Urenco Annual Report 2022

30 Urenco Annual report and accounts 2022 Our strategy: priority focus areas Strategic report 01 Sustainability Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. Responsible consumption We have reduced our water use by 12.2% compared to our baseline year of 2020. Most of Urenco’s water consumption is used for evaporative cooling of industrial processes and the volume largely depends on climatic conditions. There is always a trade-off between water use and electricity and refrigerants’ use when it comes to refrigeration. Since 2017, we have experienced year on year reductions in water use. This is mainly due to changes in operational processes. For example, we have introduced rainwater harvesting at our Tails Management Facility as one such solution.We have also worked closely with local water companies in the Netherlands to investigate water saving measures.Water is a shared resource and we take care that our usage does not reduce its availability to others, further seeking opportunities to reduce water withdrawn from local rivers or groundwater sources. These achievements have beenmade by prioritising sustainability in strategic decisionmaking. Our Smart Plant Workstreamwill empower us to do this with greater accuracy, as we digitise the measurement of our electricity, gas and water consumption. All of our sites now have dedicated net zero leads, who are wholly focused on transitioning each site. As part of their remit, they are exploring successes on individual sites which can be rolled out to others, for example the use of solar PV arrays at Almelo.We continue to invest in electric vehicles, and are also investigating alternative refrigeration systems which deliver a far lower carbon impact, replacing natural gas assets with hydrogen or electric based systems. UN Sustainable Development Goals Image right: COP27 SharmEl-Sheikh,Egypt