Eideard

Seeing cars powered by alcohol is nothing new. After all, that’s what ethanol is. But as expensive as gasoline might get, fueling a car on single malt scotch would be more wasteful than lighting your cigar with a hundred-dollar bill. Yet that’s just what one Mark Reynier is doing. Well, almost, but not quite.

Reynier is proprietor of the Bruichladdich distillery on the Scottish isle of Islay. The island is known for its smokey, peaty whiskies, and the relatively recently re-opened Bruichladdich distillery is already earning itself distinction not only for the quality of its whiskies – this writer thoroughly enjoyed a glass of the good stuff just the other day – but also for its sustainability. Bruichladdich offers a range of organic single malts, and is also one of the first distilleries to operate self-sufficiently.

The distillery grows, malts and distills its own whisky on-site (a rarity even among single malts), but it has now taken things a step further. Bruichladdich, you see, generates its own electricity by reusing the waste products from the distilling process. And now Reynier is also using that electricity to charge up his Nissan Leaf.

To celebrate the feat, Nissan and Bruichladdich have teamed up for a special Leaf edition organic whisky.

Combining the functions of generating electricity by sustainable means – and using the juice to power an electric vehicle is beginning to catch on. If you peep over here you’ll see the proposed package to be offered by Ford and SunPower, electric vehicle + solar panels for a grid-tie installation,

ScottishPower Renewables’ £40 million tidal array will harness the power of the Sound of Islay and generate enough electricity for more than 5,000 homes, more than double the number of homes on Islay.

The 10 megawatt facility will further develop emerging tidal energy technology, and provide economic and community benefits to Islay and Jura.

The Scottish Government said it will cement Scotland’s position as a global leader in marine energy.

Cabinet Secretary…John Swinney…’With around a quarter of Europe’s potential tidal energy resource and a tenth of the wave capacity, Scotland’s seas have unrivalled potential to generate green energy, create new, low carbon jobs, and bring billions of pounds of investment to Scotland.

”This development – the largest tidal array in the world – does just that and will be a milestone in the global development of tidal energy…”

”I am pleased that ScottishPower Renewables will work with the Islay Energy Trust to maximise social and economic opportunities, for instance using local marine contractors during installation or creating new local jobs in the onshore construction phase.

”And the wider Scottish supply chain is set to benefit, with Scottish businesses set to benefit from four million pounds worth of contracts in making the turbines to be used in the development, including manufacture of a test prototype at BiFab in Arnish.

There are any number of satisfactory locations along the United States coastline for similar installations. The problems to overcome aren’t technical but political.

The NIMBY cult is particularly strong in America. “Not-in-my-backyard” is accepted as holy writ by most state and local politicians. The Eleventh Commandment is “Thou shalt not string powerlines over our sainted coastline nor above valuable land dedicated to overpriced subdivisions.

Creating renewable energy from whisky might sound like a harebrained scheme conceived at the end of a long evening drinking the amber nectar. But an independently-owned Scottish distillery is hoping that the installation of a new biogas generator will prove to be a lasting moment of environmental clarity and help solve their energy problems.

This month, Bruichladdich — one of eight distilleries to be found on the Scottish isle of Islay — will take delivery of an anaerobic digester which will start turning their whisky waste into electricity.

Mark Reynier, owner of Bruichladdich Distillery, hopes the digester will meet around 80 percent of its electricity needs and save the company up to $175,000 every year.

Reynier told CNN: “Our waste product is basically water left over after you’ve stripped all the alcohol out. It’s called, rather unromantically, pot ale.”

Every year, several hundred thousand liters of pot ale waste are taken away by a tanker and poured down a pipeline that feeds it into the Sound of Islay off the eastern coast of the island.

Its disposal is a costly business (in the region of $30,000 annually) and allied to rising energy costs it has forced the distillery to rethink how it sources its energy.

“We’ve looked at biomass and green energies and dismissed them one by one as being completely impractical and uneconomic for an industrial purpose,” Reynier said. “But one thing we can do is use this proven technology and generate biogas…”

If the biogas trial proves a success, the pot ale that was pumped into the sea on a daily basis will instead be continuously fed into the digester creating something of a virtuous production circle.

But Reynier says transforming the distillery isn’t about being “some sort of eco-warrior” but rather about just trying to be sensible.

“We are practical people — you have to be on an island like this,” he said.

I’d love to help him out with practical solutions like this. They could pay me in single malt – anytime.

Circa 1904

ScottishPower is planning a tidal energy project that will supply all the electricity for one of Scotland’s most famous islands, the Guardian can reveal.

The company is close to signing a supply contract with Diageo, the drinks group, to provide electricity from the project to eight distilleries and maltings on Islay – including the makers of the renowned Laphroaig and Lagavulin whiskies.

The 10MW tidal project, one of the world’s largest, will provide enough electricity for Islay’s 3,500 inhabitants for 23 hours a day.

ScottishPower will submit a planning application in the next couple of months and expects the ten 30-metre underwater turbines to be operational in 2011. The turbines will cost about £50m to install…

There is…strong support on the island, although it is by no means universal. Kevin Sutherland, manager of the Islay group of Diageo distilleries, works at the Caol Ila distillery, which overlooks the Sound. The distillery, like the rest of the island, gets the majority of its electricity from the Hunterston nuclear reactor on the mainland. But the reactor is being decommissioned in 2016 and the distillery suffers frequent power cuts in stormy weather when pylons are blown over.

When the tidal project is built, the distilleries on the island will enjoy a much more secure electricity supply, confounding critics of renewable energy – primarily wind power – who say it is intermittent and unreliable.

One of the biggest obstacles for renewables in Britain has been planning permission. Onshore wind applications are frequently rejected because locals object to the visual impact. Because the Islay generators will be on the seabed, no one can see them and the Scottish government will have the final say on planning.

Trust me. There will be some fop from London who owns fishing rights which he uses once every dozen years – who will find grounds he feels should halt the project.

I am also reminded there were portions of my life entirely powered by Laphroig.