United Utilities – Embedding carbon management

The Prince's Mayday Network

United Utilities' carbon management programme covers all May Day Pledges from measuring and reporting to engaging customers. United Utilities recognise in order to truly move to low carbon operations it is crucial to embed carbon reduction into key management processes and decisions, enabling staff at all levels to contribute.

Process

In doing so United Utilities have increased the number of climate change measures in business performance scorecards.  These scorecards form part of every employee’s bonus and some 95% of employees have at least one climate change measure, aligning individual objectives with those of the business. 

For example, all wastewater operators are incentivised to increase the electricity generated from CHP engines, which directly links to the high level carbon reduction measure.

United Utilities is using a suite of carbon and sustainability estimating tools (CASE) to assess the impact and cost of carbon across the asset investment programme. 

CASE calculates the CO2 within both construction materials and asset operation.  Using the shadow price of carbon, United Utilities include carbon in financial modelling, assessing the true whole life cost of an investment decision. 

Impact

  • Selected solution for treating waste water sludge has an overall lesser carbon footprint of 32,200 tonnes CO2e
  • United Utilities successfully secured a change to its regulatory contract to deliver this more sustainable solution
  • One of four DVD carbon management case studies for the Carbon Trust
  • Recipient of Carbon Trust standard, demonstrating year on year reduction in carbon emissions for the last three years

See also

Bookmark this page with: