A new report from the UK’s leading water organisation  has flagged up tension between increasing environmental water quality standards that provide “questionable benefit to customers” and the energy – and carbon emissions – that water companies must use in order to meet them.

The comments come with the publication of the water industry's annual report of sustainability against a range of indicators by Water UK, the body which represents all the UK water and sewerage companies.

Introducing the report - Sustainability Indicators 2010/11 – Water UK said the indicators highlighted good progress in a number of areas. Drinking water quality is higher than ever, leakage is down and the amount of renewable energy produced by the industry has increased significantly.

However, a harsh winter last year led to problems with burst pipes and service interruptions, and pollution incidents led to more convictions for companies than in previous years. Water UK said continued investment in an ageing infrastructure was necessary to reduce the risk of these and other failures happening in future.

The information in the report, which relates to the 2010/11 financial year, has been provided by all of Water UK’s member companies, the statutory water and wastewater service providers in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Water UK said the report showed that companies were building resilience and sustainability into their businesses. However, it warned that customers, especially in financially challenging times, might question the environmental work carried out by the industry, and expected a robust economic case to be made.

The report highlights tension between increasing environmental water quality standards that provide questionable benefit to customers, and the energy – and carbon emissions – that companies must use in order to meet these standards. While many companies are developing renewable energy to offset these costs, a clear and stable policy framework within which to make investment decisions was needed. Recent changes in the Carbon Reduction Commitment and feed-in tariffs for solar PV have caused some concern.

Renewable energy generation rose from 665 Gigawatt hours to 877. Total annual energy use rose slightly from  9,012 to 9,016 Gigawatt hours which the report says could be a result of increased pumping of water to maintain supplies during the severe winter when leakage increased demand.

However, total Greenhouse Gas Emissions rose from 4.95 to to 5.01 Million tonnes CO2. The report says that growth in emissions is a result of the slight increase in the industry’s energy use, coupled with an increase in the carbon intensity of the UK’s grid electricity.

The report says the water industry is working closely with quality regulators to seek alternative ways of meeting standards without increasing energy use. The increased level of renewable energy generation  is mainly the result of significant investment by companies in Combined Heat and Power (CHP), and in generating biogas from the anaerobic digestion of sludge. Other contributions include renewable energy from hydro, solar and wind and imported renewable energy.

Many companies have taken a strategic decision to increase renewable energy generation to offset the impacts of increased energy prices, use their resources (e.g. sludge) as efficiently as possible, and increase revenue (e.g. through the sale of Renewable Obligation Certificates, ROCs,). 

With 10% of all the energy used by the industry now coming from its own renewable sources, the report says the industry is making a substantial contribution to the government’s target of 20% renewable energy by 2020.

Five-fold increase in supply interruptions

Across the other indicators, he most significant fall-off in sustainability was the level of water supply interruptions to properties (in excess of 6 hours' duration) which saw a five-fold increase over the previous year - 700,255 in 2010/11 compared with 119, 880 in 2009/10. This was attributed to one-off events during the exceptionally severe winter weather in late 2010 and early 2011.