British Canals to Become Green Power Stations
SmartPlanet report that British Waterways is turning UK canals into alternative energy power stations. The company’s proposal calls for 50 wind turbines and assorted small-scale hydro-power schemes to be installed in canals and locations. In addition to generating enough energy to power 45,000 homes (100 MW of capacity), the proposal will save over 100,000 tons of CO2 each year.
While British Waterways doesn’t provide a timeline for their plan, the company does want to expand its network of green power stations across the UK’s 2,200 mile network of canals and rivers. If the canal network is used to its full capacity, it could generate 10 times more electricity than it consumes.
And rest assured that the UK’s canals will be preserved—all money made from selling the project’s renewable energy will go towards maintaining them.
The British Waterways project is just another in a line of schemes to use our existing infrastructure for environmentally-friendly purposes. It’s a trend that I’d like to see become even more common.
Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons
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October 8th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
See that’s smart. People think we need to have only one energy source when it’s smarter to have multiple sources. I can’t wait to see how solar will make so many tech industries more mobile. Great article.
October 8th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
wow, great idea
December 5th, 2009 at 5:29 am
Now couple that canal development with many small survival oriented cottages with gardens, humanure, compost, aquaculture, solar and wind sources where there is wind, super-insulations, and generally efficient uses of resources for human survival with sustainability foremost, almost religiously followed, and we have a new Europe, or America for that matter! Modern technologies, the hidden ones as well as the blatant ones allow totally off-grid living with some lifestyle modification albeit, but survival, none the less – better than what the impending dollar crash in America has to offer – starvation in the streets and no tools of production remaining to fight against the hunger! When a factory closes in America the tools of production are sold to the highest bidder – often a scrap metal dealer! Everyone loses, save for the shareholder, as our laws of incorporation require! What does that do for the Patriots? They die in the streets without equipment or tools to defend themselves! That’s what it means! Everything breaks down! even the homes, built in such fashion as requiring high, steady wages even for their maintenance fall to ruins! Don’t believe me! See: http://uprooted.jessicareeder.com/2009/09/detroit-and-the-100-dollar-house/comment-page-1/#comment-3003 And, the same occurred in the U.S.S.R. and they too, now have great areas of rubble in place of reasonable sustainable eco-smart dwellings! At the very least, all should have great piles of compost from years of effort – none do! All should have great fields of exceptional fertility surrounding them from bio-gassed sewage sludge! – none do! All should have mature well developed gardens still producing! – none do! All should have environmentally friendly, humane dwellings of zero upkeep, zero running cost design, solar heated, and cozy! None do! All should have Solar hot water heaters on roof tops for basic cleanliness at affordable costs! None do! We build instead, even in America today, McMansions – symbols of our immaturity and foolish pride, and will pay dearly for it as soon as the dollar hits the cellars of Hell in its downward fall, and crashes, impoverishing all!