£250m loan will help Welsh Water investment plans
WELSH Water has agreed a £250m loan facility with the European Investment Bank (EIB) to help finance the company’s extensive capital expenditure programme and its plans to further develop renewable energy generation capacity at its sites.
The loan will enable the company to deliver its record £1.7bn investment programme between 2015 and 2020 to invest in its assets for the benefit of customers and the environment.
It comes as the company has signed a contract with Dong Energy to make sure the electricity it uses comes from green gen-eraters.
The not-for-profit utility company already generates its own energy from renewable sources.
Welsh Water has an annual energy bill of more than £44m, most of which is used for pumping water and wastewater through thousands of miles of pipes.
It generates 20% of its own energy needs through wind, hydro, solar and advance anaerobic digestion, with the aim of increasing this to 30% by 2019.
Steve Wilson, Welsh Water’s managing director of wastewater services, added: “We’ve significantly increased the amount of energy we generate at our sites over the past few years by embracing technologies such as solar panels, hydro turbines, anaerobic digestion and our first wind generation sites in the past 12 months.
“By incorporating these sources with the green energy we now receive from Dong, we really are able to make a meaningful contribution to protecting our environment from the effects of climate change.”
Welsh Water is investing around £36m to transform the Five Fords wastewater treatment works in Wrexham into an innovative energy park, incorporating solar and hydro and the UK’s first project to inject bio-mathane gas into the national gas distribution network.
The company is also developing an advanced anaerobic digestion plant on the site which once complete will use the waste the site treats to generate enough energy to supply around 3,000 homes.
EIB vice president Jonathan Taylor said: “Here in Wrexham Welsh Water is showing the world how investment to improve wastewater treatment can harness renewable energy from diverse sources.
“Pioneering innovation such as this is crucial to cut emissions and ensure that companies can contribute to climate action.”
Welsh Water has benefited from loans of over £800m from the EIB since the inception of Glas Cymru in 2001.
This has helped finance over £1.6bn of capital expenditure in improving water and wastewater services across its operating area.
Welsh Water’s finance and commercial director Peter Bridgewater said: “As a company without any shareholders, our sole focus is on providing the best possible service to our customers at the most affordable price.
“To deliver this, we must manage challenges such as accessing funding for our investment programmes at a competitive rate as well as continuing to drive down costs as we make the company more efficient.”
The company is committed to delivering a decade of below RPI-inflation price increases on customer bills by 2020.