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Today’s newsletter focuses on Britain’s hot, stinking water mess — from water shortages to sewage problems. For unlimited access to climate and energy news, please subscribe

The messy details 

By Joe Wertz and Priscila Azevedo Rocha

While England is often associated with rain, the country has managed to end up with short supply of water thanks in part to climate change.

The problem was on full display this week: Reservoir levels across England fell far below the norm during the driest spring in more than a century.

Reservoirs were 77% full at the end of May compared with the long-term average of 93%, the UK’s Environment Agency said. This spring was the UK’s sunniest and warmest on record, and England’s driest March-May period since 1893, the agency said. While wetter conditions have since provided some relief, it’s unlikely to plug the deficit as extreme heat and more dry weather looms.

The bed of Woodhead Reservoir partially revealed by a falling water level, near Glossop, northern England in May. Photographer: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images

The hot, dry spring has been fueled by an unusual rise in high-pressure patterns that scientists say have amplified long-term global warming.

The news comes at time when water mismanagement was already grabbing headlines across Britain. 

Things have been particularly bad at Thames Water, which supplies about a quarter of the UK population, and has been on a long downward financial slope. It came close to running out of money several times before finally unlocking an emergency loan in March.

There was hope for a turnaround when alternative asset manager KKR & Co. made a bid to invest £4 billion ($5.4 billion) in Thames Water earlier this year. Only this week the US infrastructure giant realized there was little upside to a deal and withdrew its offer, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

Read More: KKR Quit Thames Bid After It Saw Little Upside to a Rescue

The crisis follows decades of poor regulatory oversight that allowed water company owners to pay themselves billions of pounds in dividends instead of using the money to maintain the infrastructure. 

Meanwhile, regulator Ofwat flexed new powers today when it banned six water companies from paying bonuses to senior executives who haven’t done enough to tackle pollution.

Water companies are facing widespread public anger over sewage leaks into rivers and lakes throughout Britain. Photographer: Carl Court/Getty Images

Ofwat’s authority to stop “unjustified” payments for poor environmental and customer performance is part of new legislation that comes into come into force today. Bosses at Thames Water, Yorkshire Water, Anglian Water, Wessex Water, United Utilities and Southern Water are not permitted to receive bonuses with immediate effect, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said. 

Stopping bonuses is meant to address the public perception that company bosses are rewarded even if a firm is pumping waste into waterways illegally.

Public anger has been further fueled by bill increases of as much as 47% in April while water companies have awarded over £112 million in bonuses and incentives over the last decade, according to government figures.

--With assistance from Claire Ruckin and Giulia Morpurgo

Read more of Bloomberg Green’s coverage on Britain’s water woes:

Britain Comes to Terms With Its New Water Poor Reality
With a UK Water Crisis Looming, London’s Leak Hunters Suit Up
£2.4 Billion Reservoir Exposes New Battlefront for Thames Water

Not so wet, wet, wet

22.2
This is the average annual rainfall, in inches, in London's Greenwich Park over 1991-2020. That's far less than cities including Nairobi and Rome.

Prepare for the worst

"There is some sense until now that we've got away with it, [but] a severe and prolonged drought could materialize at any time."
Jim Hall
Professor of climate and environmental risk at Oxford University
Hall spoke with Bloomberg Green in 2023 about Britain's race to fix its broken water system. 

More from Green

The UK doesn’t want sunny days to go to waste. The country is aiming to put solar panels on all new homes as part of a plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions, lower bills and build over a million new dwellings in the coming years.

The changes will be published in the autumn as part of the Future Homes Standard, a set of proposed regulations on new-build houses, according to a statement published Friday. The guidelines will also promote electric heat pumps instead of gas boilers and high levels of energy efficiency.

Solar panels on the rooftop of a residential house in a suburb of Brighton, UK. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Indian monsoons this year — the earliest onset since 2009 — damaged new public infrastructure across the country. It’s now putting pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s to push for an infrastructure upgrade in the world’s fifth-largest economy.

Canada’s oil sands industry reduced its emissions per barrel for the sixth straight year in 2023, even as one growing portion of the sector moved in the opposite direction, according to new Alberta government data released Thursday.

Researchers found that de-horning rhinos cut poaching by 78% in a seven-year study in southern Africa, making it the best and cheapest way to protect them. The rhino population has plummeted over the last 15 years due to poaching.

Worth a listen

Western economies need to electrify and fast, but where are all the skilled workers going to come from to install the heat pumps, solar panels and batteries needed? This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi talks with Olivia Rudgard about the shortage of labor in electrification industries, and why some experts are calling it an ‘existential’ crisis. This is the second episode in Bottlenecks, a new series exploring the lesser known obstacles standing in the way of our electrified future.  Listen now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday.

An engineer works on pipes installation inside a training house with an external heat pump at the Octopus Energy Ltd.'s training and R&D center in Slough, UK. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

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