Utility Week

MakeUK’s Electrify Industry arm has called for a bespoke government energy bill subsidy scheme to help manufacturers decarbonise industrial heating. Lucy Adams, policy advisor at MakeUK, told Utility Week that existing government subsidy schemes, such as the Energy Intensive Industries (EII) and the British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme (BICS), primarily sup...

The government has proposed options to water down the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate, which requires 80% of all new cars produced in Great Britain to be zero-emission by 2030. In its latest consultation, the Department for Transport (DfT) suggested that the target could either remain as it is, be dropped to as low as 50% or be kept at the same rate with more flexibi...

Scottish Water has missed its leakage reduction target and warned over supply in its latest annual report. The state-owned water company, which has more than 5 million customers, only managed to reduce its average water loss by 1Ml/day in the year to March 2026. Its annual report revealed leakage of 453Ml/day, down from 454Ml/day in the prior 12 months, and above its ta...

In the five years Martin Padley has spent at Thames Water he would expect to have planned for one drought. But since he joined, the company's water director has led the response to three. There was 2022, 2025, and the current drought, which now covers three quarters of England and all of Wales. “We are in a new normal”, he tells Utility Week. Temperatures in th...

Winter 2025 / 2026 was our first with a hydronic heat pump in an all-electric house. So, I thought I’d share my personal experience. When it comes to heat pumps, I’m conscious of a tendency for people to either love everything about them or to hate them vehemently. So, I’ve tried to cover both the positives and negatives as dispassionately as possible. There are a couple...