Where should craft brewers focus to cut costs and carbon emissions?

There are a lot of craft brewers out there that want to help reverse the climate crisis by reducing their beer’s carbon footprint.

But most of them have full-time jobs that have nothing to do with cutting emissions. So they carve out an hour when they can to help their brewery reduce its environmental impact.

Where should they focus those valuable, limited hours to drive the greatest impact?

On malt, electricity, natural gas, and fugitive emissions

They should focus on using malt, electricity, natural gas, and purchased CO2 more efficiently, which will result in greater profit and less emissions per barrel of beer produced.

Craft brewers should focus in these four areas, as opposed to all of the other emissions in the beer-making process, because:

1. They have direct control over how much malt, electricity, natural gas, and CO2 they use

2. Cutting emissions in these areas can lead to thousands in annual cost savings

3. These areas influence more than a third of the total emissions in the beer-making process, according to New Belgium

The exact share of a craft brewery’s total emissions that malt, electricity, natural gas, and CO2 account for will vary brewery-to-brewery based on their operations and practices. We can help you measure your emissions to find that out.

What makes up the remainder?

Three areas account for the lion’s share of the remaining emissions in the beer-making process:

1. Making glass and aluminum containers to put beer in (~38%)

2. Transporting raw materials and packaged product (~15%)

3. Keeping beer cold at retail locations and customer homes (8%)

If we can decarbonize these areas, we’ll be really close to carbon-free beer!

The challenge with these supply chain sources, however, is that craft brewers have limited control over them, especially with the enduring supply chain disruptions from COVID. Regardless, a great first step is to start conversations with suppliers about actions they’re taking to cut emissions.

We can help

If you’re ready to cut some carbon while saving money, w’d love to chat!

We help craft breweries quickly measure their emissions; identify profitable carbon-reduction projects; and get those projects completed.

Other awesome resources

• New Belgium’s Carbon-Neutral Toolkit is an incredible resource for carbon-conscious craft brewers and green teams. The toolkit includes the Drink Sustainably GHG Accounting Tool, which allows any craft brewery to calculate its value chain emissions.

• Though carbon-conscious craft brewers know all about the Brewers Association’s incredible resources - from sustainability benchmarking to sustainability manuals - it would be absurd to leave them out as an awesome resource.

• The Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Sector Guidance applies the gold standard of emissions measurement to the brewing industry specifically.