Irish Distillers is set to invest €50 million in Midleton Distillery over the next four years, and plans to deliver a carbon neutral operation by the end of 2026.
This puts Midleton Distillery on track to become Ireland's first and largest carbon neutral distillery.
The plan to eliminate scope 1 and scope 2 carbon emissions by the end of 2026 will involve several projects which will see Midleton Distillery entirely phase out the use of fossil fuels to power its operation.
The carbon neutral roadmap for Midleton Distillery will involve the roll out of several projects aimed firstly at reducing overall energy use by improving on-site energy generation efficiency and recycling waste heat in the distillation process.
In time, the distillery’s remaining energy requirements will be fulfilled by generating power from renewable sources.
As part of the initial phases of the roadmap, Irish Distillers has invested in highly efficient boilers which will require less fuel to operate.
To deliver subsequent phases of the roadmap, Irish Distillers said it is working with global experts and partners on innovative Mechanical Vapor Recompression (MVR) technology which will see a closed looped system capture, compress and recycle waste heat in the distilling process.
It said this the first time this technology has been used across multiple batch processes in distilling.
Irish Distillers said the first three phases of the roadmap alone are expected to reduce emissions by up to 70%.
The final phases will see the introduction of renewable sources of energy, including green hydrogen and biogas to power the distillery and close the door on natural gas usage.
To achieve this, Irish Distillers has partnered with local experts at EI-H2 to explore opportunities to source green hydrogen.
Irish Distillers has also carried out extensive research in partnership with MaREI, the SFI Research Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine, hosted by University College Cork, to determine the biomethane potential of the by-products of distillation and design the required anaerobic digestion process necessary to produce biog.
