The Water Industry has made significant progress in improving the methods and consistency of reporting carbon emissions. The greenhouse gas accounting tools and guidelines recently developed by a partnership of UKWIR, Water UK and the Carbon Trust will play a crucial role in ensuring companies are able to measure and report emissions in business plans for PR09 and beyond, and in enabling the industry to report consistently.
In 2004, UKWIR commissioned WRc to produce an MS Excel spreadsheet workbook1 to support a standardised approach to the quantification of GHG emissions arising from the operational activities of UK water companies. The spreadsheet was also designed to assist the production of environmental performance indicators, corporate environmental reports, and to facilitate benchmarking.
In 2007, UKWIR, Water UK and the Carbon Trust developed a research strategy to improve carbon accounting across the industry. The work is being undertaken in the following phases:
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Phase 1. Upgrading of the Spreadsheet tool for operational carbon accounting.
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Phase 2. Dealing with Embodied Carbon.
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Phase 3. Accounting for non-CO2 emissions.
Reports on the first two phases are now available through the UKWIR web site.
Phase 1. Update of Workbook for 'operational accounting'.
The original workbook was substantially modified in 2007 to improve its functionality and to accommodate changed conversion factors and new accounting guidelines. The revision was released as a ‘Working Draft’ to UKWIR’s members for testing in January 2008. After receipt of user-feedback, a further revision was carried out by the contractor (WRc), to also include the latest Defra guidance. The phase 1 tool is consistent with the reporting requirements of Ofwat, the Carbon Reduction Commitment and Defra’s GHG inventory.
The updated workbook is now available for purchase through the UKWIR web site at a price of £500 (free of charge for UKWIR members). ‘Carbon Accounting in the UK Water Industry: Operational Emissions’. UKWIR Report Ref No.08/CL/01/5
Phase 2. Guidelines for accounting for 'Embodied' Carbon.
The purpose of this document is to provide clear guidelines for UK water companies in their estimation of carbon emissions arising from capital investment. The guidelines can also be applied to on-going investment selection and to more detailed project option appraisals. The report builds on the UKWIR guidance for operational carbon emissions (08/CL/01/5) by adding a framework for consistent estimation of embodied carbon in construction, and for combining that with operational carbon emissions in ‘whole life carbon' accounting.
The report contains five main sections covering: (1) overview of guidelines; (2) embodied carbon estimating; (3) embodied carbon emission values; (4) whole life carbon costing; and (5) additional operational carbon emission values. A further section (6) provides some case studies to illustrate potential application of the guidelines.
The guidelines are are flexible enough to deal with individual water company requirements, but consistent across the industry. The report is now available for purchase through the UKWIR web site at a price of £1000 (free of charge for UKWIR members). ‘Carbon Accounting in the UK Water Industry: Guidelines for Dealing with Embodied Carbon and Whole Life Costing'. UKWIR Report Ref No. 08/CL/01/6
Phase 3. (Accounting for non-CO2 emissions)
The emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) from certain wastewater and sludge management operations are difficult to estimate with reasonable accuracy, yet these may be significant contributors to the total emissions arising from the Industry's operational activities. Consequently, UKWIR has let a contract for Phase 3 to WRc, to focus on 'non-CO2 emissions' and the development of appropriate conversion factors associated with those emissions from treatment operations and the recycling of bio-solids to agriculture.
The specific objectives will be to:
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Critically review the standard emission factors that the Water Industry should use for the calculation of such process emissions.
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Recommend an appropriate methodology that the industry could use to more reliably quantify these emissions.
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Through field studies (in the second stage of the project), determine factors for those emissions of greatest significance to the Water Industry.
Discussions are being held with Defra to explore opportunities for collaboration on this topic.
UKWIR, through its membership of the Global Water Research Coalition (GWRC) is also in discussion with its international contacts to explore opportunities to collaborate on this subject. It has emerged that WERF in the USA, STOWA in the Netherlands, CISREE in France and WSAA in Australia are all actively pursuing projects to measure nitrous oxide and methane emissions and to increase their knowledge on the contribution these gases make to climate change.
In a separate initiative, Water UK is exploring with other sectors in the supply chain how their carbon accounting can complement and feed into the Water industry's approach.
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1 UKWIR, 2005. Workbook for Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Ref No 05/CL/01/3
G Wheale (UKWIR) B Horton (Water UK) 25 July 2008
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