See how sustainability drives our future
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The first phase of the Edinburgh Biomes project includes the construction of a new, more efficient Energy Centre located in the Garden’s Nursery site.
The new system will use a hybrid approach, with Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHPs) providing sustainable energy from beneath the soil, supplemented by high-efficiency hydrogen-compliant gas boilers. A combined heat and power (CHP) system will also recover waste heat for energy use.
Work on the construction of the new Centre began in October 2025, and is expected to conclude in spring 2027. Once operational, the Energy Centre will provide heat and power initially to the Palm Houses and then to the Garden’s other public and research Glasshouses, Horticultural buildings and Nursery site, significantly reducing our carbon footprint.
In the longer term, we are seeking to introduce next generation technologies, perhaps a switch to hydrogen fuel which may become more readily available in the future.
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What are Ground Source Heat Pumps?
Ground source heat pumps work on the principle of extracting existing heat from deep underground then circulating that heat through pipes (ground loops), but accessing that energy can be quite a challenge. Our contractors began work in November 2025, drilling through frozen soil and solid Edinburgh rock to install 62 boreholes drilled to a depth of 199 metres.
Drilling work is now complete (April 2026), marking another significant moment in the Edinburgh Biomes project.
The pipes will now be connected to each other before work on the Energy Centre substructure and foundations begin.
The Energy Centre
Learn how new energy systems will cut carbon emissions and secure a greener future for the Botanics.
| Time | Description |
| [Erin Miller] The Energy Centre’s a key part of Biomes because it will provide heating to the living collection based within our existing Glasshouses. | |
| The current boilers are very old, very inefficient and are starting to break down. So it’s really important that we build a new Energy Centre that provides a more reliable source of heat for the Glasshouses, and also it runs more efficiently and reduces our operational costs as well. | |
| We’ll be using a combination of ground source heat pumps, which are a renewable heat source that extracts heat from the ground. We’ll be using a combined heat and power plant which captures heat produced as a by-product of electricity generation. And in addition to that we’ll be running some modern efficient gas boilers which will provide the heat necessary to keep the Glasshouses to temperature. | |
| The Glasshouses account for the vast majority of our emissions, so by addressing the heat requirements of the Glasshouses and the existing buildings, it’s going to have the largest single impact of any project that we have in terms of reducing our emissions. | |
| [Marc McCluskey] One of the main benefits for the Botanics is the safeguarding of the Living Collection and that was always our initial brief: how do we safeguard the Living Collection for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years? | |
| But tied into that was also looking at how we can do this in a sustainable manner. | |
| So the solution that we’ve come up with, and what we’ve been working through over the last six or seven years, has allowed us to reduce carbon impact on the environment by about 250 tonnes on day of opening per annum, and by the time that the Biomes Project is complete over 500 tonnes per annum of carbon saved. | |
| There is a general understanding from people that energy, sustainability, carbon reduction is important and it needs to be addressed. And I think projects like the Biomes Project can help to inspire people to understand the options that are available to reduce energy use, to reduce carbon and to then possibly take something from that, and take that back to the domestic level, and hopefully ensure that they can bring that to their own home. | |
| [Erin Miller] As a research institute and an educational facility, plants are at the heart of all we do. We have to address both the climate emergency and biodiversity crisis in tandem. Climate change is very real and very present and it’s up to us to do our best to mitigate where we can and to embed sustainability in all of our working practices. |
Reducing our carbon footprint
| Time | Description |
| [Erin Miller, Sustainability and Energy Manager] The Biomes project's going to have a huge impact on our journey to net zero. The glasshouses take up about 50% of our carbon footprint, and therefore the refurbishments and the upgrades that we're doing as part of this project are really going to make a difference in terms of our heat efficiency and the amount of energy required to heat and maintain the living collection. | |
| As part of our decarbonisation efforts in the garden, we're looking to electrify our fleet, and our hand tools as well. So we've recently purchased electric lawnmowers, an electric wood chipper, some strimmers and hedge trimmers and leaf blowers that are all electric. That allows us to move away from fossil fuels. | |
| [Angela Pllu, Environment and Sustainability Manager, Balfour Beatty] This was a really good project where we really wanted to put all our efforts into making it as low carbon as possible. We recognized from an early point that there was going to be a lot of glass waste produced on this project, so we wanted to really implement the circular economy and try and find a local home for that to be used. We took some of the glass off, crushed it to a very specific size, and we're using it in an ultra-low carbon concrete mix that will be brought back into the garden in the forms of benches and some PV tools. By the end of this project, we hope to have a really good set of updated knowledge that other projects can share and learnings that we can share wider within the industry. | |