Minister welcomes the canals’ role in ‘green revolution’
THE Canal & River Trust recently hosted Lord Callanan, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, at London’s Docklands.
He heard about how the nation’s former industrial waterways can play a 21st century role in the ‘green industrial revolution’.
In Docklands the trust’s waterways have recently started providing low-carbon cooling for a global datacentre – in addition to the low-carbon energy already supplied to two residential towers and a hotel.
Lord Callanan heard about how, using water-sourced heat pumps, the low-carbon energy in the trust’s national network of canals, rivers and docks is enough to support the heating and cooling needs of around 350,000 homes, with 650 megawatts of low-carbon energy and a potential saving of more than a million tonnes of CO2 per year.
Hosting the visit, CRT chief investment officer Stuart Mills said: “Our canals are famous the world over as the original arteries of the Industrial Revolution and for the boats that still navigate them in the same way today.
“These historic waterways can, however, also be at the forefront of the new ‘green industrial revolution’, offering huge opportunities to help Government on the challenging journey towards ‘net zero’ with a wide variety of carbon-friendly initiatives, from urban cooling and ‘green’ energy to sustainable urban drainage and the development of traffic-free transport routes.”
Lord Callanan commented: “Changing how we warm and cool homes and workspaces is vital to eradicating our contribution to climate change. The Canal & River Trust is a prime example of how water-sourced heat pumps can offer an effective way of reducing emissions and how the pace of rolling out cutting-edge low-carbon technologies is being accelerated across the UK.”
Global data centre provider, Interxion: A Digital Realty Company, worked with the Canal & River Trust to implement the environmentally friendly solution at its London Docklands data centre – as it continues to move towards its global goal of reducing its scope one and two emissions (direct and indirect company emissions) by 68% by 2030.
The trust is already working with a number of organisations to provide heating and cooling, from data centres and municipal and industrial buildings to a residential district heat network in the East Midlands.