Canal & River Trust recently published an article on its website titled Why Yorkshire’s industrial age canal can help tackle the climate crisis.
The article set out the many ways waterways help to mitigate climate change in the UK’s overheating towns and cities.
The modern-day benefits of historic canals they set out include:
- Using canal water to heat and cool homes, businesses, and waterside buildings
- Flood mitigation, providing extra urban drainage
- Supporting hydro schemes, using water to generate electricity
- Facilitating water transfers, the widespread network of canals can move water from areas of plenty to areas of drought – greener pumping solutions will help enormously in this
- Providing sustainable, active transport links via its towpaths, for traffic-free commutes
- Reducing road transport by moving freight on larger commercial waterways
- Preserving and increasing wildlife habitat by connecting otherwise fragmented wildlife habitats
Pumping is fundamental to most of these activities – a ‘necessary evil’ – so Green WIN’s efforts to find ways to green this is extremely important.
