‘Whisky fuel’ makers given £11m grant

A company that has been making the world’s first biofuel from the byproducts of the Scotch whisky industry has been awarded £11 million from the UK Department for Transport.

Professor Tangney and Andrew Jones, transport minister (Photo: Celtic Renewables)

Celtic Renewables will use the funding to build a biofuel facility that will be operational by December 2018, producing at least 1 million litres every year.

The process of making the fuel, which can power cars, involves bacterial fermentation of carbohydrates such as starch and glucose – in this case, leftovers from the whisky industry.

Celtic Renewables is a Scottish spin-out company from the Biofuel Research Centre (BfRC) at Edinburgh Napier University, and is led by Professor Martin Tangney.

It has spent the last 18 months developing its process as part of a £1 million programme funded by the Department for Energy and Climate Change under its Energy Entrepreneurs Fund.

Professor Tangney said that the company aims to reintroduce biofuel production – which had its heyday at the beginning of the 20th century before the dominance of petrochemicals – in a modern context by using leftovers from the Scottish whisky industry.

He added: “We are committed to developing a new industry right here in the UK that will be worth more than £100million-a-year and it starts here.

“We have already attracted investment and partners in the private sector and this funding announced today will allow us to scale-up to industrial production.

“Our next step is to open a demonstration facility and we are targeting a location in or near Grangemouth which is an area that’s strategically right for us.”

Presenting the award, transport minister Andrew Jones said the company represents “a fantastic story that fits perfectly with our aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and decarbonising transport.”