Collaboration with Northumbrian Water
Global water technology company, Xylem, sponsored and coordinated a hackathon during the Northumbrian Innovation Festival. The event tasked participants with mapping carbon emissions from water utility suppliers to support Xylem’s net-zero emission goals by 2050.
Hosted in partnership with Northumbrian Water, the event brought over 2,500 people representing 700 global organizations, joining forces with local schoolchildren from across Tyneside.
Winning Team: Phloem and their Innovative Dashboard
The hackathon’s winning team, Phloem, designed an innovative sample dashboard to assess supplier excellence and incentivize supplier carbon accounting. Comprising members from CK Delta, Northumbrian Water Group, Selwood Ltd, and ista Energy Solutions, the team was awarded a $3,000 prize.
Alexis De Kerchove, Europe Client Sustainability Leader at Xylem, said, “We recognize the mounting environmental challenges impacting humankind and the need to prepare the next generation of young talents to solve water issues. Ofwat is mandating that utilities tackle the emissions from the entire value chain by 2050. To do this, we need to gather and manage 8 billion data points to support decision-making on reducing the carbon footprint of purchased goods and services.”
He added, “Through the development of a data management system and an optimization model, we aim to enable utilities to engage with the stakeholder of their value chain, to prioritize their business activities and investments towards achieving net-zero emissions while meeting the regulator’s mandate. All our hackathon participants demonstrated a real passion for solving these issues, with the winning team devising an innovative idea that we will further develop into a possible solution to this challenge.”