Anglian Water @one Alliance Sustainability in Design Initiative

The Anglian Water @one Alliance, comprising Sweco and 6 other partners, was formed to deliver many of the Anglian Water capital investment programmes. The Alliance was challenged to achieve a 50% reduction in embodied carbon and a 20% reduction in operational carbon across the project programme by 2015 on a 2010 baseline.

By putting carbon reduction at the forefront of their strategy, management and asset delivery, the @one Alliance surpassed their carbon reduction targets to achieve a 55% reduction in embodied carbon and a 41% reduction in operational carbon. Not only has this initiative significantly mitigated the climate change impact of Anglian Water’s activities, it has also unlocked significant cost benefits, seeing the @one Alliance deliver the AMP5 investment programme at an actual cost 26% lower than the final business plan.

It has become a benchmark for other water companies and has set a precedent for what is possible within the wider infrastructure sector. Sweco continues to work with @one Alliance to deliver low carbon solutions across Anglian Water's asset construction and refurbishment projects.

In 2010, Sweco joined the Anglian Water @one Alliance along with Anglian Water Engineering, Balfour Beatty Utility Solutions Limited, Barhale, Black & Veatch, MWH and Skanska Jacobs to achieve carbon reduction targets across many of Anglian Water’s projects.

The water sector is energy intensive, particularly in low lying regions such as the East of England. Taking responsibility for its vast energy consumption, Anglian Water committed to ambitious carbon reduction strategies and with the help of @one Alliance has become a leader in carbon efficient infrastructure within their field.

The success of our work with Anglian Water @one Alliance has become a benchmark for other water companies and has raised the bar for carbon reduction efforts across the infrastructure sector.

We are successfully creating a step change in organisational culture from risk averse engineering to embracing technological innovation in design. Through supply chain events, working closely with suppliers and collaborating on projects it has been possible to influence suppliers to make lower carbon products.

Increasing the transparency of carbon and supporting teams to share their learning has led to greater awareness around carbon and methods of reduction. By surpassing both carbon and cost reduction targets we have demonstrated that carbon and cost are inextricably linked, and therefore reducing the embodied and operational carbon of a project serves to reduce its cost.