In the daily operations of a power plant, a considerable amount of fuel and chemicals are being consumed and several hazardous chemicals are produced as waste in the process of producing electricity and utilities such as steam to our customers. To minimise damage to the environment and the ill effects that these substances bring to our health, we need to keep our environmental performance at a high level.

Driving the environmental performance of our plant is the ISO 14001 environmental management system which is a process that has been established at our plant since 2005. The environmental impacts for each and every environmental aspect is identified and assessed before it is entered into the Significant Environmental Aspect Register. Action plans encompassing procedures, mitigation measures and target objectives are then drawn up for every significant environmental aspect for control purposes and for subsequent implementation. The environmental aspects and their associated actions plans are then communicated to all relevant staff.

For monitoring purposes, environmental indicators are tracked against objectives and reported on a monthly and quarterly basis at the department/group and senior management levels respectively. On an annual basis, a management review of the environmental objectives and EMS procedures is conducted as part of the continuous improvement cycle.

Every year since obtaining the ISO 14001 in 2005, our company has been successful in maintaining its certification status. In the latest surveillance audit exercise done in 2H 2009, no major non-conformance items were found in our ISO 14001 systems when an audit was conducted by the independent auditor, SGS. Some of the positive remarks made by SGS during the recent re-certification exercise were:

• Records are updated, readily available and retrievable during the entire audit.
• Staff commitment in maintaining the Quality and Environmental management system is observed.
• Comprehensive Utilities Group Environmental Programme Initiatives (E.g Reduction of CO₂ & SO₂ emission, water and electricity consumption) were observed.