Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 22ND - 28TH MARCH 2019 | 5 "Avoiding something called the jaws of death is by and large the sensible thing to do" Environment Agency chief executive Sir James Bevan says water company forecasts in their business plans for the next price review predict that England could be facing water shortages in 25 years' time unless action is taken now to mitigate the effects of climate change and reduce demand. Thames Water has signed contracts worth £200 million with suppliers to find and fix "more leaks than ever before" across London and the Thames Valley. Thames said the contracts would enable it to target higher leakage savings of 430 million litres a day for 2019/20, up from 370 million litres of water a day, an increase of 16 per cent. PAN-UTILITY Gove reappoints EA chair Michael Gove has reappointed Emma Howard Boyd as chair of the Environ- ment Agency. Her second term will run from September 2019 until September 2022. Howard Boyd was appointed to the board of the Environment Agency in 2009 and was made deputy chair in 2015. She became acting chair in January 2016 after Philip Dilley stepped down from the post. She was appointed chair in Septem- ber 2016. Gove, said: "I look forward to her continuing to enable delivery of our 25-year environment plan, which will leave the environment in a better state for future genera- tions." Howard Boyd also sits on the board of the Department for Envi- ronment, Food and Rural Affairs. ELECTRICITY Offshore wind deal negotiations 'lengthy and confusing' A report by the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) committee into the department's track record of delivering on its industrial strategy sector deals has hailed the recent accord signed with the offshore wind sec- tor but concluded that it took too long to finalise. The report highlighted the protracted gestation period for the offshore wind deal, which Benj Sykes, vice president of wind farm developer Orsted, proclaimed in mid-October was "weeks" away from being signed. However, the final version of the agreement, a draft of which appeared in March last year, only finally appeared last week. The offshore deal is one of five sector deals the committee examined in detail, and it said the negotiation process had been "lengthy and confusing". ENERGY NW bids for zero- carbon funding A group of business leaders, local politicians and academics is bid- ding to create the UK's first zero- carbon industrial cluster between Manchester, Liverpool and Chester. The North West Cluster is vying for a share of £170 million of match funding promised by energy and clean growth minister Claire Perry in December to support the development of a low-carbon and then zero-carbon industrial hub by 2030 and 2040 respectively. The group said the project would combine wind, solar, tidal and small modular nuclear generation within a smart grid and establish a new "hydrogen economy" in the region enabled by carbon capture and storage. "If it is too tightly defined within a particular scheme, it could lead to quite perverse decisions" Trevor Bishop, organisational development director at Water Resources South East, warns that Defra's national policy statement on new water infrastructure may too tightly define net environmental benefits and hinder inter-regional water transfers. ★ Outfox the Market was ranked in last place in Citizens Advice's latest star ratings table with a score of one star out of five. Of 35 suppliers ranked, the five lowest places were all occupied by challenger brands. 20m The number of UK homes that could have been powered by all the energy projects cancelled by the current Conservative adminis- tration, according to the Labour party.

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