It's often said that the industrial revolution can be blamed for jump-starting the problem of climate change. But there is a lesson from that era of pollution and innovation that can in fact teach us how to cut carbon emissions today: carrying goods by water. Businesses are fast re-learning that water freight can deliver environmental benefits while still being competitive on price and on time and reliability.
Savvy retailers can meet some of their CSR goals [pdf] by greening up their supply chains - taking their goods off the road, and shipping them on coastal and inland waterways. After all, according to the government's figures, water freight emits only 22 grams of C02 per tonne-kilometre, compared to 59 grams per tonne-kilometre on roads, and 28 grams when using rail. And the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research has concluded that water-freight transportation is four times less carbon intensive than that of road.
It is not just carbon: increased water freight transportation can also reduce the amount of nitrogen oxide emitted into the atmosphere by 35%.
Using water also helps to deal with congestion. Barges, at their full capacity, move far more freight than lorries: a single barge moves 300-400 tonnes of aggregate, taking 15-20 lorries off the road. The waterways are also not congested, so using water can be at least as quick, and certainly more reliable, than using Britain's congested road network. Retailers can also sidestep road congestion charges. So water freight both cuts congestion, by taking lorries off the road, and at the same time bypasses it.
In short, there is a good environmental case for moving goods on waterways, and at the same time a strong business case. That is why there are increasing numbers of businesses making the decision to switch to water.
Recently, retail giant Tesco collaborated with water transport operators such as Seaborn to do precisely this, when it began making use of the Manchester Ship Canal to ship New World wine from Liverpool to Manchester. This new cargo service now involves three journeys per week, delivering approximately 600,000 litres of wine on each journey along the 40-mile stretch of canal. It has delivered significant environmental benefits, since it takes 50 lorries off the roads each week, cutting carbon emissions by 80%.
There are other examples of success: shipping timber to the Scottish port of Troon; Asda's use of Teesport, and the transportation of London's rubbish along the Thames.
However, significant barriers remain to increasing water freight transportation throughout the UK. One is, simply, the occasional lack of requisite infrastructure. Although there are 2,000 miles of navigable rivers and canals in the UK, many cargo-handling terminals need to be refurbished to make water freight transportation a real possibility. And in places like Wales, with few navigable canals, water freight transportation is nearly impossible.
Water freight faces challenges in the UK that do not exist in many other countries. This is because UK ports are private, and relatively fragmented. The lack of centralised control cuts into strategic co-ordination, and prompts frequent disputes over who ought to maintain ports infrastructure. By contrast in Italy, for example, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport has approved 250 million Euros of "eco-bonuses" to be distributed among transport operators using waterways.
But the greatest hurdle for water freight to overcome is not a lack of navigable canals or inadequate infrastructure. Rather, it is the false belief that water-freight transportation is too slow, or that it is unreliable. All the experience of operators shows that thanks to road congestion this is increasingly not the case.
Yet a Sea and Water survey of business attitudes towards water freight showed that the vast majority of users ranked its reliability over cost. There are opportunities and business benefits to water transport: what is needed is to explain that to mainstream business opinion.
Investment in wharves and terminals continues to require boldness. And since water freight transportation is not yet a mainstream idea, most opportunities have yet to be thoroughly explored by prospective investors and freight operators. But it is now clear that investing in water freight is a sound business decision. Movement on inland waterways is not too slow for "just in time" business practitioners, and it could not be more reliable. There are also significant environmental incentives for moving cargo on the sea.
So, yes: the industrial revolution may have got us into this mess, but carbon emissions were much lower then. And we can learn from that era by encouraging retailers and other businesses to move their goods on water, thereby helping to secure a better, more sustainable future for us all.