Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 18TH - 24TH MAY 2018 | 5 WATER Severn Trent chief wins business woman of the year Severn Trent chief executive Liv Garfield has been named Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year. The 42-year-old is the youngest woman to head a FTSE 100 com- pany and was praised by judges for her strong focus on customers and business acumen. She took the helm at the water company in 2014, having previously been chief executive of BT's Open- reach, where she was responsible for the rollout of BT's fibre network. The award organisers said Garfield has "shepherded strong growth" at Severn Trent, which it highlighted is "strongly outperform- ing" the rest of the sector. "She has also helped forge a customer-focused culture in the company, reflected in its outper- forming challenging targets set by customers themselves. "It was this commitment to customers combined with a respon- sible business that made her stand out," they said. GAS Cadent to create large-scale UK hydrogen network Cadent has published a report on its plans to create the UK's first large-scale hydrogen network, in the North West, at a cost of around £900 million. A new pipeline will deliver hydrogen to ten industrial sites, including oil refineries and manufacturing plants. Hydrogen will also be injected into the existing gas network serving Cheshire, Merseyside and Greater Manchester at blends of up to 20 per cent, reducing the carbon footprint of two million homes. The HyNet project should cut carbon emissions by more than one million tonnes annually – the equivalent of taking 600,000 cars off the road. Around 5,000 jobs are expected to be created by the time the network is completed in the mid-2020s. A three-year project to restore peatland on the South West's iconic moors has been awarded £2 million. A partnership of regional and local organisations including South West Water was awarded funding by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to restore 1,680 hectares of damaged peatland on Bodmin Moor, Dartmoor and Exmoor. "This is absolutely outrageous… I'm calling for an urgent debate on this in parliament" Green MP Caroline Lucas says the government must clarify whether it is offering a package of financial support for Hitachi-backed plans to build a nuclear plant on the island of Anglesey. "Retailers and brokers should see this as a golden opportunity" Phil Marshall, deputy chief executive of CCWater, says SMEs need "more convincing" about competition. The UK is unlikely to need any new baseload gas generation to fill the gap le by the closure of coal plants, WWF and Sandbag have claimed in a new report. The environmental groups said the growth of renewables had undermined the investment case for gas, which is losing out to more flexible alternatives that can back up intermittent renewables generation at a lower cost. There are seven coal-fired power stations le to close in the UK, with a total capacity of 13.7GW. 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 Actuals Forecast Coal Offshore wind Onshore wind Solar Biomass TWh UK electricity

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