 Hello everyone and welcome to this first of four webinars on climate accounting. We've really been looking forward to this. Good to see so many attendees online. I have a bit of practical information before we get started. I have to say that this webinar will be recorded and made available on demand on the IWA Connect Plus platform for presentation slides and other information. The speakers are responsible for securing copyright permissions for any work that they will present, of which they are not the legal copyright holder. The opinions, hypotheses, conclusions and recommendations contained in the presentations and other materials for the sole responsibility of the speakers and to not necessarily reflect IWA opinion. There will be some possibilities to ask questions along the webinar. You have to use the chat box. You can see them in the bottom of the screen. You can use this for general requests and for interactive activities. And you can use the Q&A box for questions to the panelists. And these questions will be answered during the discussions and or in the post-webinar materials. You are all attendees are muted and you cannot use the raise hand function. Only use this chat box and Q&A box possibilities. Thank you. Good. I want to say a little bit of the background of why we're here. This is a very interesting topic, of course. And a lot of you people listening today might also have been present at the IWA conference in Copenhagen last year. That was a very interesting workshop, first of all, which was initiated by the four water and wastewater associations in the Nordic countries in Denmark and Sweden, Norway and Finland. And we had some very interesting inputs from examples from utilities around the world. And also we had some very good round table discussions. And it became very clear that we needed to have these discussions out in a broader format. And there was a lot more to be discussed. Also at the same conference, a report called the Nordic report was launched. And this MIAM file from Denmark will present later in this webinar. We got together after this, especially this workshop at the IWA conference. I talked a lot with Amanda Lake about how we could go on with this. And Amanda took contact with the IWA, Climate Smart Utilities Network. And we started to try and organize these webinars. So it's Brenda and Charles from IWA. Amanda Lake from Jacobs. And Katerina Vansko and myself from NVidane, who has been organizing this first webinar and will also be organizing the next three webinars. I'd like to say a little bit about the background also from a Danish perspective. Now the whole webinar series is based on the Nordic experience. And a lot of other countries in the EU and also other countries are looking towards the Nordics and especially towards Denmark, because a lot of things are happening here. First of all, there's an overall target in Denmark that the entire sector want to be energy and climate neutral by 2030. There's been a lot of success in the cooperation between legislators, technology providers, consultants, etc. to try to get more knowledge, to measure and try to get these measurements into actual legislation. And two examples I've shown here, it's in Danish. So you might not be able to see the text on the report, but it's a big study on nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide funded by the Danish EPA. In this report, nine wastewater treatment plants were studied quite intensively. And this was the basis of a new Danish emission factor for nitrous oxide. You might have seen the number, 0.84% nitrous oxide emissions per TN in the inlet. Another big study was funded by the Danish EA Energy Agency. And here we saw that an average loss of methane from almost half of the wastewater treatment plants in Denmark showed 7.7% loss of methane. So it really opened the eyes also of the legislators that something had to be done in terms of methane, but also nitrous oxide emissions. So what's going on now in terms of legislation in Denmark is that it has been stated that a nitrous oxide emission limit will be implemented no later than 2025 for all wastewater treatment plants bigger than 30,000 PE. And also it has already been taken into account now that all wastewater treatment plants with biogas production needs to have an internal protocol and also an annual check by a third party. And then they're also working on some more specific limits for methane. So a lot of things are happening in the water sector in Denmark. So what we want to go through today is this quick background. Then we'll move into a broad look into the greenhouse gas emissions with an EU perspective by Alberto Pistocchi and Vanessa Paraviccini. Then we'll move on to and zoom in on the Nordic report by Miriam Falber from Denmark. And then we'll have a case by Natalia from Bergman. And then we'll have some time for discussion, question, and answers in between and also in the end of the webinar. Three more webinars are coming. The first one will be zooming in on methane emissions. This will be moderated by Amanda Lake. The next one will be zooming in on nitrous oxide. This one will be moderated by Anne Katrin. And the third one will zoom out a little bit more and look into a broader perspective, not only CO2, but also look into planetary boundaries, life cycle assessment and stuff like that. So put these dates in your calendar now and we will make sure to post it later. So today we have myself. I'm a head of R&D within sustainability at the Scandinavian consultant company called NVIDEN. After me, Alberto Pistocchi will take over. Alberto is an environmental engineer and land planner and also scientific project officer at the European Commission Joint Research Center. Then Miriam Falber will talk about the Scandinavian Nordic report. Miriam is a head of climate at the Danish Water and Wastewater Association of Denmark and has a lot of experience within climate change adaptation and planning. And then in the end Natalia will take over. Natalia is a senior engineer in back and van and she's very experienced within especially the fields of energy and climate. Good. I will give the word to Alberto. Thank you Jakob. Good morning everyone. I'm going to present the results of the studies that we conducted as the scientific service of the European Commission in support to the revision of the urban wastewater directive that you may be familiar with. Particularly for what concerns the balance of emissions of greenhouse gases from the wastewater treatment system including everything that goes from the collection of wastewater to the different forms of treatment and disposal of the influence. The study was led by Vanessa Paravicini who is also here and I'm presenting the messages mainly from an aggregated point of view. We are happy of course to address more specific and detailed questions later on as we become of interest for the audience. There is as you know very well a European Green Deal that was launched in 2019 a context in which the European Union has adopted ambitious goals for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions along with pollution reduction and circular economy. Wastewater treatment is clearly at the center of these three dimensions of the Green Deal. Wastewater collection and treatment is a contributor to the overall greenhouse gas emissions of the European Union to a non-negligible extent and is reported as such under the UN Convention. So presently there is already some reporting of emissions from wastewater treatment systems. However in support of the revision of the European Wastewater Treatment Directive we wanted to have a closer and more operational look at what contributes to the emissions of the wastewater sector and to this end we developed the calculations that encompasses virtually all emissions that we expect from the wastewater collection and treatment system at the European scale beyond what is reported to an extent in a conventional way under the existing procedures. The ultimate goal was to explore the leeway that we have the possibilities and opportunities that we have towards reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of wastewater and explore how this may roll out in different scenarios of policy. In the study that we have performed we considered direct emissions that are the ones already addressed by the IPCC guidelines of 2006 and the update of 2019. The indirect emissions related to construction, operation, electricity and reagents particularly with regard to phosphorus removal and eventually we estimated on these phases a burden or in some cases a credit of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions for typologies of plants that were expected to represent the European system. In this table you see some components of emissions direct and indirect emissions that we consider. The typical credit is about credits from the production of renewable energy, electricity or biomethane to an extent. In operation we consider the emissions of TENTUO and CH4 within the treatment process and with the effluents as well as the methane that we expect to be stripped at the arrival of effluents at the wastewater treatment plants that somehow combines also emissions associated with the collection system. This is a sketch of the system that we are describing. As you see you have effluents entering the treatment process then the water and the sludge lines and then an effluent that emits to some extent in the receiving water bodies. Emissions include N2O emissions from the biological stage, methane emission from the sludge line and nitrous oxide and methane in the effluents according to the IPCC guidelines of 2019. We identified a set of typical plants and then we classified the about 25,000 wastewater treatment plants available in the urban wastewater treatment database of the European Union of the European Environment Agency and Commission. On the basis of the level of treatment and the size of that plant we made assumptions on the type of treatment. The main uncertainty here is related to the fact that we don't know if a plant without full-blown nitrogen removal anyway addresses to some extent ammonia so there is an oxidation of ammonia or not depending on the cases and so we considered both cases and we took the range of outcomes corresponding to the two typologies in the case a plant was known not to have a nitrogen removal stage. For the rest it's rather straightforward to attribute the typology to a plant on the basis of size and level of treatment. Another assumption that we had to make was about the type of sludge stabilization. We assumed an aerobic digestion for plants above 30,000 population equivalents and for smaller plants simultaneously as aerobic sludge stabilization whereas in many cases for smaller plants we also assumed read beds or other systems of treatment of the sludge. We did not include emissions related to the transport and final disposal of the sludge because that can be very specific and was out of the scope of our analysis whereas the operation of the plant and the emissions embedded in the infrastructure in the construction of the infrastructure were also included in the calculation. The emission factor of N2 for nitrous oxide for the biological stage was set lower at plants targeting and removal over denitrification. That is a peculiarity of sorry. Can I go back? No. How do I go back? I clicked by mistake. Okay, sorry. This slide presents the emission factor let's say the emissions per unit treated populations of the population equivalent in terms of CO2 equivalents for the different typologies of plants that we considered. The details can be found in a paper that has been published that you can find link in the slides from which all the figures are taken but without going into details you see that the gray part corresponds to the emissions embedded in the infrastructure. The bluish part corresponds to emissions related to methane. The green tones parts correspond to emissions of N2O from the process and from the effluents and the red part corresponds to the reagents for phosphorus removal whereas the pink parts of the bars are emissions with electricity assuming a certain carbon intensity of electricity that of course is a parameter of the assessment. Based on these emission factors we started exploring different scenarios of wastewater treatment across Europe so assuming that all plants of a certain typology were undergoing a certain level of treatment and the results are summarized in this bar chart where you see the current situation where we emit approximately 35 million tons of CO2 equivalent per year of which about 14 million are associated with the construction of the infrastructure so they are somehow embedded in the infrastructure. Then we started performing some what-if scenario calculation seeing how far we could go in reducing emissions with a number of policy options including first of all going towards full compliance with the existing legislation that does not change a lot but still we have parts of Europe where the treatment is less efficient than it should be. Then we started considering energy efficiency so reducing the electricity consumption of the plants and then starting to decarbonize completely the electricity that we use in plants add to the decarbonization of electricity also the possibility to upgrade the biogas to biomethane used in the net so for uses outside of the wastewater treatment plant and so displacing fossil methane and that brings additional benefits and then other scenarios that you can see here for instance a scenario where we perform very extensive nitrogen removal denitrification with basically with a simultaneous aerobic sludge stabilization at every plant which may not be regarded probably as a realistic scenario but it's a limit scenario to analyze the extent to we can reduce the emissions and this gives you a range of what we expect by adopting different measures as blanket measures across the European Union. This gave us the possibility to explore from the current scenario to the maximum possible reduction of emissions that we considered in the different assumptions country by country by how much we could reduce emissions of CO2 equivalent in Europe from the wastewater treatment sector. One aspect to mention that I would drop here for general consideration is that the revision of the urban wastewater treatment directive also proposes the introduction of an advanced treatment for micro pollutants this advanced the treatment may entail non-negligible CO2 equivalent emissions because of the energy and the materials that may be required. These emissions have been quantified at a very preliminary level but do not figure into the calculations that we have performed. There is a possibility to perform advanced treatment by completely offsetting the emissions using let's say renewable electricity and renewable non-fossil materials for the advanced treatment so this is a point of warning that we should be aware of in the development of the system but apart from this consideration the general pictures that we drew from this simulation of scenarios is that we have a quantification of a European wastewater sector emissions that may range from 50 to 125 kilograms of CO2 equivalent per pollution equivalent per year of which a significant share 20 to 40 kilograms are embedded in the infrastructure. The main contributors to these amounts are N2O emissions and electricity in the operation then direct CH4 emissions as a third contributor to the overall emissions. This amounts to a current level of 35 million tons and those emissions can be significantly reduced but of course not brought to zero by primarily by efficient use of electricity the carbonization and so for a large part measures related to the energy neutrality of plants that is also requested under the proposed revision of the directive. One key aspect is ensuring an efficient denitrification and I'm sure the approach for instance simplified by the Danish limits to N2O that we were seeing before could be a good opportunity to go in that direction and step up with the reduction of emissions. Many thanks. Thank you Alberto. Perfect timing. Thank you for that. I would like to start with a question or first of all I would like to thank you for a very good presentation and a very substantial piece of work. Very interesting. I would like to I like that you had the slide on the treatment advanced treatment for micro pollutants because I mean this is just one of the things where we actually are getting bigger demand on treatment of the wastewater which will make it even more difficult to become climate neutral and then we're talking about this climate neutrality. I would like you for you to reflect a little bit on that because when I saw your graph with the different things you can do to get closer to this climate neutrality that's a long way. Could you say anything about that? I mean how are you looking at that? I think we have to be aware that the current technical possibilities are limited. We have emissions that as we see derive from the infrastructure and the way forward is to limit the emissions embedded in concrete, steel, plastics etc. that for part of the infrastructure. That's of course a very complex debate and it's probably out of the scope of this conversation but an implication for us is probably that we need to limit the extent of the infrastructure to the minimum possible compatible with our environmental objectives and then offset what cannot be reduced basically. Then if we go to the emissions that theoretically could be compressed it's apparent that the lion's share is electricity, methane and of course nitrous oxide. So whichever innovation in process design or in the typologies of processes that may help avoid leaks of methane or N2O is by far needed and we'll have to go that way anyway. For the present time I think efficient denitrification and the carbonizing electricity are the ways to go and the control of positive methane emissions for instance whatever can be fixed within reason with the current technologies should be implemented as soon as possible. So that was one question in the Q&A. It's the same kind of question how to become carbon neutral. I think we kind of covered this question. I must say that when I presented in the beginning that in Denmark you have this overall aim of being carbon neutral it's actually only in the operational phase. So I'm glad that your work is also taking into account the building phase. For instance extending sewer networks beyond the reason should be regarded with particular attention because sewers embed significant emissions. So centralizing treatment implies in some cases these proportionate emissions in the infrastructure. If I mean of course if the infrastructure already exists the situation is very different but we have to think about that. Good thank you Alberto. We'll be moving on. We'll be looking into the Q&A session later also and we will have some time at the very end of the session to take in some of the questions from you guys. But we will have to move on to Tamir from Denmark. Tamir please take the floor. Thank you so much Jakob. I think you hear me now. So we are all aware that we are facing really severe risks related to climate change and we have also heard now and thank you very much for an interesting presentation Albert. That from the water sector there is also significant impact related to climate change. From the Nordic water sector it is a decision that we are willing to take up this challenge and live up to our commitments in terms of reducing CO2 emissions from our activities. But we also need to ask ourselves the questions. Is climate and energy neutrality actually possible and if that is the case what can we then do to advance towards this goal? And the questions were the starting point for a project that we started in the Nordic water sector called Nordic Principles for a Climate Neutral Water Sector. My name is Mia Feilberg. I represent the Danish Water and Wastewater Association. But in this project I'm also presenting on behalf of my fellow Nordic water associations from Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. We have made this joint project from our four countries in the very north of Europe to present our efforts and to move jointly towards living up to our responsibility related to climate change but also to live up to other global goals that we are facing and national goals like the European Green Deal and what we are also expecting to come from the revised urban wastewater treatment directive. We have also started on this in order to have a stronger voice in Europe in terms of presenting our experience but we can also actually use it to strengthen our own domestic policy making. So where we can see some of the other Nordic countries are lacking behind a bit then we can use this to promote what we want to do in common. So these four Nordic countries well the size of the countries varies quite a lot but in terms of inhabitants they are relatively small countries all of them but what we have in common is a relatively high technological level and also water and wastewater systems where inhabitants are connected to centralized systems to a very high degree. We also have very similar figures when we're looking at as you can see down here the contribution from the water sector to the national emissions for both Denmark, Sweden and Norway this is actually 0.4 percent for Finland it's a bit higher but it's probably because the figures are a bit older. But we started from this kind of this level and want to look into what we can what we need to do in order to become climate neutral. We have also very similar targets in the Nordic countries wanting to lower emissions and move towards eventual climate and energy neutrality when differs a bit but as you can see for both Denmark and Sweden that are most specific we're also now looking at the operations level that you also touched upon Alberto and I will come back back to that a little bit later also. But the overall content with this project the Nordic principles for a climate neutral water sector is not to make a common model for climate accounting but we want to use our experience from the utilities in these four countries to reach a common understanding of climate accounting models what is needed to do solid climate accountant and then make some common principles on what you need to do and first what I will present here is kind of the background and status from the Nordic countries and then we also made a test of the principles and if they are actually usable in terms of making the climate accounting models can we can we use the results in order to advance towards climate neutrality. So the first step we we took was to make an overview of the different climate accounting models that we have in place now what are the parameters that are included in the different models Finland is developing a model currently but you can see the parameters here and you can get the presentation or look at the report for to to have more time to study the details but we had this overview of the different parameters for waterworks for sewers for wastewater treatment plants and you can see some are similar for all of the countries they are included in our models and others vary in terms of of the way we are handling drinking water wastewater and so on in in the different countries but we have a common set of parameters that are applicable to one or more of the Nordic countries climate accounting models. The next step is then to look into if we have the data in order to do the accounting and also to to pay attention to how important the impact is so we we went down further in the study studied to look at the our data availability and the importance of the emissions. The aim is to reach a model where we do not necessarily have all emissions included but in order to to advance to the goals that we want to meet and to be a bit more to make a bit more simple model to focus on where we have good solid data and of course where there is a strong impact if there is a strong impact and we have less data then of course it's important to start looking at how you can secure better data in this area. We we want to work towards what we call like an 85 percent model it's not because you need to reach exactly 85 but in order to have to to focus on getting the most important emissions in place and starting to handle that and then we we based this we made this set of common principles we can learn a lot from each other that's also why we are very happy to participate in a webinar like this or present the results at the IWA Congress in Copenhagen. We think it's important that you include all emissions and avoided emissions and that you're looking at both water supply transportation sewage systems and wastewater treatment plants. We have significant emissions in all of our operations. We think it's it's a good idea to start by including the operational level but we can also see and you mentioned that also Alberto again that emissions from construction and demolition are significant. Studies in Denmark point towards perhaps a factor 10 in terms of emissions from an operational level and I have we've written here that it can be included but probably we should say that it must be included in a later phase. It's important when you want to do the climate accounting that you start measuring the climate emissions and that you can establish some baseline in order to follow the progress of your activities. We it's it's also important that you base emission factors on the latest calculations and measurements and scientific results and as I I just said we propose to keep the model and the reporting as simple as possible. This is what we call the 85 percent model and that you by doing that start by selecting contributors where data availability and significance is high and kind of based on these principles and the data we have where we can see what it what matters then we selected a number of parameters that should be included or that we can recommend to include in climate accounting still focusing on waterworks drinking water on transportation sewer systems and in wastewater treatment plants where we have the green marks we have we have the data in the models already in the countries and in others we are not including that but but it can be it can be a good recommendation to do that the only factor that none are including yet is carbon capture but as this these technologies advance I think we will also get to include that as well so these are the parameters that we propose to include in counting climate accounting models and then the next question is is it possible can we actually we do we have the data can we measure and can we track progress and in order to find out that we selected information from utilities from foreign order countries we have 14 waterworks 12 sewer systems and 16 wastewater treatment plants that contributed data to making this overview as you can see there are large variations between utilities and between countries and I know this is difficult to read but you can get all the data in in the report that we have but just just to give just a few few more pieces of information on this I mean what we learned is that from all the utilities where we collected data they have data on these different parameters it varies how much it it accounts for in the in the utilities but they have the data and there is also data on avoided emissions, solar energy and so on so the to keep it simple the conclusion is that it is possible to do the recording and measuring of your climate emissions in the water sector and it's we are very can very much convinced that it's also possible to become climate neutral at not now I think one is there but but some are getting close and for others there's still some way to go but it will be possible to to get there at some point and it's important information to start working towards climate neutrality that it is possible to get there so just a few take home messages from the work we have been doing and you can get much more information in this report we have made it's important to know what you're doing and start by measuring the emissions it is possible to do that and based on that make a baseline for your activities start again by focusing on the most significant contributors it's also important to set ambitions ambitious targets if you want to do that you also need to have some buy-in from owners politicians consumers in your areas but it's also a good starting point for a discussion on the the climate impact of the water sector based on our study it's possible to calculate the emissions and to follow the progress and once when you have established the climate accounting model and you're comfortable with doing that in the operational phase then you can or probably should start looking at the construction phase as well and and finally it's important for water utilities that they need we have a lot of goals in our sector and we need to balance the different goals energy and climate neutrality that can be a trade-off here but also looking into the environmental targets that we have the costs the quality so there are some balances that we need to pay attention to and finally greenhouse gas emissions are of course not the only area of focus for sustainability in our sector it's quite important that we avoid carbon tunnel vision that we are not only looking at carbon emissions but are also looking at other areas like biodiversity air pollutants eutrophication and so on I think that is probably going to be a topic also for the fourth webinar in the series and I think it's a very important discussion to get back to as well so finally this is our report there's a link to the report and I'm happy to answer questions now but you can also send questions later when you have had a look at the report and all contact details in the report as well yeah that was for my part now and you can see the report Brenda just send a link to it thank you so much ma'am for a very good presentation very interesting work I was also a part of this and I think it was a very I think we learned a lot very interesting to see also how different people look at this climate accounting just in in in different countries where we normally normally see each other as quite equal it's yeah that was very knowledgeable piece of work start with just a few questions from the from the Q&A ma'am just a clarification first from an anonymous attendee thank you for the presentation ma'am you mentioned the fact that 10 emissions from infrastructure compared to the operation of the system is that meant on an annualized comparison I'm not really sure actually no I think it's well actually I don't know how they have made that estimate how they're breaking it down it's one utility in Denmark that has been doing a very sorrow study uh on on the emissions related to operations compared to the the construction investment element yeah it's also very difficult to make this factor I mean it's I see a lot of different numbers a lot of different calculations and and it's not easy to get no I don't maybe you know Jacob how they how they made this estimate I don't know exactly about this there's a question I think the key message is that there are really significant emissions related to construction phases and we need to look into that as well good there's a question on greenhouse gas emissions from sludge what's the reason to leave these emissions out of the analysis modeling uh it varies quite a quite a bit uh where it is and isn't and we have a lot of different ways to do that um yeah I think it's it's related to the kind of it's for the simplicity of the model actually yeah I think that's very important and you also clarified that quite clearly that we really need to also if we need to to get all the utilities to work with this I mean we need simplicity also so you need to find that that balance so that everybody can can get started but I mean for some they are including it and for others they are not having it into but it but it is difficult to to work with good question on climate models or LCA um have you do you have any experience with that um yeah I know that it hasn't been used for this this work or but you also mentioned this with uh looking a bit more holistically at at projects or in general to look more holistically at not only calculating CO2 and then then you think you're safe can you say a little bit more on that well it's it's an element I don't know actually in the other Nordic countries but I think that will be focused on that as well but I know in the Danish water sector it's an element that people are beginning to pay more and more attention to uh the the whole life cycle impact of what we are doing and it will as I see it be one of the more important tools in order to look also at construction and and the building phase and so to include the life cycle assessment perspective there is some experience in this not a lot but we will start looking into that now yeah and you can say this this work that you're presenting now me I mean that's also has I mean its background in in LCA thinking I mean it's not a full LCA on on on CO2 climate change but but it it has all these thoughts about it I mean what what do we need to include we need to include as much as possible um but but but for the the reason in your project in your project I mean we also need this simplicity factor and then when you don't do full LCA's so again back to this balance yeah but I think in a way LCA's will be the next step when we have the the climate accounting models and we have an overview of that and a more solid idea of where we want to go what activities and then the LCA will be the next step that we will take yeah we're taking one step at a time that's what I'm hearing from you yeah good thank you so much we have we need to move on and I'd like to give the word to Natalia from back and back please thank you very much hello everyone my name is Natalia Domtek I work as a senior engineer in Bergen Van Bergen is the second largest city in in Norway Bergen Van has about 260 amazing employee employers we have five water treatment plants five sewage water treatment plants with secondary treatment we have a biogas plant and really really a lot of pipes and pumps and tunnels to pump it through the city we started looking at carbon footprint calculations in 2018 so we have some experience with with this one it wasn't easy so so last year I had the opportunity and the pleasure to talk a little bit about our experience from developing climate footprint calculations and I thought that it would be nice to revisit this particular presentation and see if it holds up so today I want to talk about not only how to start and then or develop but only how to maintain your climate footprint calculations in not three but now five steps and this I hope that it would be would be helpful regardless of whether you use or want to make your own carbon footprint calculations of if you use some already developed developed tools so it will be a little bit a lessons learned from Bergen Van the first step is that you need to know your value chain this is this is something this is a nothing nothing new we started with operations we used ISO 14030 this is this LCA approach but we didn't use it to make all the LCA we just we just used the approach and the method to start mapping and making some illustrations of our product system it worked really good for operations because in operations we have actually flows from one part of system to the other and this this tool and this approach help helps helps really good with illustrating it but when when we were done with this one we found out that this approach do not work for for project for project management so we needed to change the perspective and sorry and we looked at Norwegian standard 3720 this is a standard that is based on European standard on sustainability of construction works and it worked so what is really nice with this approach is that it is really flexible you can actually expand on it you can see the dotted line under the project it's a face a six and a seven that we just added because this is something that we want to have a more focus on so and what is also nice is that you already have this operation phase that you can put inside you have also product stage where you can look at indirect emissions from from products you you buy you purchase and where you also can ask for a EPD or for LCA for those products so everything actually hangs together so this is something we work with right now then you need to organize your emissions there's a lot of emissions a lot of the measurings that a lot of projects that you can hear about so you you need to make some baselines you need to make some system you some boundaries for what do you want to look at you can either use this this one standard or you can make the use this one so it works for for both it helps you with understanding what you know and what you don't know and if you don't know something that you can prioritize to to for example getting more information about this particular emissions it also helps you with making a system that will be easy to maintain later so if you if you miss some some data you can just fill it out later this is a new one this is something we learned you need to understand your data we started with establishing our own energy management system in a power bi and you can see to the left that we we this is divided into two pieces the the first one is actually based on information data we get from our energy suppliers and it is it is information that is on the more used on a more strategic level when you move further you can you can see more detailed information and it is information that comes from our own sensors in in our facilities where you can go down and see what is energy consumption at those different different processes level levels but what you need to understand is that if you have if you have raw data data that comes from one source it doesn't have to be in accordance or do not have to respond correspond to the other database so what we found out is that there is some discrepancy some mismatch between those two sources and it helps us understand that if you want to use our data for reporting or more strategic planning that we use data from energy supplier but if we want to plan or follow up some measures then we use data from from some source so you need to know your data and its purpose the other example is from transport this is also something we learn you can get data in different with different units sometimes it comes in kilometers working hours liters diesel used and and so on you can have different sources to your emission factors you can use different databases the standards suppliers have usually their own data or authorities in your country maybe have their own data they want that you will use calculations you need to know what type of calculations is easiest to make if it's one way or both ways if you want to look at a single single vehicle or group or if you want to look at the whole vehicle fleet and at the end what is your output in what you need how do you want to compare all those results so everything is the most important thing is that you understand what do you have and what do you want to achieve what is your purpose and it's it's it's it's worth thinking a little bit about about this one yes this is also new choose your tool wisely in 2018 we started with with a one excel file where we have all our calculations in 2022 we had five it was really chaotic and people who didn't work with with excel file and calculations had no idea of what was happening there so we needed to do something with it we introduced power bi as i said now we work with both energy management system but also our climate management systems where we move our climate calculations from excel to power bi but you cannot use the the one tool for everything what we learned is that excel is really nice in the beginning it's easy to calculate everyone can use it in some great and it's easy to store and exchange the files but everyone can use it it means that everyone can also go in and make something with your calculations that you have problems with later from the other side power bi it's really easy to navigate when you make already the report you can filter and find the data you really need from this particular report it's visual appealing and intuitive to use you can link up different sources you can have data clouds you can have live sensors just like we did with with some of our sensors so we have live data but it needs a special competence it's not as easy and intuitive to learn as excel it is not for calculations so some of your calculations you will still need to make in excel or other other tool and it costs in addition so there is always pros and cons and you need to you need to know which tool can you use for which purpose so this one is still actual you cannot do it without help you need both internal and external stakeholders to help you with gathering the data with checking if the data is good to go if it is something that you can use you need your IT department and and so on and so on so what we did in a bad again a bad again one is to expand on our existing management systems for quality and environment because we had already established a lot of a lot of processes and procedures that we could use to just build on them instead of trying to make something something new so we tried to to map a little bit how do we want to work with all those aspects we have a little bit about energy management the iso standard that we use that helps us with putting everything together we have a little process for carbon footprint with those two iso standards or standards that I mentioned earlier and the administration level helps with with communication looks at all the all the systems and standards and other tools that you can use like sequel or premium and see if it is something that we can use or we can inspire us with and then we have the executive strategic level where all the inputs from all those little processes goes to climate and energy coordination group and there we have people from the whole organization that both work in terminal and external with stakeholders but we also make reports that goes further to our management level to help them with understanding energy and climate situation we are in so this is also something something new we try to put we try to make the whole new process for how do we work with climate energy and environmental aspects in our projects the green part of the process is the detailing phase and this is where we want to use this and this standard to build on it and make some manual for how do we how do we calculate our carbon footprint calculations that we can use both internal and external some lessons learn start with operations and move further into other department departments this is something that was already said before data obtained from different sources will be difficult to compare without some generalization this is also something that already been said you need to simplify things sometimes remember the purpose of your calculations choose your fight you can't do everything at once and the last one use already existing systems just to expand on them and not do something something new thank you very much thank you Natalia for this very excellent presentation and I really enjoyed your your new steps especially step three understanding the data and the calculations I think that's very important that we don't just use any emission factor out there and then we think we we are more knowledgeable we really need to to understand what we're doing and state the basis and then we can work on from there to get what we really need is the reduction of emissions very good very good Natalia and I would like to to ask you one question because it's a very thorough work that you've done quite detailed also time consuming I would guess recommendations to other utilities because I'm sure that not all utilities have the sorry the resources and time to do this five-step model do you have any like general recommendations how to to to get started how to I mean if you if you're not there yet how do how do you start working on this I think that you you can actually use this this model but you look at you choose two or three emissions the biggest sources to your to your emissions that you start with what you have you can look at for example energy consumption you can look at your chemicals you can look at your transport just just see what you already have or what is not that hard to obtain and start with this the the most important thing is to start and build on it it's a process it takes time this is I don't think it is something that you can just sit down and and do you need to understand how your organization works you need to talk with different departments and understanding is the most important thing and not necessarily try to copy or do the same as the others you need to understand why do you want to do it if you see that energy is the biggest issue start with energy look at look at your emissions try to see where do they come from see at your factors try to calculate it and try to make some measures to to reduce and just look look how it how it goes yeah and I agree I mean your your five-step procedure can I mean it can be used in many different levels I guess you don't have to to start with the very detailed level you maybe just get started and get the baseline yeah good Natalia do you have to have does different data quality and frequency mean that you have to have multiple accounting systems depending on the purpose um I mean for maybe you need online data to actually minimize reduce the emissions and then you have to have some other data static data to do some reporting for government or I mean how what do you think yeah it's a little bit like this what I showed with with the energy we have actually in our report we have two sources to data this is two separate databases and we are lucky that we have it but I think that if you in the beginning you start with the reporting one I think because this is something that goes to authorities this is something that gives you some strategical understanding and then if you have already some sensors you can you can try to to get data from there if you do not have then it can be a good opportunity to do it at once and install some and connect it to the to your report but power power bi and database management it is it is not easy so I think that the the easiest part is to start with Excel understanding what do you have and then you can move it but I wouldn't um I wouldn't uh um now I forget the word but didn't you not start with power bi in the beginning I do not recommend it yes just start easy really easy and then try to move to a more detailed view build from the top level down not not from the detailed level up yeah I think that's also what we we heard from from me I mean maybe also start with the operational phase then you can add more when you understand that then you can add the construction phase and then when you're there you can start maybe doing life cycle assessments I mean do one step at a time in in your own pace yeah yes and I think I think that if you if you start with something that you know it wouldn't be that discouraging when you're just hoping to into the ocean of strange strange factors and and data you you have no you don't understand so start what you what you know good we will be moving into the the general Q&A session and I will ask some some questions to the panelists and also taking in questions from the Q&A so you can you can still post questions there in the Q&A session um I would like to ask the panelists first just one two minutes from each of you can you say what what do you think is the the the biggest source of emission where we can actually do something I mean the low hanging fruit you can say what what what what can we do already now where we really we can have an impact maybe also you can say something about risks related to the to greenhouse gas accounting the battle if you can go first are you there better no doesn't seem the way we'll just bring the same question to Natalia yes um I think that when I look at Norway I think that energy is is the the biggest source of energy that we actually can do something with and this is because energy in Norway was actually cheap before and and there is a lot of a lot of possibilities for optimizing processes to choosing other ways of doing the same but minimizing energy consumption and the other other thing is that you can look at the possibilities to produce energy this is also something that that is a good topic to to look at so I think that this is something that we focus on this at this at this point what was the second question sorry you're on mute you're muted sorry any any risks in relation to this I mean now we're talking about this that we should just jump jump into it start actually start measuring are there any risks related to this way of doing it but of course I think that when when you talk about changing a process it's always a risk especially when you talk about when we think about biological processes it's always a risk when you when you change something it can have consequences so you do not you always have to remember why are we where do we have those plants so this is the main purpose that we can reduce energy consumption is just it's just like like a second second thing I think so as as long as you can have the quality the same quality of your processes and treatment and you can actually deliver the same quality of your services it's okay but if there is some risk that the quality will be will worsen then I think this is this is something that should be taken into into account thank you Natalia now throw the question to alberto again seems like he was just off are you on again alberto yeah sorry sorry I had a hiccup yeah thank you for the question can you make it back the biggest biggest contributions to to CO2 emissions that we can actually do something about maybe also something on risks of when doing a greenhouse gas accounting yeah I think there is a point that we we are always reminded also by by Vanessa when addressing this this topic the primary goal is to secure processes that deliver good treatment of wastewater so for instance if if you produce renewable energy at the expense of denitrification for instance because you use less than efficiently your carbon your carbon then this can be a problem so in general I agree that going energy neutral in the sense of using energies that you can possibly produce on site or any way of set your energy consumption with renewable energies and carbonizing energy is a no regret option anyway for the rest certainly having a good denitrification is a good way to go but but also then biogas management is another aspect so the two things together should combine with electricity management in general I think as they propose the revision of the urban wastewater treatment directive includes an objective of energy neutrality which is a stimulus towards climate neutrality but at the same time raises a bit the ambition on nitrogen removal which is also kind of a a constraint in order not to go in the what was dubbed nicely the carbon tunnel vision so not considering only carbon per se but also in the context of an efficient wastewater treatment process thank you so much Alberto Miriam are you also there maybe Miriam also having some problems here yeah I would also like to go back into the some of the questions those questions a question from from Mikl he writes we've seen a number of cases where increased pretreatment for anaerobic digestion leads to much higher nitrous oxide emissions will the urban wastewater directive drafts not just increase the nitrous oxide emissions with the one-sided focus of the energy production for CO2 reduction and I think this is very interesting it's also I mean there are also other examples of some of these emissions going in opposite directions I mean also when you if we need to do the advanced treatment I mean there we are getting much more CO2 emissions based on that so different purposes that goes in in quite different ways do any of you have any thoughts on that maybe Alberto if you could give some thoughts on that yeah I think the general point is that each case is is a bit different and so in audit or anyway an assessment that at the plant level is probably necessary as a starting point anyways a general consideration I think that having an energy neutrality vision on the one side and a high ambition on water quality or so the quality of treated effluence on the other side are potentially a good combination to contain the possible drifts towards a one-sided view of the problems that brings back problems on other sides like for instance if the objective is to have a maximized methane production but it then produce more end to all from the process that could be of course a problem I think we are not yet at the point of addressing this granularity of the problems and and probably we need more analysis but at the same time I think the direction is that we should start being conscious of the greenhouse gas emissions balance of the process as a whole and the energy balance that is related to that thank you Alberto I'd like to also hear the the panelists on if you could mention the most important thing like policy wise that that should be implemented now in the next the coming years in order for for really make a difference in decreasing the CO2 load from from the water sector Natalia do you have a perspective on that well also taken into account that the question from Mikkel before that we really need to think that I mean what is it that we want I mean we want both energy and climate neutrality maybe but maybe it does not work together maybe we we need to to have emphasis on one thing and that's what Mikkel is writing that he think that's maybe a little bit too much emphasis on the energy side in the in the in the draft for the open wastewater directive yeah sorry I took your word no no it's okay I try to try to wrap my head about I had around it I'm not sure if I understand the question but if I could point at something that would be helpful like help from authorities in in Norway in our and like a water and sewage part I think that no I was thinking about about financial help to carbon removal because this is this is something on the like more wider level and this is something that we have been talking about lately that if you if you really it's you cannot just reduce it it will not help and this is of course you can reduce some of the energy but you cannot get rid of all emissions from the energy so of course there are some some limits this is low hanging fruits and you shouldn't maybe use more time more energy or resources for for reducing even more so but you need to do something else so so carbon removal to try to look at the possibilities maybe try some give some financial help try to make some more more research more possibilities on on this one I think it would be it would be really great but do we need some more legislation is it wanted by the utilities also to to kind of make a guideline and what we see in Denmark is that that a lot of the utilities are actually doing something and they have been doing something for quite some years for especially on the measurements on nitrous oxide without having any financial benefit but maybe if you put in a CO2 tax or something it would be it would enhance or increase the the pace of the implementation of of technologies and and yeah for CO2 reductions but are you ready in the utility you're from in the utility Natalia do you want more legislation I know it's it's a hard question because it's it's always nice to have some rules and regulations but the problem is that yeah the problem is that sometimes you can have rules and regulations that do not suit you and they are more problematic so I would say yes to something that is clever and actually will will help but sometimes it's better without without it because not all it's it's not always like those who make those those rules understand where the problem is and how to what to do with it so of course it would be nice with some help but at the same time this help can can be problematic if it's not wise help yeah I have I have I understand what you're saying I have the same feeling that that the entire sector needs some some some not necessarily legislation but we we need some guidance and maybe some some common some common grounds common tools common innovation factors so we we kind of speak the same language and that was also actually a part of also what me I am presented today that that was the kind of the first part of that project with the different water waste water associations in the in the Nordic to speak together and and try to see if they were actually speaking the same language that's the the very first first part of that the battle did you have a same yeah I think on whether we need more legislation or more policies or more explicit policies etc yeah I think it's it's always a problematic question because in general I'm not sure that more legislation necessarily helps in this respect in the revision of the urbano wastewater treatment directive there was an intention also to address the greenhouse gas emissions side of the problem but eventually there was a serious question on the mandate of this directive in the context of the broader climate action of the european union so so whether this was the right place to put constraints or specific objectives whether the sector of urbano wastewater treatment was the right place to start necessarily in every country and so on so I think we have already a number of tools of policy tools and constraints and pieces of legislation that force us to take one direction and and we should harness the tools that we have in order to make the best of them and achieve an objective of water quality of the one side and an objective of energy efficiency etc energy and self-sufficiency and at the same time having in mind this long-term objective of the of the carbon efficiency as well so if we don't if we're not able to reduce everything to zero at least we are efficient and then we leave to less efficient processes the the the mandate to to implement more cost-effective measures sometimes very good points about so and that's going to be the the last words for today's webinar thank you all in the panelists and also all the attendees for all the the questions I just have a few things here at the very end just putting this slide for for 15 seconds please remember three more webinars in this webinar series yeah and also there are two upcoming IWA webinars and events that I would like to show you here the young water professionals get together and also the webinar called the waterproof and you can read more and also yeah for the attendance you can you can click the link in the bottom of this page and the very large last slides yeah join the network of water professionals there's a discount code here that you can use for new membership and also here you can see the link and then I would just like to to wrap up and again thank you all for attending and I hope to see you again at the next webinar in in June thank you so much see you