SBRI Green Distilleries - Phase 1 [Feasibility Study]

The supplier must undertake and report on a feasibility study into the development of innovative fuel switching or fuel-switch enabling technologies that are directly transferable to the distilleries sector (from malting to maturation).

Background

In the 2020 Budget, the Chancellor announced £10 million of new R&D funding to help decarbonise UK distilleries. This aligns closely with BEIS's wider innovation work to deliver on the government commitment to accelerate the commercialisation of innovative cheap, clean and reliable energy technologies, enabling the UK to meet net-zero.

The spirits sector is estimated to have a GVA of £8.25bn with Scotch whisky providing £5.5bn.1 £4.7bn was through exports, making up 21% of all UK food and drink exports.1

The production of whisky is around seven times more energy intensive than that of gin and directly produced around 530,000 tCO2e/y in 2018.2,3 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.3 56% of the fuel used is natural gas.3 However, due to the remote location of some of the distilleries, the industry still uses a range of fossil fuels including medium/heavy fuel oil.

1. https://www.scotch-whisky.org.uk/media/1591/final-2018-economic-impact-report.pdf accessed 20/7/20
2. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/866363/Phase_2_-_EMEC_-_HySPIRITS.pdf accessed 21/7/20
3. https://www.scotch-whisky.org.uk/media/1733/net-zero-pathways-report-june-2020.pdf accessed 20/7/20

Competition Details

The Green Distilleries Competition is to support the development of innovative fuel switching or fuel-switch enabling technologies that are directly transferable to the distilleries sector (from malting to maturation). It is to support the development of technologies that are not yet commercial rather than supporting ongoing decarbonisation across the distilleries sector. Therefore, the technologies to be developed must be at a technology readiness level (TRL) between 4 and 7 at the start of the project. The ultimate objective is to trial the technologies at pilot scale.

The aim of the Green Distilleries competition is to identify, support and then develop credible innovative fuel switching technologies/enabling technologies bringing about a step change in their development. The competition will be split up into two phases with Phase 1 focusing on an initial feasibility study, followed by Phase 2 which will support a pilot demonstration. Only those applicants who are successful in Phase 1 and have completed their feasibility study may enter into Phase 2. A separate application form will be released before the end of the Phase 1 feasibility study, which will be used to assess applicants for the Phase 2 demonstration study.