Gardiner V., Matthews H. The changing geography of the United Kingdom

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VINCE GARDINER

Sustainability

Are the water resources of the United Kingdom being developed in a sustainable way? The

brief review which follows is largely based on the Environment Agency’s analysis of this

issue. Overall, the total available water resources of the United Kingdom significantly exceed

demand for water. About 263,400 million cubic metres of precipitation fall over the UK.

About 60 per cent, equivalent to over 2 million litres per person per year, forms runoff, and

could be exploited as a water resource. The total demand for water is of the order of only

250,000 litres per person per year.

However, the balance between supply (from rainfall) and demand (from the multiplicity

of human activities, including residential, agricultural and industrial use) varies widely from

region to region. In broad terms, the south and east of the country is the driest, yet it is in the

south and east of the country that demand is generally higher because of the centres of

population, with associated industry. The geographical variation in resource potential is shown

by Figure 2.6. This compares licensed abstractions, as an indicator of demand, with effective

rainfall in a drought which can be expected to occur once in every fifty years, for the ten

National Rivers Authority regions. In eight of the ten regions the ratio of abstractions to

effective rainfall is less than one-third, whereas in the Thames and Anglian regions licensed

FIGURE 2.6 Geographical variation in resource potential: licensed abstractions compared with 1:50

year effective drought rainfall, England Wales. Note the high utilisation of resources in the Anglian

and Thames regions

Source: Derived from figure in the DETR World Wide Web pages.

WATER RESOURCES

abstractions can exceed the effective rainfall, with the deficit being made up in droughts by

re-use, and storage in reservoirs and groundwater. Clearly, stress on the resource is greatest

in these regions, and river basin management has had to ensure that water which falls as rain

can be re-used several times before its eventual return to the sea. This is particularly the case

for the Thames basin, where recycling of abstracted water takes place along the length of

the river. Increasing demand and abstraction can cause unacceptably low flows in rivers,

thus damaging habitats and the amenity value of rivers. Water transfer and river regulation

schemes have been implemented in order to alleviate the worst affected reaches of river.

Since 1990 £6 million has been spent, and this has been effective in reducing affected reaches

from 335 km to a target of 79 km.

However, in years of exceptionally low winter rainfall and hot dry summers the margin

between the available resource and the public demand for water is sufficiently small to require

restrictions on water use. For example, in the prolonged fifteen-month drought of 1995

Yorkshire Water almost became the object of public ridicule when it was forced to transport

water by tanker from Northumberland in order to maintain supplies.

The margin between average demand for public water supply and the resource available

in dry years is reasonable in most areas. In 1993/4, a dry year, five of the ten NRA regions

(Wessex, Thames, North West, Yorkshire and Severn Trent) used over 80 per cent of the

available resource, and the last named used over 90 per cent. Only one, Northumbria, used

less than 70 per cent. That there is no scope for complacency is underlined by the uncertainty

over the possible effects of climatic change on water resources, which could increase demand

by up to 4 per cent in the south and east of the country by 2021.

Under extreme conditions of stress on available resources Drought Orders can be

made in order to introduce emergency measures, such as the imposition of bans on the use

of hosepipes and the abstraction of water from rivers when flows are below normally

permissible levels. Table 2.4 illustrates how these identify major drought years of 1976,

1984 and 1995, and the succession of dry years 1989–92. Those Environment Agency

Regions mostly likely to have to resort to Drought Orders are the Southern and South West

regions.

Any such estimates of sustainability could of course be undermined by changes in the

climate, which provides the basic resource. Chapter 19 in this book examines in more detail

the probable impact on the water industry of likely climatic changes.

Conclusion

The basic geography of water resources in the United Kingdom remains essentially

unchanged from that described in earlier editions of this book, with the wetter northern and

western parts of the country enjoying a relative wealth of the basic resource, as compared

with the relatively drier south and east. This physical framework is not totally fixed,

indications being that climatic change (see Chapter 19) is working to accentuate the basic

dichotomy between the two halves of the country. However, the human participation in the

water demand and supply relationship has changed markedly in the last decade. Changes in

demand for water have resulted from many of the economic changes described elsewhere in

this book, as outlined above, with (in general) a decline in demand occasioned by changing

patterns of industry being a least partly counterbalanced by rising consumption associated

with rising living standards, and uses such as irrigation and fish farming. The major change

TABLE 2.4 Number of drought orders in England and Wales by Environment Agency Region, 1976–95

Source: From data in the DETR World Wide Web pages.

WATER RESOURCES

BOX 2.1 Bristol Water

The nature of water supply in the UK may be illustrated by a more detailed examination

of one area, which in many ways is fairly typical. Bristol Water is one of the UK’s

largest and most successful water supply companies, and since 1846 it has existed

with the sole purpose of supplying water. The Company now supplies 1,049,000 people

in an area of about 2,391 square kilometres, in most of Avon, large parts of Somerset,

and small parts of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, centred on the Bristol conurbation,

and embracing Tetbury, Clevedon, Wells and Frome. Sewage disposal in the area is

the responsibility of Wessex Water. The area is a varied one, having highland areas in

parts of the Mendips and Cotswolds, with both dramatic limestone scenery and rolling

chalk downs, as well as the lowlands of the Somerset levels.

The Company’s founders included William Budd, the sanitation pioneer, Francis

Fry, the industrialist, and George Thomas, the Quaker merchant who founded Bristol

General Hospital. The town’s main water supplies prior to this were based on medieval

conduits and wells, and were sources of typhoid, cholera and dysentery. The Company

first supplied clean spring water from the nearby Mendip Hills, through an impressive

16-km pipeline. A reservoir was opened in 1901, with water being pumped by huge

steam-driven beam engines. Now, 6,472 km of mains supply (on average) 327 million

litres of water per day to 444,000 properties. The water supplied comes from sixty-

eight different sources, including fourteen reservoirs, as well as springs, wells and

boreholes, with the largest reservoir being Chew Lake, and the largest single source

being abstraction from the River Severn, which supplies more than half of the total,

although this requires much more complex purification than Mendip water. The

company has twenty-six treatment works, 164 pumping stations, and 139 covered

treated water storage reservoirs. As well as supplying water, the reservoirs of the

Company provide extensive conservation and recreation facilities. Ninety-nine point

nine per cent of the Company’s compliance tests meet the stringent water quality

standards, and there are no restrictions on the use of water. Over 99.9 per cent of

properties receive water at a pressure above standard. During the year 1997/8 less than

0.1 per cent of customers were without water for more than six hours due to burst

pipes or overruns on planned maintenance.. Water charges are below average for the

industry, equivalent to only 30p per day for each household..

The group contains an engineering subsidiary as well as Bristol Water plc. Its

share capital comprises 7.2 million ordinary shares and 1,414,000 non-voting shares.

The turnover of the Group was £78 million in 1997/8, and regulated pre-tax profits

of Bristol Water plc were £13.8 million. For the year, a dividend of 57p was paid on

each share. In the year there was capital expenditure of £29 million, including

replacing or reconditioning more than 80 km of mains, as part of major water quality

improvement. Key issue for the future will be the new water quality directive—

especially the standard for lead, as Bristol has one of the highest incidences of lead

pipes in the country. Four thousand new properties were connected to the mains,

but impact on consumption was contained within the overall economies achieved,

and consumption was at its lowest level for five years, partly as a result of increasing

customer awareness of the need for economies, and partly as a result of the weather.

VINCE GARDINER

in the geography of water resources, though, is in the administrative and legislative framework

for water services. In some senses, the water industry in the UK has now gone full cycle,

from a plethora of private suppliers in the last century, through an essentially nationalised

industry in the 1970s and 1980s, to a regulated privatised industry. The system of regulation

is complex. Despite the doubts of many, the regulators, and especially OFWAT, have made

what to many neutral observers appears to be an impressive start. However, it remains to be

seen whether the regulatory system can cope adequately with the complex interrelationships

between the economic, political and physical changes which will have repercussions for the

water industry in the twenty-first century, or whether future editions of this book will again

describe a completely changed system.

References

Economic Affairs (1998) 18(2) (a collection of papers on water policy).

National Rivers Authority (1994) Water: Nature’s Precious Resource, London: HMSO.

Park, C. (1991) ‘Water resources’, in R.J.Johnston and V.Gardiner (eds) The Changing Geography of

the United Kingdom, London: Routledge.

Water Resources Board (1973) Water Resources in England and Wales, vols 1 and 2, London: HMSO.

Further reading

A good introductory overview of issues involved in water resources and their management

is A.T.McDonald and D.Kay (1988), Water Resources: Issues and Strategies, Harlow:

Longman, which takes a global perspective but contains some good insights into the water

resources of the UK. The development of water resources and the water industry in the UK

is well described by Park in previous editions of this book. Other sources for this to K.Smith

(1972) Water in Britain, London: Macmillan, and D.J.Parker and E.C.Penning-Rowsell

(1980) Water Planning in Britain, London: Allen and Unwin, whilst a very basic introduction

is C.Kirby (1984) Water in Great Britain, Harmondsworth: Penguin. A dissenting view of

the water industry during the 1970s is F.Pearce (1982) Watershed, London: Junction Books.

Water demand, and its forecasting, are considered by papers in V.Gardiner and P.Herrington

(eds) (1986) Water Demand Forecasting, Norwich: GeoBooks. A discussion of issues relating

to sustainable development of water resources is J.Rees and S.Williams (1993) Water for

Life—Strategies for Sustainable Water Resource Management, London: Council for the

Preservation of Rural England. A critical debate on privatisation is contained in the collection

of papers in an issue of the journal Economic Affairs (volume 18(2), 1998), whilst regulation

is considered by S.L.Holborn (1993) Guide to the Economic Regulation of the Water Industry,

Oxford: Oxford Economic Research Associates.

Data on the water industry are now much more readily and conveniently available

than before, through the Internet. The sites listed below were checked in July 1998. In using

web-derived data readers should always be aware that the validity and integrity of the data

always depend on the nature of the site. Official government sources include the Department

of the Environment, Transport and Regions (DETR) (http://www.environment.detr.gov.uk).

The DETR publish a very useful little free booklet, The Environment in your Pocket, annually,

and the data and illustrations from this, and much more, are available to download through

WATER RESOURCES

the Internet. A gateway site to many water industry sources is the STS Guide to the UK

Utility Industry (http://www.sts.co.uk/utltysuk), which provides links to gas, electricity and

water utility company home pages, and to those of various associated organisations. The

sites of the individual water companies often provide much of interest. An immensely valuable

source of information is OFW (http://www.open.gov.uk/ofwat), which makes available not

only their own technical papers related to regulation, but also some of more general interest—

for example, on the history of the water industry. Much data on the quality of tap water is

available from the Drinking Water Inspector (http://www.dwi.detr.gov.uk). For keeping up

to date with developments in the industry the quality newspapers are a good source, and

these are also available on searchable CD-ROM in many librararies, and via the Internet.

An Internet source offering a water industry perspective is Water Magazine (http://

www.water-services.co.uk/magazine).

Chapter 3

Energy

Keith Chapman

Introduction

The production and consumption of energy have had a massive impact upon the geography

of the United Kingdom (UK). This impact extends from the influence of water power on the

location of the early textile mills, through the economic and social transformations deriving

from the exploitation of coal during the Industrial Revolution to the relatively recent

consequences of North Sea oil and gas. The pace of change has accelerated and this Chapter

focuses upon developments in the relatively recent past which have moulded contemporary

patterns. It is divided into two sections. The first identifies the principal factors shaping the

evolution of energy markets in the UK and the second reviews some of the spatial implications

of these changes.

Changing energy markets

The fundamental importance of energy resources to the quality of human life ensures that

the interpretation of change in energy markets requires a very broad perspective. Economic

considerations obviously influence decision-making within these markets, but social, political

and environmental agendas also form part of the wider context shaping the actions of energy

producers and consumers. This wider context has a geographical dimension in the sense

that the energy market in the UK is not insulated from international pressures. The following

section describes general trends in the UK energy market, as reflected in the changing

contributions of the various fuels to total consumption, before identifying some of the key

influences upon these trends.

ENERGY

Trends in the energy market

Before the Second World War the UK was a significant net exporter of energy in the form of

coal, but the combined effect of inadequate investment during the war and personnel shortages

resulted in a failure to meet even domestic demand when hostilities ceased and the coal

industry’s virtual monopoly as fuel supplier to the British economy was gradually weakened

as the volume of imported oil increased. The gap between indigenous energy production

and consumption widened steadily for almost twenty-five years (Figure 3.1) and it was not

until 1975 that any perceptible narrowing of this gap occurred. By 1980, the rapid rise in

North Sea oil production had transformed the energy gap into a surplus once more and it

seems unlikely that the UK will return, in the foreseeable future, to the situation of the early

1970s when more than 50 per cent of its primary energy requirements were imported.

Associated with these changes in dependence upon internal and external sources of supply

have been shifts in the relative contributions of the various fuels to total energy consumption

(Figure 3.2). Coal consumption has been reduced not only by the substitution of imported and,

more recently, domestic oil, but also by the introduction of natural gas and, to a much lesser

extent, nuclear power. Thus whereas coal accounted for 95 per cent of primary energy consumption

in 1950, its share had fallen to 73.9 per cent by 1960 and 20.1 per cent by 1996. This decline was

initially related to the rapid growth of imported oil in the 1950s and the trend was reinforced by

the rise of natural gas and nuclear power in the 1960s (Figure 3.3). Although oil accounts for a

higher percentage of primary energy consumption in 1996 (33.9) than in 1960 (25.5), the sources

of supply are very different and the UK has been a net exporter since 1981 (Figure 3.4).

FIGURE 3.1 Production and consumption of primary energy, 1966–96

KEITH CHAPMAN

Global influences

The international price of oil has been the most important single influence upon the evolution

of the UK energy market over the last fifty years. Producers and consumers have responded

to this external influence, which has also been a major factor shaping the economic and

energy policies of successive governments. It would be difficult to overestimate the impact

of the sharp and dramatic increases in the international oil price resulting from the actions

of the Organisation of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) which saw the average f.o.b. (free

on board) price of, for example, an Abu Dhabi crude rise from US$2.54 a barrel in 1972 to

US$36.56 in 1981. In these circumstances, oil prices became one of the key global economic

variables. The impact of the 1973 and 1979 oil price ‘shocks’ was all the more striking

because of the contrast with the history of a gradually declining ‘real’ price of oil from the

early 1920s.

It was this declining price which encouraged UK consumers to switch from domestic

coal to imported oil during the 1950s and 1960s. However, the oil price increase in 1973

reversed these trends. The Plan for Coal, produced by the National Coal Board (NCB) in

1974, aimed to halt the decline in output and to reduce overall costs by replacing old capacity

with an approximately equivalent volume of new production by expanding suitable existing

mines and creating some new ones. Although the planning horizon of the document extended

only to 1985, various factors contributed to a reappearance of the industry’s secular decline

by the early 1980s. The economic recession triggered by the second oil price shock in 1979

reduced overall energy demand and increased competition between the various fuels. A

relatively new element in this competition was introduced with the growth of coal imports,

which had been negligible before 1970 (Figure 3.5). The international coal trade was boosted

FIGURE 3.2 Consumption of primary fuels, 1960–96

ENERGY

significantly by the increase in oil prices which made it possible for cheap, opencast coal to

be delivered to UK ports at prices competitive with fuel oil and below those quoted by the

NCB. The expansion of the deep-sea coal trade has, therefore, become another important

global influence upon the UK energy market. It is secondary to the international oil price as

an external ‘regulator’ of the UK energy system, but has certainly contributed to the decline

of the coal industry.

Global influences upon the UK energy market have not been restricted to the

coal industry. Although commercial interest in the hydrocarbon potential of the North

Sea may be traced to the early 1960s, the oil price shocks provided a massive stimulus

to this activity. This stimulus incorporated both political and economic elements.

There had been an awareness from the 1950s of the political risks deriving from

increasing dependence upon the imported oil which accounted for almost 50 per cent

of UK primary energy consumption by 1973. Events such as the Suez crisis in 1956

FIGURE 3.3 Rates of change in consumption of primary fuels, 1960–96