Our journey towards improving the environment is part of our key purpose at Anglian Water.
We are thrilled then that two environmentally-focussed projects, Triple Carbon Reduction and Project Firefly, have been shortlisted for this year’s Water Industry Awards in the Net Zero Carbon Initiative of the Year and Wastewater Innovation Project of the Year categories respectively.
Triple Carbon Reduction, an Ofwat Innovation funded project, aims to evidence a step change reduction in green house gas emissions and electricity used in the water treatment process. This will simultaneously create a new renewable energy source through green hydrogen production.
Using novel technologies, it will create a ‘triple carbon’ synergy and demonstrate an alternative waste water treatment process that could significantly reduce the amount of emissions created compared to the current process. Also shortlisted at the Business Green Awards this year, Triple Carbon Reduction’s approach represents a viable strategy to meet the industry Net Zero ambitions by implementing the solution at scale, to reduce the marginal abatement cost of carbon emissions reduction.
It demonstrates the viability of hydrogen production at wastewater treatment centres and defines best practice for process scale up for the water sector, to allow hydrogen demand and infrastructure to grow beyond local use and support regional and national applications.
You can learn more about the Triple Carbon Reduction project here.
Project Firefly is a collaboration between Anglian Water, Firefly Green Fuels, (a spinoff from Green Fuels Research who won ~£2M from the Department for Transport’s Green Fuels, Green Skies competition) and Haltermann Carless.
The project takes post anaerobic digested biosolids from wastewater treatment and, by applying pressure and heat using a process called Hydrothermal Liquefaction (HTL), converts the organics fraction of biosolids into Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). The first of a kind refinery is planned to be commercially operational at Haltermann Carless’ Harwich refinery by 2029. Firefly Green Fuels also secured a £5m inward investment from Wizz Air along with a lucrative 15 year SAF offtake agreement.
With the UK Government announcing a SAF blend mandate increasing to 10% by 2030 and 22% by 2040 , the demand for SAF in the UK and globally being unmet (e.g. 200K tonnes of SAF unmet demand in 2019) there is a huge market for SAF which provides a solid foundation for the Firefly project, making it unique as an innovative circular economy (CE) concept. Existing solutions for SAF production are also uncompetitive, with the current price to wing being 2-6 times the cost of fossil jet fuel.
From a water industry perspective, the Firefly concept provides an important alternative outlet for bioresources, and the phosphorus fraction can still be captured post HTL through separation of the biochar component, and as such can still provide potential value as a fertiliser.
The Firefly concept, if rolled out nationally, has the potential to process more than c3.6 million tonnes of sewage sludge to produce 200k tonnes of SAF. Firefly will facilitate a step change towards the future of air travel.
Congratulations to both project teams on their shortlisting, we look forward to the awards announcements later this summer!
