Beer does its bit to reduce the carbon hangover

Offsetting carbon, thinking about life cycles and working towards net zero isn’t just related to the environment in which we live – it’s also about what we eat and what we drink. This is the context for the rise of beers that are doing their bit to reduce the carbon hangover – while still providing the taste that connoisseurs want.

And it couldn’t be more prescient in 2021, as consumers continue to respond well to brands who are seen to be doing their bit regarding ethical production, sustainability and the broad fight against Covid-19.

There are a number of different aspects to what’s happening with beer: breweries using recycled ingredients; sustainability life cycle assessments (LCAs); Heineken engaging in carbon-neutral shipping; and even brewers going beyond carbon-neutral to become carbon-negative, to name but a few.

Indeed, there are six key components in a beer’s life cycle sustainability: raw materials; brewing operations; packaging; distribution; refrigeration; waste management. Let’s have a look at what goes into producing sustainable beer, and what brewers are doing to slash their carbon footprints.

One simple approach is to replace some of the traditional ingredients – malted barley, for example – with recycled material, such as breakfast cereals or bread waste. This is the method favoured by Seven Bro7hers, the Salford-based brewery. A third of the world’s food lies unused, or is wasted or lost. It then goes to landfills, where it decomposes, and releases methane gas into the atmosphere. Therefore, any initiative that makes use of any of that material is to be welcomed.

Brewing is, of course, an energy-intensive process that uses a significant amount of water and power. Anti-foaming agents can help. For example, Kerry’s FermCap was shown to deliver energy savings of 8% and a CO2 emissions reduction of 19% in the company’s recent LCA.

Similarly, the brewery’s product that they use to flocculate yeast at the end of the fermentation process, Biofine, delivers the following results:

“a 14% reduction in maturation time, a doubling of filtration cycles, and a drop of 50% in filter aid consumption. Other benefits included a 1% reduction in beer loss, a 5% CIP reduction, 8% lower energy use, and 17% reduction in CO2 emissions.”

While these are impressive results, what Brewdog is planning in the Scottish Highlands is if anything even more remarkable, though coming at the issue of carbon footprint reduction from a different angle. They plan to begin peatland restoration work on 2050 acres of grazing land, with the aim of having their own forest that will take double the amount of carbon out of the air that they emit each year.

Planting trees is a quick option, of course, and other brewers are taking different approaches, with more concentration on the actual process of brewing, as mentioned above. Everyman’s Right brewery in Finland is using its spent grain, hops and yeast to produce biogas that will then be used to produce the energy they need to brew the beer, so a genuine cycle. Any biogas remaining from the brewing process will be used to generate green energy, or sold for use in biogas-fuelled cars.

Furthermore, they are going to collect the CO from the fermentation tanks and reuse it for carbonation, with any excess being bottled and offered to restaurants and pubs. Also, heat will be recovered and only green and carbon-neutral energy will be used in the process.

These initiatives from small brewers are very welcome, as in general it has been easier for the large breweries to commit to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions than it has for craft operations. In terms of the larger breweries, as well as the Heineken shipping development linked to above, Carlsberg have been at the forefront of innovation. They have launched  a paper cup, and more incredibly, are the first brewery in the world to eliminate almost all water wastage via a water recycling plant at their brewery in Fredericia. Here’s what website future Net Zero has to say:

“The new plant is estimated to halve the average water consumption at the brewery and reduce energy consumption by 10% through its biogas production and hot water recycling. The new water recycling technology will also allow the brewery to recycle almost 90% of all process water.”

Of course, there is some public funding involved, and there’s no doubt that the marriage of public and private finance is helping get such developments off the ground. Overall, Carlsberg has reduced its carbon footprint by 20% since 2015.

In the UK, the Zero Carbon Forum was launched in December 2020. A hospitality industry coalition comprising restaurants, pubs, and brewers. They will collectively develop a roadmap to net zero by September this year, with a view to it being offered to the hospitality industries of other nations at COP26 in November. It requires members to measure and benchmark emissions across energy, water, waste and the supply chain on an annually.

There is an economic case in the context of Covid-19 as well, as outlined by its founder and chief executive, Mark Chapman:

“Cutting carbon emissions also cuts business costs so our solutions to tackling the climate crisis will help us bounce back more strongly from the pandemic. Hospitality is committed to working together at a pace to decarbonise its operations and support the Government’s green industrial revolution.”

Your nights out to the pub – once they’re re-opened – are starting to look that little bit closer to net zero as each day goes by. And the move to net zero is low cost, according to the Committee for Climate Change’s chief executive, Chris Stark:

“Overall, the cost is surprisingly low – it’s cheaper than even we thought last year when we made our assessments. Net zero is relatively low-cost across the economy. But that rests on action now. You can’t sit on your hands and imagine it’s just going to get cheaper by magic.”

And with COP26 taking place a year later because of the pandemic, that’s a year more emphasis to be placed on this, and more beer to be made with less carbon used.