Chivas Brothers, the Scotch whisky business of Pernod Ricard and whisky brands including Chivas Regal and The Glenlivet, has announced today that it has chosen to share its techniques for using heat recovery technologies, making it ‘open source’, after their own methods proved successful in reducing carbon emissions at their Glentauchers site.
By putting collaboration ahead of competition, and sharing its design process and implementation insights, Chivas hope to help the industry on its road to net zero creating a sustainable future for Scotch, Scotland’s largest export.
Chivas are using heat recovery technologies, which include Mechanical Vapour Recompression (MVR) and Thermo Vapour Recompression (TVR), which help to reuse the heat produced during the whisky-making process, heat that is normally wasted. The company started using these technologies at their Glentauchers distillery, and found that they reduced overall energy use by nearly half resulting in a 53% fall in the site’s carbon emissions. The energy saved from using these techniques could power almost 5,000 average UK homes for a full year, which is more homes than are in the nearby town of Keith.
Chivas Brothers says that it plans to start using these heat recovery technologies at all of their other suitable distillery locations, with a goal of having carbon neutral whisky-making processes by the end of 2026. They anticipate that these technologies will lower their overall energy use and carbon emissions by one third, which is more than 30,000 tons of CO2 per year.
Although not all distilleries will be able to use these technologies, Chivas Brothers believes that if all the malt whisky makers were to adopt these techniques, the energy savings could be enough to power 605,000 average homes for a year. This is more homes than in Edinburgh and Aberdeen combined.
Commenting on the ‘open source’ move, Jean-Etienne Gourgues, Chairman and CEO of Chivas Brothers, said, “Heat recovery forms a critical part of our commitment to achieve carbon neutral distillation by 2026. Findings with such significant impact must be shared; this technology has the potential to transform our industry and accelerate its progress to net zero.
“That’s why today we’re making our design process and implementation learnings available to all”, he continued. “As a business with a long history of innovation, we believe this is the right thing to do. Collaboration across our industry will be fundamental if we are to meet collective ambitions around sustainability, safeguarding the long-term future of our product and our planet. Understandably, this technology won’t be right for every distillery, but we encourage our peers to explore whether it has the potential to reduce their own carbon output.”