Making Whisky Green Again
Balmenach, one of Speyside’s oldest whisky distilleries and the home of Caorunn Scottish Gin, is set to become one of Scotland’s greenest distilleries now that work has started on a £3 million biogas project to further reduce the site’s carbon footprint.
The new technology will integrate with their existing brites fuelled wood-pellet biomass boiler, and once complete, the combined system will generate enough renewable steam and electricity to meet 100 per cent of the Distillery’s energy requirements with a surplus of electrical energy supplied to the grid.
As one of the partners in the project, Balcas operates the existing biomass steam system at Balmenach, which uses brites wood pellets produced from home grown Highland timber local to the Distillery to produce zero carbon steam for the Balcas system. In the past 2 years since installation, it has enabled Balmenach to reduce its carbon footprint by 10,000 tonnes.
Ian McCracken, Balcas Business Development Director added: ‘As a company committed to renewables, Balcas is proud to be associated with Inver House’s aspiration to stay at the forefront of the drive to deliver long term economic, environmental and social sustainability. Our 4MW biomass steam system is capable of meeting the demand previously met by a much larger traditional heavy fuel oil boiler. Over the same period this has displaced 3.1 million litres of imported oil while still making the same great tasting whisky and gin.’
Photo: Great to partner with Inver House, Clearfleau and Synergie – Environ on this exciting new project, driving the de-carbonisation of distilling in Scotland.
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