The demand-led approach involves engaging and collaborating with customers, supply chain partners, businesses and other local stakeholders. Abstraction will be cut by 10 per cent by 2025 and 25 per cent by 2030 as the number of customers with smart meters increases to 25 per cent by 2025 and 100 per cent of billpayers by 2030.
Meanwhile, the company will move all its consumers onto smart tariffs and ensure all new connections feature rain/greywater supply by the next decade.
Henrietta Stock, energy and carbon manager, said: “We currently emit 2,550 tonnes of carbon per year in the delivery of water, which is 89 per cent lower than ten years ago because of changes we have made to how we source and use energy. This has included investing in more efficient pumping equipment, installing solar generation at our sites, increasing the proportion of electric vehicles in our fleet and ensuring 100 per cent of the electricity we purchase is from green sources.
“We expect to see significant change between now and 2030, including regulatory transformation and technology innovation, which may lead us to change the specifics of our approach, always aiming to keep our routemap focused on the most sustainable, resilient and lowest cost path to net zero.”
As well as reducing demand SES aims to reduce electricity consumption by 15 per cent by 2030 and increase submetering of its consumption by 50 per cent in the same period. The company calculated this would contribute 12 per cent (300 tonne) reduction of its C02e target.
On top of this, the company will double its on-site generation of renewable energy, switch to a fully electrified fleet and phase out all use of fossil fuels.
The company said it considered this approach to be the most affordable, sustainable and resilient way to achieve net zero in the coming decade and will be supported by other changes such as electrifying its fleet and increasing renewable generation.
Looking beyond the 2030 targets for operational carbon, the company will address its embodied carbon from capex projects. To achieve this it will begin measuring capital carbon emissions from this year and develop a reporting methodology with others in the sector to make informed decisions on capital investment programmes.
A Public Interest Commitment was made in 2018 by all English water companies to achieve net zero by 2030. Coordinated by Water UK a roadmap was published in November showing how 10 megatonnes of emissions would be saved.