Northumbrian Water has made a concrete commitment to reduce carbon in its £3.6bn investment programme.
The water company has pledged to stop the use of CEM1 – the most carbon-intensive type of concrete – on its sites, delivering significant environmental benefits.
Concrete is among the most carbon-intensive materials used in construction, and removing CEM1 from the maintenance and enhancement of its assets is already seeing real-world reductions of up to 54% embodied carbon – the lifetime emissions of a building or construction product.
The move comes in the first eight months of a five-year, £3.6bn capital investment programme, which has also seen it embrace manufacturing improvements that allow recycled rebar steel to meet the same quality and safety standards as newly-manufactured “virgin” steel. Recycled rebar steel is now embedded as the standard for the water company and its partners working across its water and wastewater sites.
These moves complement the company’s work with external partners to investigate the potential for carbon reduction. This includes hosting a trial of graphene-enhanced concrete on a road at Sedgefield Sewage Treatment Works, in County Durham, which will inform an ongoing study by Innovate UK, the University of Manchester’s Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre, Cemex, Sika and Galliford Try. This work has been recognised in the Building Innovation Awards 2025, winning the Best Energy Efficiency Innovation Award.
Northumbrian Water’s Project Manager, Ben Gilbert, said: “The prohibition of CEM1 concrete and our embedding of recycled steel as our standard for rebar will deliver significant reductions in embodied carbon across our sites, as a result of our £3.6bn investment programme, and of our work to maintain and enhance our sites long into the future.”
“We’ve made these changes as part of our commitment to the CO2nstruct Zero Five-Point Carbon Reduction Plan. Carbon measurement and reduction are embedded into our investment projects, from design to delivery, encouraging smart interventions to reduce carbon and share best practice across our network of partners and beyond.”