novel solutions means clients, the supply chain and wider stakeholders working together to challenge the status quo, to accept different risk profiles, to trial new approaches and to accept that solutions may take longer to deliver their benefits than a hard asset may have done in the past.

But that is why we need to accept and adopt an adaptive management approach. This concept, which originates from ecosystems management, is a method of managing resources in the face of uncertainty. It promotes a continual cycle of assessment, planning, implementation, monitoring learning and adaptation where success can be built up incrementally.

Agreeing the way forward no longer depends on a single decision at a point in time. The decision-making process may take longer but it is just as valid as long as it recognises the interests and contributions of different stakeholders, is based on evidence, is transparent and has a mechanism for achieving consensus. When combined with co-creation it could be a powerful approach and will help to demonstrate the social value and environmental benefits and carbon reduction that society now demands the sector deliver.

Adrian Johnson: A Chartered Civil Engineer, Adrian Johnson is a technical director with Stantec, specialising in sustainable development, climate change and carbon management in the water sector. Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it