Greenhouse Gas Emissions
As part of our commitment to transparency and environmental responsibility, United Utilities is publishing detailed greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data for the previous financial years from 2023. These datasets provide a comprehensive breakdown of emissions across our operations, including water and wastewater services, transport, energy use, and supply chain activities.
All of our emissions are related to activities and energy consumption in the UK. We use the financial control approach, so our energy and carbon accounting is aligned with the consolidated financial statements for United Utilities Group PLC for the relevant period. Our GHG inventory, including all the underlying energy data, has undergone independent third-party verification by Achilles Group and is certified to the requirements of the Toitū Carbon Reduce programme.
The data is structured according to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and includes Scope 1 (direct emissions), Scope 2 (indirect emissions from purchased electricity), and Scope 3 (other indirect emissions such as supply chain and employee commuting). Emissions are reported in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO₂e), using the AR5 100-year Global Warming Potential factors for FY2025 and AR4 for earlier years.
This data aligns to that published in the United Utilities Group Integrated Annual Report. Small differences are due to greater detail presented here and rounding.
We are still developing and building our approach to releasing open data. If you have any feedback or queries about a specific dataset available on this page, please email us at myview@uuplc.co.uk.
This data is licensed under CC BY, an open data licence, in order to make it freely available to other potential customers, stakeholders or interested organisations. You can find out more about CC BY here.
Data files
Data Specifications
Emissions are calculated by estimating the individual greenhouse gases that result from all United Utilities’ activities, converted into a tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e).
Tools and values used include:
- UK water industry Carbon Accounting Workbook (CAW)
- UK Government GHG conversion factors for company reporting
- Global warming potentials from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
- Global Comprehensive Environmental Data Archive (CEDA)
Market-based figures for electricity use emission factors specific to the actual electricity purchased. Emissions from electricity for recently adopted sites were supplied on standard tariffs until they can be moved onto our corporate renewable contracts. For electricity supplied on a standard grid tariff, we use CO2e per kWh from suppliers’ public fuel mix disclosures.
Location-based figures use average UK grid emissions to calculate electricity emissions.
Further notes:
Scope 1, scope 2 and scope 3 categories 3, 4, 5 and 6 use activity records, 2022, 2023 and 2024 UK Government GHG conversion factors for company reporting and UK water industry Carbon Accounting Workbook v17,18 and 19.
From 2023/24, emission factors use IPCC AR5 global warming potentials where methane = 28, nitrous oxide = 265. Earlier years used AR4 where methane = 25, nitrous oxide = 298.
Scope 3 categories 1 (excluding chemicals) and 2 use the latest Global CEDA to estimate emissions based on the amount spent by spend category. CEDA is a multi-region, environmentally extended input-output database that has global coverage and is a CDP recommended tool. Global ’22 was used for 2022/23, CEDA v6 for 2023/24 and CEDA v7 for 2024/25.
Category 7 used EcoAct models to estimate emissions from employee commuting and homeworking based on company FTE figures and home, site, and hybrid working policies.