The Scottish whiskey distillery Bruichladdich, located on the Isle of Islay plans to produce 80% of its electricity with the new anaerobic digester being installed.  Doing so the company hopes to save nearly £120,000 ($175,000) every year, according to CNN.

Creating renewable energy from whisky might sound like a harebrained scheme conceived at the end of a long evening drinking the amber nectar.

But an independently-owned Scottish distillery is hoping that the installation of a new biogas generator will prove to be a lasting moment of environmental clarity and help solve their energy problems.

Mark Reynier, owner of Bruichladdich Distillery

told CNN:

“Our waste product is basically water left over after you’ve stripped all the alcohol out. It’s called, rather unromantically, pot ale.”

Beginning in 1999, the Vermont Public Service Department and the Vermont Agency of Agriculture started a joint venture to investigate the possible use of anaerobic digesters at Vermont’s dairy farms thanks to Senator James Jeffords who secured the funding.  Vermont Digesters

In Scotland, the cost of disposal of the pot ale waste costs $30,000 per year.  And the pot ale waste is taken by tanker and dumped into a pipeline that ends up pouring the pot ale waste into the bay, named Sound of Islay, right off the eastern coast of the island.  CNN Whiskey into Watts

Anaerobic digestion occurs when natural food stuffs decompose in the absence of oxygen. The end product of this process creates methane which Reynier says will be fed into the generator and converted into green electricity. The only by-product is water.

So what is the problem?  Why aren’t there more anaerobic digesters throughout Vermont for dairy farms, organic farms, and Vermont’s own budding wine and alcohol industries?

Jonathan Dowds, a graduate research assistant at UVM’s Transportation Research Center has a long paper regarding the use of anaerobic digesters in Vermont Anaerobic Digestion: A Farm Methane Mitigation Strategy for Vermont Dairies

So what is stopping Vermonters in turning farm waste into watts?

Most of what I have read is not only the cost of creating and installing digesters, but having the right transmission lines and a smart grid to carry that power to where it is needed.

Today’s Burlington Free Press has a lengthy article entitled Power-strips–Can-the-smart-grid-smarten-up-Vermont-s-energy-choices? that is worth a read.

Lawrence Mott, Director of Bristol-based New Generation Partners and board chairman for Montpelier-based nonprofit Renewable Energy Vermont notes several key points critical to the ‘green-grid/smart-grid’ connection:

“Renewables allow for reduced transmission —

and reduced losses. Smart grid allows for

transmission and generation that’s less

vulnerable to disruption. That combination

results in more security.”

Savings: “Smart grid lets you understand demand,

rather than just pushing power over the wires.

Consumers will ask themselves, ‘Maybe I’ll do my

laundry away from the peak dinner hour.’ And

that will let power companies throttle back

sooner.”

Smart money: “We need to expand the idea of

value. A feed-in tariff might be of value to

ratepayers when it asks them to pay a little more

— to protect them in the future. It also

conditions the market, and reduces the cost of

new technologies as we expand it.”