Renewable energy
The use of renewable energy will help provide a more sustainable future by reducing our carbon footprint and energy costs.
Welsh Water is one of the largest energy users in Wales, operating and maintaining a network of 27,500km of water mains, more than 30,000km of sewers, 838 sewage treatment works and 66 impounding reservoirs. With an annual energy bill of £44 million, we have been looking at ways to generate electricity on our sites so that we can reduce our carbon footprint and the cost of importing energy.
We have significantly increased the amount of energy we generate on their sites in recent years, up from just 6GWh in 2007-08 to nearly 100GWh in 2015/16 and the number of sites continues to grow.
We’re now generating 20% of our own energy needs through wind, hydro, solar and advance anaerobic digestion – with the aim to increase this to 30% by 2019.
In July 2017, we announced a new energy contract with DONG Energy will ensure that energy Welsh Water uses from the grid will also be guaranteed green energy.
All this makes a big difference to reducing our carbon footprint, but also benefits our customers by reducing our overall operating costs so that we can keep bills low.
You can find out more about our renewable energy projects and news below: