Roseisle Distillery – Renewable Energy Project of the Year

Roseisle Distillery, designed by Austin-Smith:Lord, has been awarded Renewable Energy Project of the Year at the 2013 BusinessGreen Leaders Awards.

The distillery, designed and built for Diageo, is the first new major distillery to be built in Scotland for 30 years and was designed specifically with sustainability in mind. It uses cutting edge technology to produce 11 million litres of whisky a year and has made substantial contributions towards reducing Diageo’s carbon footprint and increasing the company’s use of renewable energy sources.

Roseisle is the first malt whisky distillery to generate renewable energy from its co-products making its environmental impact significantly lower than a distillery of an equivalent size. It has an onsite bioenergy and effluent treatment facility and overall 50% of the distillery’s energy consumption is made up from renewable sources processed in the onsite bioenergy plant.

The distillery uses a combination of environmental technologies that was unprecedented in distilling, such as biomass boilers to raise steam from the spent grains, and waste water treatment by anaerobic digestion and membrane filtration.

The project’s other awards include the RICS Scotland Award for Sustainability Project of the Year, RICS Scotland Award for Overall Project of the Year, Scottish Design Award (Commercial Project Category) and a Saltire Award Commendation in the Civil Engineering Category.