In 2008/09, we used 1,230GWh of electricity across all of our activities, of which 786GWh was used in our regulated water business. This is a slight reduction from 798GWh the previous year.
Energy efficiency will remain high on our agenda with the introduction in 2010 of the carbon reduction commitment which will see us working to emissions forecasts. The continuous requirement for improved water and wastewater quality has the impact of increasing the amount of energy required to power new treatment processes and we endeavour to keep this as low as possible. We have taken account of the energy requirement of solutions in our proposed five year investment programme and identified possible ways to reduce the energy requirements, including development of promising new technologies such as Gravitox.
In our regulated business, we generated just over 100GWh of renewable electricity from our combined heat and power (CHP) plants, sludge incinerator and hydropower plants, an increase from 93GWh in 2007/08. The increase is due to the investment we made the previous year in increased CHP capacity. We have also taken steps to install this technology in the concession we operate in Bulgaria.
Of the electricity we purchased in our regulated business in 2008/09, 83 % was certified green energy, up from 27 % the previous year. Although we are unable to count the carbon reduction benefit of this action, we wanted to take this step to support the renewable energy market, where commercially viable.
Innovating for the Future