TAXING WATER UTILITIES High taxes for water companies Water companies pay highter tariffs than expected. The latest estimates from DANVA show this. Like previous documents, the report shows that the political intentions of the Water Sector Act haven't been met. Instead, water companies have been milked like cows to collect additional tax revenue that make water bills more expensive for consumers and businesses. According to an audit memorandum by Deloitte, the total deferred tax for water companies is more than DKK 24 billion. DANVA believes this is a case of lax le gislation caused by tax laws that are inade quately designed and improperly applied af ter the intention and agreed upon compro mise behind the Water Sector Act. The con sequence is a significant increase of the water bill for both private households and Danish companies. For example, the tax authority requires the Silkeborg Vand company to pay an extra fee of DKK 450 million in deferred taxes, of which residents in Silkeborg will pay DKK 420 over the next 50 years. DKK 100 million every year The explanatory notes in the Water Sector Act 2009 states that water companies' tax payment in the long term is expected to be in the order of DKK 100 million per annum. DANVAs most recent estimate from June 2016 confirmed that the amount has been exceeded many times. The fact is precisely that the state has enjoyed a windfall from year "0" following the breakup of utilities. Re cent tax proceeds amount to an estimated DKK 220 million in 2014 and about 190 mil lion in 2015. * Deloitte memorandum to DANVA: Tax related management of water companies valuation and consequences. 16 Water in Figures 2016 The 2014 audit memorandum assessed that the total deferred tax for the water compa nies account was more than DKK 24 billion. There is a caveat in this amount. The ac counting depreciation used by the regulator, the Danish Water Utility Regulatory Author ity under the Competition and Consumer Au thority, and the tax depreciation used by the Ministry of Taxation is different. This tax will likely not be fully applied as reinvestments and new investments to a certain extent mi nimise the value differentials over time. But there is no doubt that the enacted legislation has garnered substantially more tax revenues than politicians originally intended. burden. Namely, families and businesses.not create an unintended tax. On behalf of water companies, DANVA sued the state on this matter. The main ne gotiators of the principal points of contention dealing with water companies from Hjørring and Hvidovre moved the case to mid-March 2017. Both cases will be dealt with by the High Court. Concurrently, 275 companies have complained about their tax assessment to the board of appeals, the National Tax Tri bunal. The tribunal has informed water compa nies that the processing of the appeals has been suspended until the principle suit has been resolved. Avoid endless debt Waiting for analysis Parties to the agreement decided to avoid hopeless indebtedness of the water sector. Accordingly borrowing should be possible for companies to finance investments through the collection of a so-called historical depre ciation over the water tariff. Parties to the agreement decided at the same time that such financing should be possible so that it would not create an unintended tax. This consideration is lost in the tax code. DANVA believes the tax ministry hasn't verified the enacted tax laws and model so they produce the expected results. The tax ing of water companies amounts to an in direct tax on Danish citizens and businesses, as utilities have but one place to share the In 2015 the Ministry of Taxation was tasked by the legislating parties to the agreement to conduct an analysis of the impact of cur rent taxation on water companies. It will re port to the parties on the issue of taxation of water utilities and water works under the Water Sector Act. In advance of the final ana lysis DANVA suggested a specific solution designed to ensure translating the code with a grace period whilst simultaneously resolv ing the conflicts in the outstanding taxation cases. Since taxation is decided through com promise, it should at least be agreed that a solution need be found. The settlement is in effect until it is terminated or an election cal led. 2016 Water in Figures Danish Water and Wastewater Association - DANVA Statistics and Benchmarking The Danish Water and Wastewater Association EDITOR'S NOTE Benchmarking provides an overview Benchmarking is a tool that iden tifies efforts, work processes and methods with efficiency en hancement potential showing best practices. In total 138 drin king and wastewater companies have participated in Water in Fi gures 2016, providing data from Information about the price of water What's the price of water? This all depends on your water company. Contact your local water utility to find out more about prices. On ave rage, water costs 0.009 per litre. How to we arrive at this price? The price of water is derived from five elements: A fix Mapping prices in Denmark An interactive map on DANVAs website illu strates water pricing by the utilities, subject to the Danish Water Sector Act (Vandsektor loven). The map offers examples for the price of water for typical households 50m3, 83 m3 and 170m3, showing both drinking water and wastewat WATER COMPANIES' TASKS What utilities are doing More focus on climate change adaptation and quality Danish water companies manage the majority of the water system's daily operations. This includes ground water abstraction, distribution of clean drinking water to the public, transportation and sanita WATER PRICING Composition of Water Prices Share of water pricing by category, 2015 Tariffs (wastewater) 1.1 Tariffs (drinking water) 9.9 Drinking water companies' share 18.4 Wastewater companies' share 50.6 VAT (drinking water) 7.1 VAT (wastewater) 12.9 The composition of water pricing can be split Water costs in the household budget For a little more than DKK 5,000 a year, an average family of 2.15 people can be supplied with fresh, clean and monitored drinking water from the tap, whilst also having its wastewater collected, treated and responsibly returned to the environment. Some of these c WATER IN FIGURES 2016 Services The Wate SERVICE What is the water cluster? The term water cluster refers to companies that di The water cluster contributes to job creation, pro INDUSTRY rectly or indirectly work with or around drinking wa ductivity Industry and growth in Denmark. DANVA has com Recov er Cluster 1 = 100 Employees 90 Distributed in the Water 60 Cluster 0 40 Consulting Engineers 65 35 10 0 25 By-products 22.4 30 20 10 0 By-products 10.7 15 40 Plastic and Rubber Andel af total dansk eksport Total dansk ekport (2006=100) Eksport af vandeknologi (2006=100) Core Andel eksport af Water REGULATING THE WATER SECTOR Revenue cap regulation and benchmarking From 2017 the water companies are required to meet ef- ficiency targets for total costs and not just operating costs as it is today. This means that a new total economic bench- marking has to be developed, which can be used by the D Sector Act will both create and remove flexi bility for the water companies. The system of past price caps, adjusted annually after ef ficiency requirements, will be replaced by one adjusting for income levels over several years. Though some economic flexibility will be lost with the new regulatory BENCHMARKING DRINKING WATER Drinking water companies in DANVA benchmarking In 2016, 61 water companies reported data to DANVA Statistics & Analysis and Benchmarking. The figures are for 2015. The companies cumulatively maintain 1,797 water abstraction wells, 247 water works, about 29,243 km of suppl Actual Operating Costs, 2015 Actual Operating Costs, 2015 Significant Cost Differentials The weighted average of the costs of producing and distributing 1 m3 of water is DKK 4.39. Variability between the lowest and highest points is considerable. This is mainly due to the widely differing conditions BENCHMARKING WASTEWATER Wastewater companies in DANVA benchmarking In 2016, 77 wastewater companies provided data to DANVAs Stati stics & Analysis. The figures shown are for 2015. These wastewater companies together operate 518 treatment plants, which treat more than 706 million m3 of wastewater, a Actual Costs, 2015 2015 Actual Operating Operating Costs, HOFOR Kbh. Fr. Berg Glostrup Ballerup Gladsaxe Gentofte Lyngby-Taarb Transport Only Lynetten SC Avedøre Mølleåværket Måløv Sanitation Only Kalundborg Hørsholm Aarhus Rudersdal Tårnby Fredericia Greve Aalborg Rebild Herning Esbjerg Ringsted Vi TAXING WATER UTILITIES High taxes for water companies Water companies pay highter tariffs than expected. The latest estimates from DANVA show this. Like previous documents, the report shows that the political intentions of the Water Sector Act haven't been met. Instead, water companies have been mil Vand i tal 2016 17 WATER IN FIGURES 2016 Forsyning Ballerup can now measure security of supply An upgrade to Forsyning Ballerups text messaging service means it can now collect a range of information about disruptions and water supply. The data is being used to ensure both quality and to keep the price of water down. Controlling the objectives Registrations from the messaging ser vice are also used to ensure that the new valve plan that the company has initiated adequately works, explains Michaela Bloch Eiris. We have very many valves in the network and a good amount are broken. Through the years weve used a lot PROCESSBENCHMARKING DRINKING WATER Danish utilities are among the leaders in low water loss Share of Remote Water Meters 2013 2014 2015 16.4 21.5 29.1 Data from 54 drinking water companies. The Danish drinking water companies are recognised for having very low water los ses in the distribution syste Non-revenue Consumption (water loss), 2015 Non-revenue water (water loss), 2015 3 0 1 2 3 4 0 5 10 15 20 m /km/day 5 Glostrup Fr. Berg Fredensborg Ikast Verdo Viborg HOFOR Kbh. Silkeborg Egedal Gladsaxe Morsø Kalundborg Esbjerg Ringk.-Skj. Ballerup Midtfyns Helsingør Mariagerfj. Herning Skanderborg PROCESSBENCHMARKING DRINKING WATER Infrastructure Leakage Index Water loss can accurately be captured and studied using the Infra structure Leakage Index (ILI). ILI is an international water loss model established by the International Water Association (IWA) that makes it possible to compare current Burst Frequency on the Grid, 2015 Rate of Renewal on the Grid, 2015 Rate of Renewal of the Network, 2015 Renewing the distribution network Odsherred Sorø Fredensborg Skanderborg Ringk.-Skj. Bornholm Billund Grindsted Lolland Vestfors. Guldborgsund Halsnæs HOFOR Kbh. Midtfyns Langeland Esbjerg Lemvig PROCESSBENCHMARKING DRINKING WATER Drinking Water Companies Electricity Use, 2015 Electricity Usage by Drinking Water companies, 2015 0 5 10 15 20 25 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 30 35 40 from own power generation Hørsholm Tårnby Gladsaxe HOFOR Kbh. Fr. Berg Lyngby-Taarb Ballerup Vandcenter S Glostrup S Quality control of drinking water It is mandatory to test the quality of drinking water before it is delivered to customers. The testing controls for both phy sical elements like iron and cadmium as well as for microbio logical pathogens. Drinking water companies carry out tests both on the waterwor WATER IN FIGURES 2016 Unpaid bills in the water sector The tax administration's failure to collect dues has made water companies more inclined to seek outstanding bills, known as arrears, directly from consumers. Furthermore, it should be possible to turn off the tap when payments for wastewater col VA previously put forward would give water companies the ability to directly collect debt with priority, thus strengthening their hand. In 2015 arrears booked by wastewater companies included 17,000 customers, of which the average non-payment was DKK 2,600 on the year per customer. Out of the DKK 48 WATER IN FIGURES 2016 New, updated network registration models In 2016, after 3 years of extensive work between water companies, application developers and consultancies, DANVA launched the new data models Danvand 2.0 and Dandas 3.0 For more than 10 years DANVA has been working on creating common st Common standards ensure better benchmarking The following models and applications released in December 2016: Common core model 2.0 (represents the foundation for Danvand 2.0 and Dandas 3.0) Dandas 3.0 (builds upon the common core model 2.0) Danvand 2.0 (builds upon the common core model 2.0) T PROCESSBENCHMARKING WASTEWATER Distribution of Combined and Separate Sewers by Share, 2015 Combined and Separate Sewerage, 2015 0 20 40 60 80 100 avg. age, year Solrød Lemvig Ballerup Rebild Køge Vestfors. Greve Holbæk Silkeborg Fredensborg Egedal Assens Stevns Hedensted Horsens Favrskov Odsherred A Rate of Renewal of the Grid, 2015 Rate of Renewal of the sewer network, 2015 The sewer networks rate of renewal The renewal rate of the sewer network shows the average portion (as a share) of the network replaced over the past 10 years by the company in question. In recent years, the benchmarking sy PROCESSBENCHMARKING WASTEWATER Wastewater treatment in Denmark is almost optimal There are almost 900 wastewater treatment plants in Denmark, discharging around 700 million m3 of purified wastewater each year. The sewage effluents these plants receive contain nutrients like phosphorus, nitrogen and Emmissions Taxes per kg. BI 5 16.50 Nitrogen 30.00 Phosphorus 165.00 Companies' sewage tax to the state In Denmark a fee is paid to the state for the discharge of various substan ces into the aquatic environment. Above is what water companies pay for the discharge of organic matter (BI5), nitrogen a PROCESSBENCHMARKING WASTEWATER Wastewater Electricity Electricity Usage for Use for Transport, 2015 wastewater Transport, 2015 Glostrup Ballerup Lyngby-Taarb SC Avedøre Gladsaxe Fr. Berg Solrød Horsens Greve Allerød Esbjerg Vandcenter S HOFOR Kbh. Fredericia Gentofte Helsingør Vestfors. Aarhus Hørsh Sludge processing by waste water companies When Denmarks wastewater arrives at a treatment plant, it goes through a process to cleanse it of impurities. Once this process is complete and the purified water is piped to a receiving environ ment, the treatment plant now has to deal with the residual pr PROCESSBENCHMARKING WASTEWATER Distribution of Water Sold by 3 Step Ladder Model Distribution of Water Sold into 3 step tariff model, 2015 0 5 10 15 20 million m 3 25 Struer Sorø Rebild Allerød Halsnæs Odsherred Hørsholm Billund Ringsted Glostrup Egedal Nyborg Jammerbugt Lolland Assens Skive Ikast-B 3 Step Tariff model Born from an economic growth plan in 2013, a political decision was made to lower tariffs on wastewater for large water consuming companies to the tune of DKK 700 million up until 2018. The first phase of this plan was financed by raising fees for households. This increase is exp PROCESSBENCHMARKING WASTEWATER Sewage sludge Big difference in the cost of using sewage sludge for agricultural use Statistics from DANVA and the Danish Water Regulator show significant variation in A-sludge volumes and prices. Wastewater treatment annually produces large volumes of sewage sludge, c Volume of A, B og C-Sludge, 2011 - 2014 DANVA Benchmarking has sludge treatment as a focus area in which the participa ting companies can gain in sight into and improve their own sludge treatment and reduce sludge costs. Volume of A-, B- and C-sludge 2011-2014 Tonnes Solid Matter 140,000 Total 120, REGULATION BENCHMARKING WASTEWATER Operating efficiency All utilities over 200,000 m3 are subject to the Water Sector Act, which in the period 2010-2016 has enacted regulation in the form of indivi dual price cap decisions. These price ceilings have been based on the companies budgeted costs, which Drinking Companies Actual Operating Costs Drinking Water Water Companies by Operational Net Costs Volume Costs, 2015 Targets, 2015 Actual Operating by Net Volume Guldborgsund Hedensted Ringk.-Skj. Lolland Thisted Greve Morsø Skanderborg Viborg Lemvig HOFOR Kbh. SC Avedøre Ringsted Stevns Assens Solr MAIN DATA Drinking water companies included in DANVA Benchmarking 2016 (Data for 2015) Company: Inhabitants in the supply area People Total water volume sold Boreholes (water abstraction-) Water works Water hardness Utility mains m 3 /year number number dH km Assens Vandværk A/S 8,360 607,624 8 2 19 PROCESS BENCHMARKING KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS COSTS 2016 Actual operating costs for production, distribution and customer service per debited water volume Operating costs of prduction by water abstracted from own facilities Operating costs by distribution of billed water volume in supply area Oper MAIN DATA Drinking water companies included in DANVA Benchmarking 2016 (Data for 2015) Company: Inhabitants in the supply area People Total water volume sold Boreholes (water abstraction-) Water works Water hardness Utility mains m 3 /year number number dH km Mariagerfjord Vand A/S 15,000 1,320,357 PROCESS BENCHMARKING KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS COSTS 2016 Actual operating costs for production, distribution and customer service per debited water volume Operating costs of prduction by water abstracted from own facilities Operating costs by distribution of billed water volume in supply area Oper MAIN DATA Inhabitants in supply area Sewerage (effluent and rainwater) Charged water volume Treatmentplant with over 30 PE Additional water volume to treatment plant Total organic load Company: people km m 3 /year number m 3 /year PE, person equivalent Afløb Ballerup A/S 48,205 378 2,764,165 Allerød PROCESS BENCHMARKING KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FEES 2016 (Step 1) Actual operating costs for transport, treatment and customer service Operating costs for billed water volumes in sewer catchments Operating costs for bil- led water volumes tre- ated in sewer catch- ments Operating costs for customer MAIN DATA Inhabitants in supply area Sewerage (effluent and rainwater) Charged water volume Treatmentplant with over 30 PE Additional water volume to treatment plant Total organic load Company: people km m 3 /year number m 3 /year PE, person equivalent Hørsholm Vand ApS 24,691 170 1,681,756 1 4,201, PROCESS BENCHMARKING KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FEES 2016 (Step 1) Actual operating costs for transport, treatment and customer service Operating costs for billed water volumes in sewer catchments Operating costs for bil- led water volumes tre- ated in sewer catch- ments Operating costs for customer MAIN DATA Inhabitants in supply area Sewerage (effluent and rainwater) Charged water volume Treatmentplant with over 30 PE Additional water volume to treatment plant Total organic load Company: people km m 3 /year number m 3 /year PE, person equivalent Sorø Spildevand A/S 21,000 526 1,006,381 12 3,5 PROCESS BENCHMARKING KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FEES 2016 (Step 1) Actual operating costs for transport, treatment and customer service Operating costs for billed water volumes in sewer catchments Operating costs for bil- led water volumes tre- ated in sewer catch- ments Operating costs for customer Key Figures One litre of water costs on average 0.009. Water consumption by Danish households is on average 106 litres per person per day. Drinking water companies' actual operating costs are on average 0.59 per m 3 . Invest ments amount to 0.93 per m 3 . Waste water companies' actual operati