A taste of the future?

WHISKEY GOES GREEN - WITH NEW DISTILLERIES COMPETITION

Did you know that the production of whisky is around 7 times more energy-intensive than that of gin and in 2018 produced around 530,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent?

Back in March, In his 2020 Budget speech, the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak announced £10 million of new research and development funding to help distilleries go green. Now (16th September 2020) the UK Government has announced the launch of their 'Green Distilleries Competition' to help identify and then develop fuel switching technologies that will help support distilleries in cutting emissions and harnessing energy - by utilising low carbon fuels such as hydrogen.

The announcement of the competition was welcomed by trade bodies in both Scotland and Northern Ireland, home to the vast majority of the UK's world-famous distilleries, and it's hoped that the initiative will help slash carbon emissions by almost a million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, which is equivalent to taking 100,000 vehicles off the road. The majority of these emissions come from the generation of heat for the distillation process, which accounts for approximately 83% of the distillation industry's fuel consumption.

The competition is split up into two phases with the first providing up to £500,000 in initial feasibility studies, followed by the second which will support pilot demonstrations.

To meet net zero by 2050 all industries, including distilleries must decarbonise as far as possible. Let's hope this could be a sweet and mature taste of things to come ...