THE Edinburgh-based Green Investment Bank (GIB) is financing an eco-friendly biomass boiler at Royal Brackla Distillery in Nairn, the fourth Scottish distillery to be helped by funding earmarked by the lender to boost energy efficiency in that type of business.
The bank, which was created by the UK government, said the new facility will replace the heavy fuel boilers currently in place at the distillery, which is run by John Dewar & Sons.
The project is set to be completed next year and the GIB said it would "reduce the distillery's energy costs and its greenhouse gas emissions, without requiring any up-front capital investment from the distillery".
It is also expected to be 50 per cent more energy-efficient than the present set-up, as well cutting greenhouse-gas emissions to the same extent as taking 2,265 cars off the road.
Funding will come from the £5 million made available by the bank, as announced in May, via its fund manager Equitix. Dewar's Aberfeldy distillery in Perthshire, Balmenach distillery in Speyside and Tomatin distillery near Inverness have already made use of the financing.
The GIB's chairman, Lord Smith of Kelvin, said he was delighted that the bank could help another distillery save money and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
"This is an investment to help one of our most iconic industries to modernise, become more efficient and reduce its carbon footprint," he added.
Royal Brackla, which is owned by Bacardi and was the first distillery to receive the Royal Warrant, said the new boiler will go towards its goal of cutting global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent by 2017.
Operations director Iain Lochhead said: "The installation of the biomass boiler will mark a significant change in the environmental performance of the distillery as we are expecting an annual target reduction of some 5,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions."
In August the GIB sannounced that it was investing in a green Speyside power plant, providing energy to the Macallan distillery.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article