Fleet and mobility management £1.2bn
Severn Trent aims to spend this amount on Britain’s environment.
Severn Trent
chairmen about “efficiency and the economical use of staff”. Like so much else from 1970s Britain, the water authorities have vanished. But if these state- run behemoths were dragged down by a riptide of privatisation, their ghosts remain. Wessex Water and Anglian Water still exist – as private companies. The same is true of Severn Trent. Just as it was during the Three-Day Week, the firm is based in the Midlands, serving customers from Derby to Shrewsbury to Coventry. Yet with yearly revenue of £1.8bn, it’s clear that the Severn Trent of today is very different from its nationalised cousin. More than that, the company has undergone a fundamental change in style. Beer and beige suits are out, replaced by cheerful faces on a vibrant website, complete with a pally exhortation to be “a water saving hero”.
“In 2019 we outlined our Triple Carbon Pledge, committing to net zero operational carbon emissions, 100% renewable energy and an all-electric vehicle fleet by 2030.”
As that last comment implies, one of the best ways to understand the difference between the two Severn Trents is in its environmental commitments. From recycling waste to its glittering sustainability reports (smiling faces aplenty), this is obviously an organisation with the planet on its mind, even if recent pollution fines rather dampen the rhetoric. That’s clear, too, in Severn Trent’s recent push towards sustainability in another field: its fleet of vehicles. Ferrying engineers to leaks and reservoirs and floods, the company is inconceivable without them. Until recently, however, Severn Trent had powered its fleet the old-fashioned way – with trips to the petrol station. Yet here, too, change appears to be swinging round the bend. With plans to electrify its entire fleet by 2030, Severn Trent may finally be putting one of the last vestiges of its twentieth- century heritage to bed, with happy consequences for staff and the environment alike.
Electric feel 70k BP 62
The number of British-build vans Electric Vehicle Fleet Accelerator van aims to buy by 2030.
Over the past decade, a single word has been on the lips of British fleet experts everywhere: electrification. Electric vehicles (EVs) have been impossible to avoid, plastered on press releases and trumpeted by managers at companies from Devon to Dundee. In 2021, for example, Royal Mail unveiled an order for 3,000 low-emission delivery vans, while delivery giant DPD announced it was invested in 750. These individual efforts are shadowed by collective work. In July last year, seven major companies collaborated to form the Electric Vehicle Fleet Accelerator (EVFA). Encompassing Tesco and BT, among others, the group aims to electrify all its
vehicles by 2030. At the same time, the ECFA is using its combined commercial heft to secure help from the government, pushing Whitehall to build significantly more electric charging points. Severn Trent’s own move towards electrification – in fact it forms part of the EVFA – is therefore far from unique. Nor is the rush away from traditional combustion engines particularly surprising. Once again, government is vital in prodding change along, not least through its 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol cars and vans, and its 2050 carbon neutrality target. No wonder, then, that the Coventry-based company is also pinpointing that same year for its own transformation.
“In 2019 we outlined our Triple Carbon Pledge, committing to net zero operational carbon emissions, 100% renewable energy and an all-electric vehicle fleet by 2030,” says Helen Miles, capital and commercial services director at Severn Trent. Yet as Miles continues, that’s only half the story. “While 2030 is our deadline,” she explains, “we wanted to make the change to an all-electric vehicle fleet as soon as possible, and recent advancements in battery life and mileage ranges have now made EV’s more operationally viable for us as a business.” That last point is important. If speeches by Boris Johnson are an important push factor for firms like Severn Trent, better technology tugs them in a similar direction. Though electric vehicles have been around for a while, moreover, they’ve traditionally been hamstrung by reliability issues. Despite promises by industry insiders to the contrary, they’ve historically broken down just as often as their petrol counterparts. Cost has also been a challenge. As recently as 2010, lithium-ion batteries, of the sort common in EVs, were 80% pricier than they are now. Combined with a lack of EV infrastructure – Severn
Trent’s new vans wouldn’t get far without chargers – no wonder the march towards the EV uplands has been slow. But with Shell alone now planning to install 50,000 new electric sockets by the middle of this decade, to say nothing of national procurement plans (the EVFA aims to buy 70,000 British-built vans by 2030), that’s clearly changing. More than that, says Miles, her company has a moral obligation to go green. That’s doubly true given what Severn Trent actually does. “As a water and wastewater company,” she explains, “we recognise that we are well-placed to take a leading role in helping the UK become a sustainable, low-carbon economy. We take care of one of life’s essentials, water, so a healthy environment is vital to the long-term sustainability of our business.”
A bit of a Kona At first glance, Severn Trent’s revamped fleet doesn’t look particularly impressive. Curved at the back and squat like pork pies, these Hyundai Konas hardly seem
Finance Director Europe /
www.ns-businesshub.com
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