Acting now on climate change

Sydney Water is taking action now to identify and address the risks associated with climate change. This includes:

• becoming carbon neutral for energy and electricity use by 2020
• implementing best practice in energy efficiency for water and wastewater treatment
• using renewable energy across our business
• helping the community and businesses be water efficient
• building and operating a desalination plant. The power needs of the plant are fully offset by renewable energy
• recycling 70 billion litres of wastewater a year by 2015.

Read our fact sheet (PDF - 124KB) on how we are assessing climate change with our risk assessment.

Sydney Water's Climate Change Strategy (PDF - 824KB) helps us prepare for the challenges ahead. It will ensure there are water and wastewater services for our future.

Climate change is a challenge for us all. World climate scientists widely agree that human activity is causing the climate to change and become less predictable.

A drier, warmer climate may:

• reduce supplies of fresh water
• increase customer demand for water
• increase the risk of severe bushfires in water catchments, reducing the quality of water run-off
• increase algal blooms in dams, with implications for taste, odour and toxicity
• increase the risk of pipe corrosion and odours
• cause more extreme storms that test the capacity of wastewater treatment plants
• cause sea levels and storm surges to increase, posing a flood risk to low-lying
• coastal assets
• change the structure and stability of soils, leading to greater risk of pipe failure
• disrupt electricity supplies due to increased storm activity or excessive demand during heatwaves.