A sustainable supply chain
Scope 3 emissions – coming from sources we don’t own – make up the most significant proportion of our total emissions. The two biggest contributors to our Scope 3 emissions are capital and purchased goods and services.
To tackle this, we must work closely with our suppliers to develop innovative solutions.
Our capital carbon emissions, in particular, continue to be a key focus, with challenging targets and an ODI in place to drive reductions.
When we talk about our ‘capital works’, we refer to infrastructure development in our network to improve services for customers and the environment, both now and over time. Examples might include constructing new treatment works in our network or large-scale renewal of mains pipes. While essential, this type of construction work increases our capital carbon emissions. We are incorporating the impacts of this activity into our project planning, design and delivery processes, to inform our decision-making and reduce our overall environmental impact.
For AMP8, we have a new bespoke ODI that is aimed at driving data maturity and bringing about innovation to find lower-carbon ways of meeting increasing environmental standards. It calculates the difference in emissions between two stages in a project lifecycle, where we can drive emissions down through design optimisation, material selection, build technique and on-site fuels.
We can drive emissions down only through tackling this challenge with peers, suppliers and others outside of our industry. In 2025, we launched our Capital Carbon Innovation Forum to share knowledge, develop ways of working and collaborate on low-carbon solutions with key capital contractors. We set clear expectations for all high-impact suppliers to improve emissions reporting and set their own science-based targets (‘SBTs’) to deliver carbon reductions.
Our dedicated Supply Chain Sustainability Team assesses capability and drives proposals for low-carbon solutions specific to the product or service procured.
By working closely with suppliers, we continue to make positive progress against our engagement target, delivering 65% against our target of 70% of suppliers, by emissions, to have set an SBT by 2026*. The final phase of our engagement includes a dedicated and targeted approach to support a wide variety of suppliers at varying levels of maturity. We use our partnership with the Supply Chain Sustainability School to deliver training and workshops which help our supply chain to understand their emissions and build their capability to reduce our collective impact.
As our strategy around scope 3 develops and we work towards a reduction target, we continue to look for opportunities to collaborate and reduce emissions. A tailored approach to our procurement strategy means we focus on the most impactful areas and address the specific needs and carbon reduction goals of the product, service or project.
We want to look into and develop ways to improve our decision-making within the procurement process, with carbon in mind. Data improvement forms a key part of this, ensuring we continuously build accuracy and detail of the emissions associated with the products and services we buy.
Our Carbon Innovation Forum aims to foster collaboration among stakeholders, including our Capital supply chain, to collectively address challenges, co-develop low-carbon solutions, and seek expert insights from various fields.
*Due to a constantly changing supplier base, regulated tender cycles and SBTi validation timescales, performance includes those who have set an SBT, have formally committed or are contractually agreed. Performance by emissions is calculated using spend-based data.
As part of our drive to reduce what we send to landfill, we are building a picture of where the waste we generate sits within our supply chain. We collect data on waste from many of our suppliers, which helps us learn where we’re producing the most of our waste and where there’s the best opportunity to make reductions. This allows us to look at where we could integrate circular economy thinking (which is all about using resources in a way which doesn’t harm the environment and focuses on using what we’ve already got) and lessen our impact on our environment.
The largest portion of Severn Trent’s generated waste is from our capital construction projects, which include things like building waste and water treatment assets (e.g. sludge pumps and scraper bridges), and improving our network of clean water and sewage pipes. We have built a close relationship with our Capital Contractors to use their waste data so we can identify and drive the reductions we’ve mentioned above.
We are incorporating the circular economy into our tender processes. Where we think there’s a great opportunity, we ask potential suppliers to tell us how they could reduce the waste they generate, increase the use of recycled materials instead of new, and if they recycle or extend the life of anything we buy from them, once it’s no longer in use.