Anglian Water is making history with its carbon reduction programme, as the UK utility industry’s first fully electric jetting 4-ton van hits the region’s roads.
The project sees a fully electric jetting machine fitted to a 4-ton electric van – the first of its kind in the UK. This innovative development marks a significant step in Anglian’s decarbonisation efforts, which will see 90 per cent of small vehicles replaced with electric equivalents, medium-sized vehicles moved to hydrogen or alternative fuels, and 55 per cent of HGVs using liquefied natural gas by 2030.
Used for industrial sewer cleaning, the van will be silent even while operational, allowing the company to minimise disruption and noise in local communities during late night call outs.
Anglian Water clears over 40,000 blockages every single year, caused by wrongly flushed items, as well as a build-up of fats, oils and greases. This equates to one blockage every 5 minutes – of which 80 per cent are avoidable. They cost the company a whopping £19 million a year to remove and can often lead to sewer spills resulting in pollution to the wider environment. The new electric jetter will help clear blockages in the company’s pipes, helping prevent these spills.
In July 2021, Anglian Water launched its comprehensive routemap to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2030, following the world-leading net zero commitment by the entire water sector in 2020. Anglian’s routemap is centred around several key areas of work and outlines the targets the company will reach by 2030. Each year the company will reduce its carbon emissions, and by 2030 its operational emissions will have reduced by more than 70 per cent against a 2018/19 baseline – a reduction of more than 250,000 tonnes, or the equivalent of filling 55,000 hot air balloons.
The new jetting van forms part of Anglian Water’s wider push towards electric vehicles, with the company also receiving deliveries over the coming months of 40 range-extended hybrid vans, 43 fully electric small vans, and 200 electric cars.
Mick Farmer, Head of Fleet Services at Anglian Water, said:
“Every year, our vans drive 20 million miles – the equivalent of going to the moon and back 24 times – so going electric is essential for us to reach net zero by 2030.
“Innovations like this new fully electric jetting van have the potential to revolutionise our everyday work. We’re always working to eliminate the impact of what we do on the environment, and being able to jet clean sewers with an electric jetting machine on electric van will not only cut carbon emissions, but prevent sewer blockages which can cause pollution.”
Read more about Anglian Water’s plans to go electric here.
