Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
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with valuations for the natural impacts through its in-house so ware tool, ESIVI (Ecosystems Services Identi cation Valuation and Integration) which uses a host of literature and environmental evidence in its gures. As work began on embedding the process into the decision-making framework, this involved building similar bespoke so ware for Yorkshire Water. However, this is not the end of the story, since the bene ts expressed in nancial terms accrue to di€ erent stakeholders, societal groups or in some cases the world at large. So the second stage is setting the various bene ts against Yorkshire Water's strategic objectives and working out which one is optimal: to do this, the utility is using optimisation so ware developed by SEAMS, called EDA (Enterprise Decision Analytics). SEAMS and AECOM are part of a consortium of companies working with Yorkshire Water on its asset management which also includes Sweco, CGI and AMCL. "Yorkshire Water is representing bene ts in their entirety, and those bene ts may not be simply about their billpayers, they could be far wider societal bene ts," says Adrian Rees, Director of Asset Management at AECOM. "Ultimately, this is about understanding the choices that we make in terms of their overall impact. www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | MAY 2017 | 21 upgrade Rivelin Water Treatment Works near She" eld at the cost of £24M. The pilot used a methodology set out in the Natural Capital Protocol, a document produced by a group of businesses, NGOs and sustainability experts known as the Natural Capital Coalition (Liz Barber now sits on the board of this organisation). The exercise retrospectively evaluated the natural capital impact of the two upgrade options that were considered in the decision, and compared them with a baseline option where no action was taken. This revealed that the solution that was eventually chosen (involving new clari ers covered by a green roof) provided £3.8M of bene t to the environment, largely in the form of reduced carbon emissions but also in the form of pollination in the ecosystem provided by the green roof. In contrast the other option considered (replacement with Above: Natural capital can be seen as one of fi ve types of capital The assessment for Rivelin WTW showed £3.8M net benefi t for the chosen option a DAF and MIEX plant) provided only £3.2M of net bene t, with a signi cant carbon saving partially o€ set by a loss of amenity to the local population worth £150,000 and a reduction in air quality. The analysis con rmed that the decision that had been taken was the correct one, says Barber. "It's di" cult when you are looking at something retrospectively, because you are looking for con rmation on something that you have already done, but we went into it with a very open mind. The solution we went for at Rivelin was taken with a gut feel about the environmental and social impacts of that scheme, because it was clear that the nancial di€ erence between the two options was negligible. But this provided a quanti cation of what would otherwise have been gut feel, and it gave us con dence in moving forward with the techniques." AECOM were able to assist ¥ Perspectives "This for us signals a fundamental shi in the way we view our assets and run our assets going forward. Every company would recognise they need to do business sustainably and this will allow us a system by which to practice what we preach." Liz Barber, Director of Finance, Regulation and Markets at Yorkshire Water "This is a step change in understanding benefi t. The industry has always been good at representing the risks of non-investment, but now we are far better able to capture the opportunities of investment." Adrian Rees, Director of Asset Management, AECOM