Predicting carbon in our capital programme
Carbon management is a critical issue for us. For our business plan submission we created three tools to enable us to predict the carbon and sustainability impacts of our investment plans. We are now bringing these tools together under the title Carbon and Sustainability Estimating (CASE) and are embedding the use of the tools into our capital investment processes.
The CASE suite contains three tools:
1. The Carbon Approximation Tool (CAT)
2. Carbon Curves (CaCu)
3. Carbon and Sustainability Tool (CAST)
The tools are designed for use at different stages of the project life cycle and require more detailed information as the project develops. CAT for instance requires budget information and details of the project type such as water/wastewater, whereas CAST requires full estimated quantities and operational data, such as amount of construction steel/concrete and operational power consumption.
Using these tools during a project will enable us to see what happens to a carbon footprint through the lifetime of a project and ultimately enable us to design and build more sustainable assets. The tools will also allow us to understand the potential impacts of a project and plan to mitigate them accordingly.
All three tools have been developed in-house and externally verified by the Scottish Institute of Sustainable Technology (SISTECH).
The use of CASE is part of our carbon strategy - integrating carbon into the way we do business.