UKWIR Carbon Accounting

Project Summary

The overall project objective was to develop a set of standardised guidelines for UK water companies to account for embodied carbon of construction activities of their projects and to develop guidelines on how carbon accounting can be incorporated into PR09 activity. The project built on work by several water companies, and brought them together to discuss future development of carbon accounting in the Water Industry in the UK.

SISTech used its academic expertise to review a range of emission factors from various sources and select common factors for the industry and established uncertainty bands around the data. Different embodied emission factors for materials and activities were used to calculate emission factors for different components that are commonly used in the construction and operation of water company assets. These emission factors are to be used as a common base from which water companies can develop accounting techniques for embodied carbon.