Opportunities and Barriers to Sustainability Innovation in a UK Water and Sewerage Company

Download or read book Opportunities and Barriers to Sustainability Innovation in a UK Water and Sewerage Company written by Aaron Tanner and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last twenty years, the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development have assumed political importance around the world, and have been largely embraced by governments and prominent international institutions. These concepts have been a means of tackling the challenges of population growth and environmental change. For the UK water sector, these concepts now represent a multitude of challenges. The confluence of climate change and population growth is reducing access to, and the availability of, water resources. The financial costs of inputs such as energy, chemicals, materials and cost of process by-products such as greenhouse gases, carbon, and waste services continue to rise. Government regulators are demanding an improvement in the quality of services, increasingly stringent conditions for emissions to water, air or land, catchment-specific management of the water environment, and the adoption of long- term planning horizons. The UK government has expectations that the water sector will play a role in the delivery of its targets for reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions. Society demands that WaSCs engage in high-level stakeholder consultations and employ long-term visions to guide their decision-making. Finally, WaSCs are increasingly expected to demonstrate and respond to local and global concerns (under the rubric of corporate responsibility) to further justify their value to society. Building the sustainability paradigm in practice within a WaSC requires innovation in not only technologies, structure and processes, but also behaviour, culture, knowledge and skills. These organisational changes can be recognised as sustainability innovations if, when employed, they further the WaSC's management or understanding of sustainability principles. The desired benefits of sustainability innovation adoption are to improve the resilience of water and sewerage services and / or reduce the burden of these services on the natural systems on which they are reliant. The aim of this research was to identify the factors that influenced the innovation development process and the adoption of sustainability innovations for a specific UK WaSC. The objective of the study was to generate an understanding of these factors in order that the findings could be used to inform future sustainability innovation initiatives and improve sustainability innovation adoption. The research findings, although undertaken within a specific department of a specific UK WaSC, are also of value to other stakeholders within the water sector concerned with understanding and improving the pace of adoption of sustainability innovations. Through a process of embedded research at a WaSC, this research identified a range of potential sustainability innovations that might be viable against a range of critical criteria identified by employees at the WaSC. The research then recorded the sustainability narratives of WaSC employees during the innovation process for three sustainability innovations selected against these criteria. This qualitative data was subject to thematic content analysis, axial coding, and conceptual mapping. The research revealed that the adoption of the sustainability innovations was dependant on innovations in terms of their contribution to the financial goals of the organisation, their perceived or real impact on the service provision, and the changes to risk position for the WaSC. These factors will vary in value through time, as restructuring and contract renewal events can inhibit or enable innovation opportunities. Innovation adoption was also influenced by the compatibility of the suggested innovation with the properties of the WaSC, expressed as policies, objectives, strategies, roles, responsibilities, resources and culture, which in their current form are failing to address principles of sustainability evenly. The findings suggest a skewed selection and uptake of sustainability innovation, which favours a set of innovation opportunities limited by: WaSC policy and goals, existing ii roles responsibilities and expertise, the innovation cost advantages and the perceived risks to services associated with the innovation. Under these circumstances, the outlook for radical improvements to the sustainability performance of a WaSC through the adoption of sustainability innovations is bleak. This study suggests that the pace of sustainability change generated through sustainability innovations in UK WaSCs will probably proceed incrementally and favour those innovations clearly supported by existing WaSC policies and drivers. Keywords: innovation, sustainability, asset-management, Indicators, decision-making, wastewater systems, barriers, opportunities, influence, adoption, water utilities, asset delivery.