CEO statement

The view of our Chief Executive Officer

As a water company, we rely on the natural environment to provide water for us to treat and deliver direct into customers’ homes and businesses. 

But abstracting, treating, and moving that water is an energy-intensive process that emits millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas each year – a big contributor to our changing climate which, in turn, threatens the very same natural environment that we are so reliant upon for water.

Water companies have long recognised that all their activities have a carbon footprint – whether it’s operating treatment systems, pumping water, building new infrastructure, or interacting with the natural water cycle more widely.

The water sector is the fifth largest emitter of Greenhouse Gases in the UK which is why, in November 2020, the industry published its net-zero operational carbon route map. Using over a decade’s worth of sector-level emissions data, the routemap provides a view of what the sector’s journey to net zero carbon emissions may look like – via three pathways – and made a series of commitments to get there.

And that’s where we, SES Water, take up the net zero carbon emissions baton. Taking the sector wide commitments as the starting point, these webpages add the all-important factors of our unique supply area – from the geography, water sources and customer demographics – to set out our own routemap.

Our routemap is based on something called the `demand-led’ pathway already developed by the industry; that is, our routemap will focus on managing demand for water so that we need and use less of it and, in turn, emit less carbon. We believe that is the most collaborative way to work with our customers and local communities and deliver net zero carbon emissions by 2030 – some 20 years before the economy is expected to as a whole.

Ian Cain

Chief Executive Officer