This paper represents the first time the full range of impacts of climate change on water utilities in Australia and New Zealand, and the breadth and diversity of their climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience strategies have been brought together in one place. It illustrates how the urban water industry is impacted now by climate change and extreme events, our role in emissions generation, and how we are responding and becoming more resilient.
Resource Type: Report
Thames Water: Our journey to net zero carbon and beyond
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges we face. More frequent and intense weather events across the globe – including
droughts, flooding and changes to rainfall patterns – will impact our business and the service we provide to customers over the
coming years. We must urgently tackle the global challenge and reduce the impact of climate change through our daily operations
and activities.
STATE OF CLIMATE ACTION Assessing Progress toward 2030 and 2050
This report provides an overview of climate action to date and assesses global and country-level progress across benchmarks for six sectors that would limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C) and therefore prevent its most dangerous impacts. We found that while advancements are happening within some sectors, for most the rate of change is much too slow for the world to achieve these goals.
Nature for Climate Action: Nationally Determined Contributions
Failing to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is one of the greatest risks facing the world today. However, even dramatic cuts in emissions at this stage will only begin to slow the rate of climate change. As of the middle of 2021, ever dramatic impacts of climate change are already here, and we need to aggressively cope with additional impacts that will occur in the coming decades, potentially even centuries.
Locking Carbon in Wetlands for Enhanced Climate Action in NDCs
The purpose of this report is to demonstrate the value of wetlands as a way to achieve climate mitigation targets, while simultaneously unlocking co-benefits, with biodiversity conservation being chief among them. Locking Carbon in Wetlands for Enhanced Climate Action in NDCs is written for policymakers and national climate planners with three goals in mind: 1) to illustrate the scientific rationale behind the use of wetlands as a climate mitigation tool; 2) to demonstrate the prevalence and function of wetlands across landscapes and geographies; and 3) to provide a set of clear policy recommendations that will enable Parties to the UNFCCC to conserve, restore and wisely use wetlands by incorporating them into their climate mitigation plans.
Linking Water and Climate
The Water and Wastewater Companies for Climate Mitigation (WaCCliM) project supports water and wastewater utilities to reduce their carbon footprints and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Following a cross-sectoral approach that spans mitigation and adaptation, we consider the implications of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the water–energy–carbon nexus.
HELP Guiding Principles for Drought Risk Management under a Changing Climate
In recent years, countries around the world have been hit hard by drought events that affect food supplies, agricultural incomes, employment, drinking water supplies, ecosystem health, transportation systems, and energy production. As the risk of drought is increasing due to ongoing climate change the HELP community started the flagship initiative to draft a report as guidance for supporting, defining and
refining DRR for drought risk management. In this report proactive approaches, having greater emphasis on building resilience, are advocated.
The Future of Renewable Power Production
Nearly two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, the renewable power projects on which the world relies to mitigate climate change face bigger challenges than when the coronavirus started to make headlines in 2020. As the global economy started to recover, commodity prices rose sharply and logistic bottlenecks wreaked havoc on supply chains, causing delays and eroding the margins of power equipment providers and project developers. At this point, unappealing profitability or even financial losses jeopardize investments on research, innovation, and capacity expansion. These were some of the problems discussed during the webinar The Future of Renewables: Insights from Industry Leaders, sponsored by Black & Veatch and held on January 12, 2022, as part of the Energy Leaders Series. To address these issues, the participating experts highlighted the need for new models and incentives to put the renewable power industry back on a profitable course that would enable a stable transition to a greener global energy matrix.
RESEARCH REPORT Beyond zero carbon: the bigger picture for transformation and adaptation ahead of utilities
Anglian Water 2030 strategy
For many years we have been at the forefront of carbon reduction in the water industry. With a committed leadership and a determined supply chain, by 2020 we had reduced capital carbon by 61 per cent in our capital programmes from our original 2010 baseline and reduced operational emissions by 34 per cent from a new baseline set in 2014/2015. We are also supporting system-wide decarbonisation in the region, for example by exporting waste heat to warm tomato greenhouses in our region year-round – something we are looking to repeat at other sites