Voices: Tony Cocker offers a pan-utility perspective

As trust and climate change become increasing concerns for utilities, experience in energy and water offers an interesting overview, says Tony Cocker.

I joined Affinity Water last January, having worked in the energy industry for 20 years, occasionally looking across at water. In the past 12 months I have spent a lot of time getting to know the business – colleagues at all levels, our new chief executive Pauline, customers, board members, investors, stakeholders, and industry participants. More broadly, it has been an intense time for all of us as we steered through a range of operational issues, submitted plans, and absorbed announcements from Defra, the Environment Agency, the National Infrastructure Commission, Ofwat, and so on.

So, what are my reflections? In summary, many aspects of the industry are familiar, but I was surprised by the scale of the transformation under way. On reflection, it is obvious: energy companies are at the forefront of tackling climate change, and water companies, like Affinity, are at the frontline of mitigating the impacts of climate change, and making a positive contribution to the environment. I now see this transformation as a huge opportunity to deliver the right things for our customers, future generations, and the environment, and, in doing so, demonstrate a clear, positive purpose and help to secure trust in the industry. Let me explain.

Affinity and the industry are full of committed people, strongly focused on helping customers, with deep capabilities in engineering and a real passion for the environment. It feels quite similar to energy.

Our customers rarely think about water – even less than energy. However, when asked in workshops about long-term challenges, they quickly make a similar list to colleagues: climate change, population growth, risk of drought and flood, protecting the environment, and making sure we have enough water now and for their children and grandchildren.

Of course, trust in water and energy are important topics. At Affinity, we are acutely aware of our privilege and responsibility in providing an essential public service, and the need to meet the highest standards of corporate governance. We made a number of changes to our policies and board membership recently, and will make more. Affinity has worked – and will continue to work – with others to improve trust in the sector, and a key part of this is having, and communicating, a positive purpose.

So, what really surprised me? I was struck early on by the work we do to protect and enhance the environment, and by the major challenge in the South East to improve the physical resilience to meet future demand, given population growth, climate change, and likely weather shocks. A transformation is needed.

I know that we are well on the way to transforming the electricity system to low carbon while maintaining security of supply. Of course, there have been bumps in the road and will be more, but the industry has made major progress on its own emissions, and will be an enabler of the decarbonisation of transport. It also feels like customers and commentators are broadly aware of these changes – indeed, in some cases, are pushing for them.

Looking at water, it feels like the scale of change is similar, but commentators and customers are not aware of it – notwithstanding all the consultations and announcements in the past couple of years.

At Affinity, our long-term plans are ambitious. They are in line with our vision to be the UK’s leading community-focused water company, they continue and stretch our previous plans, with substantial new investment in improving water transfer in our region and securing new water and bringing it into our region. In developing them, we have consulted widely and will continue to do so. Our teams have set stretching targets to reduce leakage, help customers reduce their consumption, reduce abstraction, restore rivers and increase our help to vulnerable customers – all while keeping bills down.

Importantly, these plans require a further step change in our engagement with our customers and the communities we serve. To deliver our long-term targets for per capita consumption and to gain consent for a new reservoir or transfers, we will need to engage much more with customers and community partners, listening, consulting, and providing feedback and support.

I believe that this transformation is in tune with the times. We have all seen the huge increase in discussion of climate change, plastics, food and general waste. At the same time, we have seen the growth in National Trust membership and the flourishing of the Wildlife Trusts.

Looking at the big picture, energy companies are at the forefront of reducing the scale of climate change, and water companies like Affinity are at the frontline of mitigating the impacts of climate change, and making a positive contribution to the environment.

So, I think this transformation is part of a clear, positive purpose. It is also an opportunity to improve trust in our company and sector, as we work with our customers and communities to deliver our water more resiliently and enhance our environment while keeping bills down – and they see the benefits we are bringing, together.

Tony Cocker is a non-executive director at SSE, an independent non-executive chairman at Affinity Water and former chief executive of Eon UK. He is also chairman of renewable energy generator company Infinis Energy Management and chair of the EIC (Energy Innovation Centre).

Utility Week’s Voices series provides thought-provoking opinion from some of the most respected commentators within the sector to inform timely and frank debate.