How craft brewers can cut natural gas emissions while growing profits
A craft brewery’s natural gas consumption can add hundreds of tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year. Cutting these emissions can lead to significant annual cost savings while helping to reverse the climate crisis.
Craft brewers can cut natural gas emissions in two ways:
By using less natural gas to do the same thing, or boosting energy efficiency
By transitioning natural gas end-uses to electric ones
Let’s break each of those down.
Boosting natural gas efficiency
Most of a craft brewery’s natural gas use goes toward generating heat for mashing, boiling wort, and cleaning.
Breaking it down, most goes to the brewhouse (30-60%), followed by packaging/cleaning (20-30%), followed by space heating (<10%), according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
If craft brewers can use natural gas more efficiently to brew beer and clean things, they’ll reduce their gas consumption per barrel produced, which results in greater profits and less emissions per barrel.
Examples of projects in these areas are to increase condensate return; improve boiler controls and set points; insulate steam lines; and recover heat in a boiler’s flue stack.
Transitioning gas end-uses to electric ones
If craft brewers can switch natural gas with electricity for specific processes, they’ll make significant progress cutting emissions.
This is because it’s easier to eliminate the carbon emissions of an electric appliance than a gas-fueled one. And this matters a lot for capital equipment with a long life.
Consider a steam boiler with a useful life of 15 years. If it’s gas-powered, it will generate emissions over its 15-year life unless it uses a lower-carbon fuel, like biogas. If it’s an electric boiler, its emissions will go down over 15 years as the local electricity grid adds more carbon-free power sources, like solar.
Whether craft brewers can electrify certain gas processes today depends a lot on the capability of the technology and what they pay for energy.
We can help
If you’re ready to cut some carbon while saving money, we’d love to chat!
We help craft brewers quickly measure their natural gas emissions; identify and quantify the ROI of projects that can save money while cutting natural gas emissions; and get those projects implemented.
Other awesome resources:
Diageo’s installation of electric boilers at a Kentucky distillery is a really exciting, real-life example of how to decarbonize boiling.