Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 31ST MAY - 6TH JUNE 2019 | 5 South West Water's managing director, Stephen Bird, has died after a short illness. The 60-year-old has been described by his company as "one of the most influential figures" in the South West's business and environmental communities. Bird began his long career at South West Water, now owned by Pennon, in 1992. He became managing director in 2016. POLICY Environment secretary runs for prime minister Michael Gove has put himself forward to become the next leader of the Conserva- tive party and prime minister. As secretary for environment, food and rural affairs, Gove has adopted an interventionist approach on environmental issues and has been a harsh critic of the water companies. Gove, who was a leading fi gure in the 2016 campaign to leave the European Union, gave the keynote speech at the launch of the Con- servative Environment Network in 2014 and a supporter of the liberal Tory thinktank Bright Blue, which has championed more vigorous policy action on climate change. He is joined in the leadership race by his predecessor Andrea Leadsom. She was energy minister from 2015-16 and highlighted "cli- mate crisis" as one of the issues that delivering Brexit would tackle. And contender Rory Stewart served in Defra as water minister from 2015 to 2016. He has high- lighted the importance of climate change, as has his fellow leader- ship candidate, foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt. When announcing his leader- ship bid, Dominic Raab said one of his priorities would be to "end con- sumer rip-offs" in several areas, including pensioners' energy bills. Leadership race front-runner Boris Johnson defended the solar industry from the withdrawal of feed-in tariff support when he was mayor of London. ELECTRICITY Low-carbon hub proposed for the Humber Drax, Equinor and National Grid have formed a consortium to explore the possibility of creating a low-carbon industrial hub in the Humber in the mid-2020s. The complex would feature a hydrogen production facility and a large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) network linked to the Drax power station in Yorkshire. Drax Group chief executive Will Gardiner said the project would seek to deliver on the recom- mendations of the government's climate watchdog: "The Committee on Climate Change was clear – the UK needs both bioenergy with CCS and hydrogen production at scale by 2030 to achieve a net-zero- carbon economy." As part of the project, the three companies will examine whether the bioenergy and carbon capture and storage pilot at Drax power station can be scaled up to form an "anchor" for a regional CCS network. They will also look at constructing a demonstration hydrogen production facility at the plant. "Nowhere near ambitious enough" Leeds MP Alex Sobel's verdict on the target to decarbonise the UK by 2050, recommended by the Committee on Climate Change. £1bn Revenue at home maintenance specialists Home Serve rocketed to more than £1 billion, as pre-tax profi t rose by 13 per cent, according to its preliminary results for the year ending 31 March. One million Number of SMETS2 smart metes on the system, according to the Data Communications Company. "This won't solve all the problems of single-use plastic, and it won't solve all the problems water companies face with carelessly disposed of products, but this move is very welcome" Southern Water's head of asset performance, Nick Mills, responding to environment secretary Michael Gove's announcement of a ban on plastic straws, drink stirrers and cotton buds.

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