A distillery on Orkney could be converted from using liquid petroleum gas to hydrogen power to produce ‘sustainable gin’ and reduce its emissions.

The HySpirits pilot project will benefit from the £390 million of Government funding announced at the end of August to help industry cut its emissions.

This includes: a £40 million Hydrogen and Fuel Switching Innovation Fund to explore how the technology can be rolled out across the UK; a £100 million competition to expand the supply of hydrogen; and a £250 million Clean Steel Fund to help the iron and steel industry, which currently accounts for 15% of industry emissions, to ‘transition’
to a low-carbon future.

Climate change minister Lord Duncan, said: “It’s great to know we can all enjoy an environment-friendly tipple while helping our planet, as we press towards a net zero-emissions economy by 2050.

"Hydrogen technology has the potential to not only reduce emissions from industry but also help us seize the opportunities of the global shift to cleaner economies — with the prize of up two million jobs and £170 billion of annual exports by 2030.”

Working with the European Marine Energy Centre — which uses wind and tidal technology to produce hydrogen — the HySpirits project could reduce emissions from the plant by around 86 tonnes of CO2 every year — the equivalent annual emissions from 10 homes or 18 cars.

Another pilot project aims to use floating wind turbines to produce hydrogen.

The Dolphyn project will mount electrolysers — electrical devices to split water into hydrogen and oxygen — on platforms to produce hydrogen.

One wind turbine alone has the potential to produce enough hydrogen to heat around 2,500 homes, fuel between 120 and 240 buses, or run eight to 12 trains.