Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/996476
www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | JULY 2018 | 13 Water companies urged to adopt staff culture of energy efficiency W ater company efforts to become energy efficient require a cultur- al change across the business in which employees must be fully engaged, experts agreed at WWT's Water Industry Energy Conference. John Mulholland, independent energy consultant and ESOS Auditor, told del- egates that the ISO 50001 accreditation, which requires a continuous programme of improvement, was the best route to involving the whole workforce in energy saving. The standard is only currently used by 6% of UK companies, but he said that early adopters from multiple industries had experienced benefits from its thorough approach; he pointed to case studies from 3M and Schneider Electric as evidence of this. "In all my years working The Talk: events in energy, IS0 50001 is the most sig- nificant development in energy manage- ment," he said. He contrasted this with the ESOS energy audit process, which he said that most employees would be unaware was taking place. Whatever the process used to bring about energy saving, the key thing was that it was "integrated" into the business rather than being treated as a burden, he added. Graham Southall, Group Commercial Director at Northumbrian Water, gave the conference an overview of Northum- brian's energy management strategy and described how water companies could pursue a comprehensive approach to the issue. He said there were five steps in a good energy strategy, which should be A comprehensive energy-saving strategy involves not only efficiency, self-generation and minimising cost, but a cultural change involving everyone in the business James Brockett reports from Birmingham considered in turn. The first is to minimise your own energy usage; second, minimise the cost of that usage; third, maximise the opportunity to generate your own power; fourth, work with external partners on power purchase agreements; and fi—h, secure the best commercial terms from these providers. Northumbrian has made great strides on incorporating systems that ensure energy is used when prices are at their lowest, and consumption is avoided when prices at their highest. Optimisation so—ware is in place for all its clean water pumps which takes detailed information on energy prices to decide what assets should be run at what time, said Southall. "We have recently taken our triad forecasting in-house and come up with SPONSORED BY