Weekend press: South West accused of failing to be honest over drought projections

In our latest round-up of the weekend’s national news coverage, South West Water has been criticised by the Environment Agency for not being “honest, open and transparent with regulators about their drought projections and potential risks to security of supply” in the summer of 2022. Elsewhere, the Environment Agency is facing allegations of neglect of the River Wye over effluent and contaminated waters at free-range egg farms flowing directly into watercourses and it is revealed that Britain’s gas network is still using engines from 1960s RAF fighter jets.

UK watchdog accuses South West Water of failing to be honest over drought projections

South West Water, which supplies 3.5mn people with water and sewerage services in England, has been criticised by a watchdog for inadequate management and a failure to be “honest” with authorities, risking severe water shortages and environmental damage in the summer of 2022.

In a damning email sent in July to regulator Ofwat last year — and obtained through a freedom of information request by Greenpeace — the Environment Agency said the water company had not been “honest, open and transparent with regulators about their drought projections and potential risks to security of supply” in the summer of 2022.

The utility showed “complacency” and a “lack of understanding” of its own water supply system before the drought. The company was not “drought ready”, which meant that new water sources and permits had to be considered, applied for and permitted during the drought instead of planned in advance, the email said. The fact that SWW acted “too late” posed a risk to water security in west Cornwall, it added.

SWW is already being investigated by Ofwat over the accuracy of information it provides on leakage and water consumption. It is also one of six companies being investigated over concerns that they may be breaching sewage regulations, including potential illegal discharges at more than 2,000 sewage treatment works. Last year SWW, which has 645 sewage treatment works, was fined £2.1mn by the agency for pollution offences across Devon and Cornwall over a four-year period.

The concerns about water shortages referred to in the regulator’s email came during the hot, dry summer of 2022. Several regions imposed hosepipe bans and utilities risked running out of supplies as water levels in UK reservoirs hit record lows, according to previous documents released to Greenpeace by the Environment Agency.

No new reservoirs have been built in England and Wales for three decades despite population growth.

The agency granted SWW a drought permit in 2022 to extract more water from the Lower Tamar lake, a nature reserve on the border between Devon and Cornwall, without which a local reservoir would have emptied and “become unusable”, according to the previous documents released by the watchdog.

Experts and campaigners say the extra water that SWW took from the environment in order to keep supplies running during the drought is likely to have negatively affected protected sites and species.

SWW said in a statement: “Protecting the environment and wildlife was always a priority [ . . . ] All drought permits were issued and approved by the Environment Agency following their processes.”

The regulator argues in the emails that SWW showed “a lack of understanding of their own supply system” and points to the utility’s water-resource management plan at the time, which predicted SWW would have enough water to be able to transfer supplies to other companies; it later realised it would have a deficit.

The company has asked Ofwat if it can raise bills by 22 per cent by 2030 to an average of £584 per household before inflation. The bills would be higher without a taxpayer subsidy of £50 per customer. This was introduced by the government in 2013 as it accepted that higher bills were needed because the company served just 3 per cent of the population but had to protect about a third of the country’s coastal waters. The company predicts a surge in demand from visitors in the summer months.

SWW said in a statement: “We strongly reject any suggestion that we were not adequately prepared for the risk of drought or that we did not operate in good faith with the regulators.

“Despite facing a once-in-a-generation drought in the South West, no customer went without water supply and we successfully maintained a robust supply of water to over 3.5mn customers and 10mn of visitors to the region.”

Ofwat said SWW “was undoubtedly underprepared for the drought in 2022. They have since taken urgent action and have invested significantly to ensure better future resilience.”

It added: “The region is now in recovery from drought and the company must continue to closely manage its water resource position.”

The Environment Agency said: “Since the onset of drought in 2022 we, along with Ofwat, have worked with South West Water to ensure they have robust plans in place to recover from the drought and to improve the resilience of our supplies so they are prepared for the effects of a changing climate.”

Financial Times

Environment Agency accused of ‘scandalous neglect’ over chicken excrement entering River Wye

The Environment Agency faces new allegations of neglect of the River Wye after a project by a conservation group found effluent and contaminated waters at free-range egg farms flowing directly into watercourses.

Of 47 sites visited in England and Wales in the Wye catchment, 19 had drains running from the poultry units to a nearby watercourse. Many of the farms had drains excavated within a few metres of the sheds.

Charles Watson, chair of River Action, the charity that obtained details of the advisory visits to free-range egg farms under freedom of information laws, said: “These documents show a large number of intensive egg production farms have been allowing the excrement of hundreds of thousands of chickens to run off, without any proper mitigation, straight into the river system.

“This is in clear breach of the regulations, and the bodies protecting the environment have largely been in denial while this has been going on. There has been scandalous neglect over the years.”

The Wye has been blighted by poultry pollution with hundreds of new production units approved in the last two decades to feed the nation’s huge demand. The condition of the river was downgraded last May after campaigners warned its ecosystem had been devastated by intensive poultry production.

The advisory visits to farms were conducted by the Wye and Usk Foundation, which works to improve the ecology of those two rivers. The visits were done in partnership with free-range egg farmers, including suppliers to Noble Foods, owner of the free-range brand the Happy Egg Company.

In an email to Environment Agency (EA) officials sent last February, the foundation said drainage water from the farms was “a pollution risk and should not be directed to watercourses”. It added that the issue was “very common and one that we have found very difficult to address”.

The charity was seeking guidance as to how the runoff should be treated. It is working with farmers to improve protection of the catchment area from effluent and agricultural drainage water.

Simon Evans, chief executive of the foundation, said: ‘Many of the challenges we are trying to resolve are the legacy of historic poor planning decisions, such as when the planners have insisted the units be located too close to watercourses.

“In some cases, the solutions are not obvious and require careful consideration along with guidance from regulators. Noble has been actively engaged in helping to find and fund solutions on the farms that supply them, and their support is driving the progress that is being made to resolve the issues.”

River Action is seeking a judicial review of the EA over allegations it had failed to protect the Wye from agricultural pollution. It is claimed the agency has failed to prevent the spreading of excess organic manure or properly apply the rules.

Ricardo Gama, a solicitor at Leigh Day, which is representing River Action in the judicial review, due to be heard next month at the high court in Cardiff, said: “River Action’s ultimate goal is that the agency takes a strong hand and actually starts enforcing these rules.”

The EA said: “We recognise the River Wye is under pressure, which is why we are already offering a wide range of support to farmers around the river to speed up their transition to more sustainable practices. We work closely with groups like the Wye and Usk Foundation, who provide advice to farmers.

“In the Wye catchment, we carried out 493 farm inspections and issued 285 improvement actions from 1 April to 31 December 2023. These inspections targeted high-priority catchments such as protected habitats, and those where intelligence indicated rule breaches and pollution.”

Noble Foods said: “Over the last three years [we] have been working hard with our producer base in the Wye and Usk region. We are supplied by family-run farms in the region, which represent less than 5% of the total poultry flock in the area. We are encouraging our producers to embrace nature-based solutions, such as wetland pools, as part of our work with the Wye and Usk Foundation.”

The Observer

Britain’s gas network still using engines from 1960s RAF fighter jets

Britain’s sprawling gas network is still reliant on a fleet of ageing aircraft engines, some stripped from 1960s RAF Lightning fighter jets, it has emerged.

Jon Butterworth, chief executive of National Gas, said many of the engines that drive gas through the system date back decades, some to the Cold War, and now need millions of pounds spent on replacing them.

National Gas is responsible for the 7,800 kilometre pipe network which transports gas from the UK’s ports and terminals to the 23 million homes and 500,000 businesses that rely on it for heating.

Mr Butterworth said: “I’ve got turbines compressing gas, from the North Sea to London, that are converted from RAF Lightnings.

“They have lasted a long time but they’ve done their shift now and it’s time to update them.”

The English Electric Lightning was among the RAF’s most renowned fighter jets, entering service in 1960, at the height of the Cold War, to protect the UK against Soviet nuclear bombers.

When the decommissioning of the Lightning fleet coincided with the UK’s conversion to North Sea gas, the engineers building the network snapped up the engines to pump gas through the new energy system.

Mr Butterworth said the engines remain a tribute to British engineering, but it is now time to replace them. Their age means new parts have to be custom made and they also have high emissions.

However, cost remains an issue, Mr Butterworth said, with the network powered by 68 turbines spread across 21 pumping stations where upgrading just one costs around £40m.

All major expenditure by National Gas gets passed on to customers, and so has to be justified to regulators and politicians. Raising funds has proved increasingly difficult as investors shun gas as the focus on net zero targets makes renewable energy more popular.

Last autumn, the Government’s National Infrastructure Assessment suggested the entire network should be decommissioned.

Mr Butterworth said: “We’re having a right old battle because everyone thinks gas should be turned off by 2035.

“It means I’m struggling to replace some of the key assets that give us the resilience that we need.”

Mr Butterworth said he expected the network to carry natural gas around the UK for decades to come despite the Government’s net zero pledges.

However, he warned that supplies are becoming an increasing concern with the UK’s existing offshore oil and gas fields fast running out. About 180 of the existing 284 active fields will close by 2030, meaning gas supplies will fall 80pc and the UK will be reliant on imports.

The Telegraph

Get money off your bills if you have a nuclear reactor next door

Simon Bowen is the man charged with re-energising Britain’s nuclear industry. As chair of Great British Nuclear (GBN), the government quango, he’s supposed to work out how we can build and pay for new fleets of reactors, large and small. And that means bringing a sometimes doubtful public on side.

So, what’s in it for us? “Nuclear offers baseload power that is low-carbon and low-footprint,” Bowen says. “If you look at the lifetime cost, it is affordable.”

But he concedes that consumers may need an extra incentive if new reactors are going to pop up all over the place. Bowen suggests people could enjoy money off their bills, similar to how National Grid could compensate people for new pylons. “Social return should be consistent between wind, grid and any major power source like nuclear,” he says. “So should there be some form of return to people for siting? Yes, there should be.”

Leading Great British Nuclear wasn’t part of his life plan. Bowen retired from defence giant Babcock in December 2021 to pursue a different passion. “I’m a fanatical surfer,” he says. As befits a former Royal Navy engineer, he has a deep love of the sea — and the winter, he explains, is the best time to grab your board: “There’s fewer people and the surf’s better.” So when a call came through from No 10, asking if he would like to help set up a new nuclear authority, he recalls: “I thought it was a joke.”

But he accepted the offer and started in the role in May 2022 — a time, during Boris Johnson’s administration, when the war in Ukraine had shaken Britain’s energy security and climate change was high on the agenda. “Boris wanted to create a nuclear industry that delivered energy security first and net zero second,” Bowen says. A subsequent offer to chair Great British Nuclear was too good to refuse, and he took up that post last March. “There are a number of us who are doing it for our grandkids,” adds Bowen, whose career includes stints at BP, Ineos and uranium supplier Urenco, before leading Babcock’s nuclear division.

The first SMRs are likely to be built on former nuclear sites that already have licences. But local authorities or community partnerships could pitch to do their own. Bowen is keen: “We would encourage it. Having market-led projects is a really, really important part of the system.”

For all the flurry of announcements, nothing in nuclear moves fast. The final investment decision for the first SMR could be as late as 2029, which means it may not be generating power until the mid-2030s. This lends ammunition to critics of nuclear, who argue that renewable energy is a faster and cheaper option, even if it is intermittent. The SMR competition — trailed for much of last year — is moving at a sedate pace: the two likely winners will not be announced until the summer.

That could, of course, bump up against a general election. Bowen is too diplomatic to comment, but he notes that Labour has made a number of pro-nuclear announcements in recent times. The party has proposed the formation of Great British Energy, which could easily swallow up the nuclear body as part of a wider remit.

Whoever is running the country by this time next year — the election must be held by January 2025 at the latest — they will not be able to escape the vast challenges of funding new nuclear. Bowen suggests that SMRs could employ the same regulated asset base model that will be used for Sizewell, which puts the upfront cost on customer bills and brings down financial fees. But he adds that by the third or fourth SMR in a series, the private sector should be able to foot the bill, in return for a contract that guarantees the power will be bought.

Bowen acknowledges that the sector has to talk up its benefits — especially if it wants to attract the engineers of the future. “We as an industry have got to get better at educating people … We’ve got a huge shortage of nuclear skills.”

There’s plenty to do; the surfing may have to wait.

The Times

George’s death shows gas theft is lethal — and it’s quadrupling

A deafening boom awoke the residents of Mallowdale Avenue one Sunday morning. The ground trembled, front doors were blown from their hinges and windows shattered.

Steve Hinds and his partner, Vicki Studholme, were asleep when their house collapsed on top of them, trapping them under the rubble. Their two-year-old son, George, was in the spare bedroom.

“I woke up and bricks were coming down on me,” said Hinds, 45. “I was suffocating. I was shouting, ‘Help!’ Next thing I knew my neighbour, Alan, was there, digging me out. If it had been 30 seconds later I would be dead. I was under the rubble for 10 or 15 minutes, inside an air pocket.

“Vicki was lying next to me in the bed. I couldn’t see her. She was buried. I was trying to talk to her. But she wasn’t saying anything.”

The cause was a huge gas explosion, caused by their neighbour Darren Greenham tampering with his meter and cutting through pipes to steal the copper. It killed George.

Read the full story in The Times

Three-quarters of Tory voters oppose Rishi Sunak’s net zero plans for boilers and cars

Rishi Sunak faces a backlash from Tory homeowners over his net zero plans, with three-quarters opposing the bans on gas boilers and petrol cars.

Polling shows the Prime Minister’s green policies are deeply unpopular with many of the voters who propelled the Conservatives to victory in 2019.

The findings spurred fresh calls from Tory MPs for him to scrap the controversial climate measures amid warnings they will heap extra cost on families.

A survey for the Better Homes Alliance also found that a large number of homeowners are reluctant to make the switch to heat pumps and electrical cars.

Only 33 per cent of all homeowners supported plans for a complete phase out of gas boilers, while 55 per cent opposed a deadline.

About a third backed the proposed a ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2035 while 56 per cent were against it.

The numbers were even more stark for Mr Sunak among Tory voting homeowners.

Of those who backed the Conservatives at the last election, 74 per cent opposed the gas boiler phase out and 71 per cent were against the petrol car ban.

Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former energy secretary, said: “No one votes to be cold and poor.

“The current headlong rush to net zero risks impoverishing the nation to no global benefit on emissions. It is time to pause all these regulations and rethink the whole approach.”

Greg Smith, Tory MP for Buckingham, added: “It’s no surprise that people feel unwilling to make massive and costly lifestyle changes at the whim of the state.

“It is imperative that to meet challenges we allow our great innovators and engineers to come up with solutions that work for people both practically and financially.

“That is the way to take people with you.”

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero pointed to YouGov polling from summer 2023 which showed 71 per cent of voters support the overall net zero target.

A spokesman said: “We are adopting a fairer and more pragmatic approach to meeting net zero that eases the burdens on working people.

“We are giving families more time to make the transition, ensuring they can switch to electric vehicles when it suits them, and only needing to switch to a heat pump when their boiler needs replacing from 2035 – saving some thousands of pounds at a time.

“Our approach is working. The 50 per cent increase to the Boiler Upgrade Grant has seen more households make the switch to a heat pump and the number of electric vehicles on our roads is growing rapidly,” they added.

The Telegraph

Oil prices rise on US-UK strikes over Red Sea attacks

Oil prices jumped by 4% after the US and UK launched strikes in Yemen over recent attacks by Houthi rebels on ships in the Red Sea.

Brent crude hit $80 per barrel for the first time this year as the Iran-backed rebels vowed to retaliate against military action by Western powers.

While the price rose, it is below highs reached when Russia invaded Ukraine.

But the UK government has drawn up scenarios suggesting further disruption could hit the economy.

The BBC understands the Treasury has modelled outcomes including crude oil prices rising by more than $10 a barrel and a 25% increase in natural gas.

On Friday, Brent Crude – the international benchmark for oil prices for much of the world – hit $80.71 per barrel before easing, while US West Texas crude increased by 2.79% to $74.03.

The UK government is concerned that ongoing attacks on shipping in the Red Sea could weigh on the UK economy, where growth remains fragile.

Higher energy prices risk stoking inflation just as it has begun to slow. Meanwhile, the cost of shipping containers on vessels has jumped, meaning that companies could choose to pass on this expense to consumers.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that the attacks had caused “major disruption to a vital trade route and [higher] commodity prices”.

But Simon French, chief economist of Panmure Gordon, pointed out that energy prices are still considerably lower than they were four months ago.

“At these levels, it is actually quite disinflationary for the UK economy,” he said.

He added that when the Bank of England comes to make its next interest rate decision in February, oil prices are still likely to be some 20% lower than they were in the autumn.

Houthi rebels in Yemen have stepped up attacks on commercial vessels since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October. The US said there had been 27 attacks in the Red Sea since mid-November.

The group has been using drones and rockets against foreign-owned vessels transporting goods through the strait of Bab al-Mandab – a 20-mile wide channel that splits Eritrea and Djibouti on the African side and Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula.

BBC News

Utility Week’s weekend press round-up is a curation of articles in the national newspapers relating to the energy and water sector. The views expressed are not those of Utility Week or Faversham House.