Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | FEBRUARY 2022 | 19 Talking Points… "As we face the consequences of climate change on our infrastructure, we may have to face up to some unpleasant realities, that if we want to have a very high level of resilience and reliability it's going to cost us more – and we're all going to have to pay." John Armitt, chair, National Infrastructure Commission "In this day and age, power outages of more than three days should be unacceptable: we can't sugar coat that. We can do a lot better." Kwasi Kwarteng, energy secretary, reflecting on the electricity network response to Storm Arwen "Rumours around the potential cancellation or postponement of the ECO scheme are alarming. ECO is the government's flagship energy efficiency policy and is a critical way in which we protect vulnerable energy consumers. While it is not the whole answer, it continues to have a vital role to play." Lily Frencham, CEO, the Association for Decentralised Energy Quote, unquote target, and underpinned by detailed company plans which are already well underway, typifies the level of ambition being shown by the most progressive parts of the private sector. And that momentum is really gathering pace in the water sector. It started to build with 2019's public interest commitment, through which we reasserted our intent to put the public good at the heart of our action. Since then we've seen the develop- ment of a sector-wide 2050 innova- tion strategy with shared goals and targets. We've seen unprecedented levels of collaboration through Ofwat's £200 million industry-funded Innova- tion Fund, which is helping us come together to solve huge national chal- lenges. Through RAPID (the Regulators' Alliance for the Progression of Major Infrastructure) we're finally seeing a joined-up national approach to water infrastructure. And at the close of last the year, the launch of Spring, our new shared centre for innovation excel- lence, gave us a new national platform for collaboration. So I'm confident that as an industry we've now got the right collective mindset and the right tools to help us find solutions to the defining – and in some cases existential – challenges we face. What we don't have is all the answers. Environmental protection and river water quality, emissions reduc- tions and the imperative to adapt to the ever increasing risk of drought and flood – all these need large-scale inno- vation, huge investment and, perhaps most important of all, cross-sector collaboration. See Peter's comment piece in full at: https://utilityweek.co.uk/peter-simpson- the-stakes-are-too-high-to-fail/ The stakes are too high to fail H aving, frankly, wondered whether COP26 would live up to the hype, I came away from a week in the Blue Zone feeling inspired and heart- ened by the tangible progress that's taking place in so many areas. So while there were cries of "blah, blah, blah", and justified concern that the official declara- tion le› 1.5C on life support, it was a huge breakthrough to see water play a central role for the first time at any COP, with the first ever dedicated Water Pavilion and widespread acknowl- edgement that water is critical to the climate debate. A›er many years of adaptation being the poor relation to mitiga- tion, it was fantastic to see its profile raised – notably through the Resilience Hub, which really put the spotlight on the transformative action we need to deliver globally if we're going to adapt successfully to the risks posed by climate change. Yet in so many areas of the climate debate, it's business that's leading the way, not just in setting targets which in many cases make those set by governments look tentative and wary, but with tangible and transformative action. Our own delivery of the first net- zero based sustainability-linked bond to be launched by any water company in the world, energy company EDF's creation of a net-zero community at Leiston in Suffolk and Lloyds Bank's £1 billion green financing commitment towards 190 wind turbines at Dogger Bank are just a handful of examples of the agenda-setting action businesses are taking. The water industry's sector-wide commitment to net zero by 2030, 20 years ahead of the UK's legally binding Comment: Anglian Water CEO Peter Simpson says collaboration is the key to making effective inroads towards net zero. .

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