Sustainable Scotch: Hybrid Distillery aims to net zero whiskey | Scotland

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Like other popular malt whiskeys made in Islay, Bruichladdich heavily promotes its idyllic location on the island, carefully selected Scottish malts, clear Hebrew waters and the loving attention to its craft distillers.

But Bruichladdich faces a big problem. Like its neighboring distilleries, and many of Scotland’s 134 producers of whiskey, it relies on fuel oil, brought on diesel-powered ferries, to ignite its boilers. Islay’s nine distilleries burn 15 million liters of oil each year. Ironically, this beautiful spot has perhaps the highest per capita CO2 emissions of any community in Scotland.

But now the company has set itself the challenge of ensuring that the distillation process will be zero by 2025. This will be followed by the production of malted malt and hot mash to create the malt wort, the whiskey’s source liquid.

Bruichladdich hopes to pioneer an innovative type of green hydrogen production using green electricity and water electrolysis, as opposed to the traditional method that uses natural gas and produces carbon dioxide in the process. For now, it’s on a green tariff, but it plans to use renewables installed around the island over the next few years — wind maybe, but there are hopes that tidal power will be possible at some point.

Kristi MacFarlane, global brand manager at Bruichladdich, is trialling the product. Photo: Mordo MacLeod/The Guardian

Douglas Taylor, chief executive of Bruichladdich, believes that if the technology works, it could help power other Islay distilleries, businesses and homes. This could help transform the island, which is also the site of pilot tidal power projects, from being dependent on fossil fuels to being self-sufficient in renewables.

“We have a view of ‘Think big, start small, but start today.’ And that’s one of the things you need in the industry: take a brave and courageous step to represent what change can look like,” he said. “What you have to do is start with what you can control.”

The whiskey industry in Scotland as a whole faces similar challenges. Whiskey is the UK’s most valuable export product, valued at around £5 billion in 2019, but its largest distilleries have for years relied on gas-flaring; Fuel oil is widely used in remote areas. Furthermore, whiskey producers know that drought and seasonal variations of climate change will hit the Scottish barley harvest and the water supply essential to whiskey production, said Moore Garden, head of sustainability at the Scotch Whiskey Association. Floods will hit distilleries and transportation.

Now, however, the industry has set a net-zero target date of 2040, 10 years ahead of the UK government’s current target and five years ahead of the Scottish target, according to the Scotland Agreement, and is partly on track to achieve that.

A number of major distilleries convert to anaerobic digestion using their by-product of whiskey production, known as druff; Biomass boilers and as a step to replace fuel oils, more efficient gas boilers are used. In early August, Diageo, the largest producer of Scotch, announced plans to install a 4-megawatt solar farm near its packaging plant in Fife, featuring 12,000 solar panels.

Some newcomers have started life as fully renewable energy. The boutique distillery of Nc’Nean, a small organic whiskey operation that began production on the Morvern Peninsula in Argyll four years ago, was recently certified as the UK’s first net zero whiskey distillery, after investing in an expensive biomass boiler fueled by woodchip. From a commercial forestry nearby.

“I feel that all companies have a responsibility to do what they can to mitigate the climate crisis we are all facing. I think if you start a new distillery, it is unjustifiable to do anything other than try to use renewable energy,” said Annabel Thomas, founder of Nc’Nean.

Bruichladdich hopes to pioneer the use of an innovative type of green hydrogen production. Photo: Mordo MacLeod/The Guardian

The hydrogen production technology for testing at Bruichladdich was designed by Protium, a London-based energy company, with development funding of £74,000 from the UK government, using US technology. The government has committed £10m to research into helping the UK’s whiskey and spirits industries achieve net zero, and Protium has just applied for a second wave of funding.

Taylor says hydrogen will be part of an overall shift in Bruichladdich’s business toward self-sufficiency and sustainability. The distillery, owned by French luxury drinks company Rémy Cointreau, was the first in Scotland to receive B Corp status – an ethical corporate designation that aims to strike a balance between “purpose and profit”.

We are trying to innovate something for the broader benefit of the island. We strongly support the idea that whatever we look at, it can be taken up by other distilleries and also other companies on the island and the community,” Taylor said.

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