The Live Wire



Press Release

Severn Trent takes carbon reduction accolade in national achievement awards

25 May 2010

Severn Trent Water has come home with the Best Carbon Reduction Initiative award following the 2010 Water Industry Achievement Awards ceremony at the International Convention Centre (ICC) in Birmingham.

Severn Trent leads the water sector when it comes to generation from renewables, as a proportion of its energy use - it now generates 20% of its electricity use in this way, a colossal 183 Gigawatt hours each year. Its current renewable electricity generation comes mainly from biogas created from a sewage sludge anaerobic digestion process.

In simple terms, it involves the sludge by-product of Severn Trent's sewage treatment being fed into a large "mechanical stomach", which then digests the sludge and produces the methane required to power turbines. The heat generated in the combined heat and power (CHP) plants is used to maintain the temperatures of this digestion process at around 35 degrees C, not too far away from body temperature.

Andrew Gardner, Severn Trent's general manager for energy and carbon management, said: "This is very much a company achievement. Severn Trent has led the UK water industry for several years in the generation of renewable energy from its sewage treatment plants and we have set the standard by installing a modern combined heat and power (CHP) plant at every appropriate site, together with support from a dedicated team to maintain the equipment and all our operating staff who maximise gas production on a daily basis.

"However, at Severn Trent we make a point of always pushing for the next phase of improvement - we have targeted better performance in terms of the energy efficiency of our operations, developing our people, the reliability of our plant, and using innovative technologies. This wide-ranging approach is setting a new standard for generating energy from sewage gas."

Andrew added: "This award follows closely our achievement of the rigorous Carbon Trust Standard six months ago, another significant and widely respected marker of the progress we have made in reducing carbon emissions over the last three years."



Press releases, papers and documents published on this page are the intellectual property of an organisation unrelated to Central Lobby. We promote their parliamentary and political campaigning activities as they are subscribers to the Central Lobby service.

As such, Central Lobby does not edit, endorse, or attempt to balance the opinions expressed on this page. The content of press releases and other such types of content are the responsibility of the originating organisation.

Severn Trent Water

Severn Trent Water

More from Dods

© Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd