Chief executive’s view: the utility of water – a first world (modern) paradox?

"Water is the most essential and precious of all of earth’s resources, it has enormous utility"

I’m perhaps a little unusual in that I’m an engineer whose most loved school subject was English language. So I tend to be as literal as I am analytical. Words, their meanings and how they are used fascinate me, especially when they tell a compelling story.

Utility is one of those words – as a noun it has two definitions:

An organisation supplying a service such as electricity or water to the public

The state of being useful or beneficial

I feel pretty much the same about water. I’ve been privileged to work in water all my life, to travel the world and see it in many different forms and settings, and to appreciate and understand its value. Water is a foundation of all our communities and lives. Civilisation fails without it. It’s fundamental to health, well-being, business, tourism and leisure, it’s essential for the production of food and energy and generally for sustainable economic growth across countries.

In short it is the most essential and precious of all of earth’s resources, it has enormous utility. Yet, and here is the first paradox, in much of the first world it is routinely taken for granted and undervalued.

The second paradox is that the “utility of water”, which is what I believe we should be talking about most, is frequently and inaccurately transposed to “water utilities” in discussions concerning water.

The good news is I believe that situation is changing and changing quickly, which is an exciting prospect.

The disruptive influence of megatrends is a key driver

I was taught that when developing future strategic approaches recognising the potential for disruptive change is extremely important. The calculus of megatrends is key to that. Essentially that means that one must firstly identify all megatrends which could potentially impose change to a business or sector. They must then be assessed in terms of impact, low to high, and then finally in terms of convergence. A good rule of thumb is that three high impact megatrends which are converging indicate that disruptive change lies ahead in the short-term.

So what megatrends do we currently observe in relation to the future of water in the UK?

Well, here are a few. Better appreciation of the environment, higher environmental ambition from the public and government, increasing water scarcity and flooding (at the same time), climate change, population growth, the need for economic growth, growing water tourism, global technology advances, increasing cyber threat, Brexit and CAP reform. I’ll stop there but there are more. How do I rank them in terms of impact? Probably all high, but happy to debate. Convergence? Again probably all but certainly more than three.

So, change is coming.

Customers of the utility of water or customers of a water utility?

I’ve seen the difference between these many times around the world. Especially in developing nations where water scarcity and the lack of water utilities means the starting point for management and development of water resources and appreciation of the utility of water is high and recognised.

In the UK I got a stark reminder of the difference when I moved to live on the South coast, in Brighton. During the winter months our beaches are quiet and populated by local citizens. The beaches and bathing waters are of an excellent standard, aided in no small part by the assets owned and operated by water utilities.

Come the first warm Bank Holiday of the year though and for the whole of the summer months thereafter though, those same beaches are filled with tourists, with enormous numbers of people coming off trains from London. Tourists come as customers of the utility of water, to take advantage of the excellent bathing waters and beaches, but they are not customers of the water utility.

The payback for the area though is handsome. The economic value-add to the Greater Brighton economy is estimated at £1 billion a year.

So, all water utilities are at the heart of our communities and play a crucial role in realising the utility of water in underpinning the socio-economic wealth of our region and the country.

It starts of course with our role in providing wholesome water and protecting, maintaining and improving the environment – but those megatrends mean we have to think differently and play a wider, bigger role in future.

At Southern Water we’re using innovative and ambitious programmes to tackle issues and opportunities through partnership and collaboration while also transforming our business to achieve a sustainable water future.

Reconnecting customers with the water cycle

Southern Water has already made great progress in helping our customers reduce the amount of water they use, which means we take less water from the environment.

We’ve done this through an industry-first universal metering programme – which has led to a 16 per cent fall in consumption. As a result, our customers in Sussex, Kent, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight are among the most water efficient in the country, but there’s always more to do.

Hitting the mark with ‘Target 100’

We’re continuing to help our customers reduce the amount of water they use even more and helping them save them money in the process through an ambitious project called “Target 100”, which aims to help customers reduce daily usage to 100 litres per person by 2040 – from an average of 130 litres per person per day.

To achieve this, we’re working closely with planning authorities and house builders, embedding water sustainability into new homes and retrofitting properties with water efficient products.

Harnessing the potential of new technology

We’re also making some really exciting technology advancements right now. This includes innovations such as DataWell, which we’re co-creating with Google to allow water companies to seamlessly share key operating data with regulators and scientists. That data initiative will become even more exciting over time as our network becomes more and more intelligent.

Remote monitoring of many of the key information drivers from our operations such as water-usage at the abstraction and customer ends, to real time water quality parameters and more, is being integrated with more sophisticated network management processes and systems. Having been a technology laggard, the water sector has an enormous opportunity to move quickly from reactive to prescriptive analytics and to more automation. In less than a decade we forecast our network will self-detect and resolve problems.

Solving the water-energy-agriculture future nexus

It’s not enough for water to be a standalone sector. To unlock the potential of the “utility of water”, we need to be working in tandem with other industries and organisations.

At Southern Water we’re working with farming communities to establish the potential for agri-water networks – a different kind of water service which would enable our wastewater treatment to be more productive.

We’re already well on the way at many of our sites to being energy neutral but our ambition is to go further and be a net exporter, and to install energy storage as well, We have the potential to use our sites as distributed generation hubs points for community energy, another emerging megatrend. These are ideas in their infancy but we can’t do it alone and are working in partnership with technology companies and councils to make this a reality.

Collaborating to innovate

Working in partnership is one of the most effective ways to ensure resilience and accelerate innovation. By working with councils and developers or joining forces with farmers, landowners and environmental organisations, Southern Water can better manage, safeguard and enhance the water environment and make optimum use of our water resources.

Our catchment-based approach to water resource and environmental management is also a massive innovation. Retaining as much water to be used by customers is a necessity – especially in a region where population in key seaside towns doubles or triples on a bank holiday weekend. Refill and efficiency schemes are vital, but water re-use innovation is equally important to create headroom.

Managing upstrearn for quality and quantity is important too. Working with farmers to manage raw water quality in catchments is already established. We are piloting nitrate management schemes which I believe will be the forerunners of future Ecosytem Service Frameworks and fit well in subsidy reform. Developing rain gardens and managed water flow through substantial green infrastructure fits well in this approach too.

All of this means thinking of customers in a wider and more innovative way and putting them at the heart of our utility of water thinking.