Blog Hero Excellence in ESG Award - Copperleaf Decision Analytics

June 26, 2023

Written by: John Harvey

Anglian Water Wins Copperleaf Excellence in ESG Award

Anglian Water, the largest water and water recycling company in England and Wales by geographic area, has been named the winner of the Copperleaf® Excellence in ESG (environmental, social, and governance) award at the Copperleaf Global Summit.

The water company is the first in the UK to embed public interest commitments in its purpose, aiming to reduce capital carbon in scope 3 emissions by 70% against a 2010 baseline, and achieve net zero by 2030.

John Green, Strategic Value Manager at Anglian Water said, “We’re absolutely delighted to win, it’s a real testament to the hard work of the team. Our Value Framework we developed in conjunction with Copperleaf enables us to put value—in the broadest sense—at the heart of our investment decisions.”

Copperleaf provides an enterprise-wide repository of cost, carbon, and value information, which ensures every investment decision at Anglian Water is based on a single source of truth. Anglian Water’s Value Framework—which enables different risks and benefits (financial and non-financial) to be expressed on a common scale—is aligned with its strategic goals, based on the six capitals model, and includes measures related to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Anglian Water has already delivered 62% reduction in capital carbon, and recently won the Verdantix Innovation Excellence Award for Enterprise Carbon Management using the Copperleaf solution.

The Anglian Water team celebrate their award win

Andy Brown, Group Chief Sustainability Officer, said, “Our purpose is to bring environmental and social prosperity to the region we serve. Integrating the six capitals framework into our investment decision-making process enables us to demonstrate how we are delivering this purpose. This award gives us great confidence that we are taking the right steps to becoming a truly purpose-driven organisation.”

Many clients use the Copperleaf solution to align decision-making criteria with ESG strategy, including the three finalists:

  • Southern California Gas (SoCalGas) includes distribution main segment leak rates in its Value Framework, providing a view of the impact of its Distribution Integrity Management Programme (DIMP) on emissions. In the future, this will allow the company to compare investment plans on the basis of cost, value, and emissions, and understand the impact of programme trade-offs. SoCalGas also plans to use Copperleaf to report DIMP impact at the community level, which will eventually enable the company to articulate the value served to disadvantaged communities in terms of safety risk mitigation and gas reliability.
  • Endeavour Energy‘s Value Framework is customer-centric and aligns investment with its corporate objectives, ensuring asset replacement and augmentation projects aim to mitigate risk to the public and minimise adverse impacts on the environment.
  • Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) also has a comprehensive Value Framework aligned to its sustainability strategy, which supports the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and six capitals. This allows TNB to build effective business cases for ESG investments to submit to regulators.

Copperleaf’s Excellence in ESG award recognises the innovation and progress our clients are making to advance their ESG goals. This award celebrates their achievements, progress, and vision—no matter what stage they are at in their ESG journey. All submissions were reviewed by a panel of ESG experts at Copperleaf, and organisations were scored based on their ESG initiatives, external awards and rankings, reporting metrics, and other relevant activities.

Despite strong competition from clients around the world, it was Anglian Water’s commitment to sustainability, public interest, and stringent reporting standards that claimed first place. The award includes a $5,000 CAD donation to a charity of their choice. Anglian Water selected the Ferry Project, an award-winning social enterprise that helps homeless people in the east of England get the shelter, opportunities, and support they need. Find out more about their great work here.

Congratulations to Anglian Water for winning the inaugural Copperleaf Excellence in ESG award, and thank you to all the finalists for sharing their inspiring stories.