This project aims at supporting the decarbonisation of asset-intensive industries, such as water utilities and industrial clusters by using a digital decision intelligence tool to enable a truly adaptive systems planning capability. Aligned with the Government objective to achieve Net Zero operational carbon, the water utilities have started publishing initial roadmaps charting their trajectory and major interventions required to achieve carbon neutrality.

These initial strategies provides a solid foundation to identify data requirements, as well as the range of interventions and major challenges that the industry needs to tackle. However, there is huge scope to improve the ability to manage and quantify the impact of uncertainty on the overall outcome of the strategy. Uncertainty can be associated with volatility of cost (e.g. recent variations in energy prices), or it could be associated with a new piece of technology, which might be still under development and therefore might not have fully-defined specifications. When combining uncertainty of multiple parameters, the direction of travel towards Net Zero might be significantly impacted, so understanding both the potential negative impact and the potential opportunities lying behind this uncertainty is of primary importance for all utilities that need to de-risk their strategy, future-proof their investment and provide the confidence to act at the pace required to achieve Net Zero targets.

We, Business Modelling Associates, specialise in analysis, optimisation and visualisation of data for large interconnected systems and we have been supporting investment decisions for utilities In the UK over the last decade. As such, we are well placed to provide a decision support tool that combines expert elicitation with advanced analytics to strengthen decarbonisation strategies and help utilities meet their ambitious sustainability goals.