Eco-innovation and benchmarking of carbon footprint data for vineyards and wineries in Spain and France

Abstract

Environmental sustainability in the wine sector has become a priority, as a result of both the growing interest in environmental issues and the consumer's demand for more information regarding the environmental impact of the products they purchase. In this context, the use of carbon footprint as an indicator to assess and report the environmental burdens associated with wine production has gained a role of primary interest. The present study has the aim of improving the wine sector's sustainability by providing inventory data on wine production systems from a total of 18 wineries located in major wine-producing regions in Spain and the South of France. The main novelty of this paper is: the corporate carbon footprint approach, the greater number of wineries studied, the diversity of location of those wineries, the detail of data presented and the identification of the best reference flow for vineyards. Data was statistically analysed. Vineyard consumptions are usually related to the area of cultivation. However, although 1 ha of vineyard or 1 kg of harvested grape could both be considered good reference flows for vineyard processes, this study shows a greater standard deviation of average data calculated per ha rather than per kg. Impact results show a major contribution of the winery phase to the corporate carbon footprint (73%), mainly due to glass production for bottling (45.6% contribution) and electricity consumption (9.2%). In the vineyard phase, contribution comes mainly from diesel production and combustion due to field works (11.3%) and the use of phytosanitary products (6.0%). The results revealed that with the establishment of best practices and with optimized resource consumption, the corporate carbon footprint values can be reduced by almost 25%. The comparative results presented can be used as a reference that will enable wineries to compare their impacts to the average, to identify in which aspects they are within the average and which aspects they are outside the average and whether these aspects are significant to their carbon footprint. This may encourage wineries to adopt measures for Eco-innovation through carbon emission reduction.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Designs for energy‐efficient wine cellars (ageing rooms): a review

“…The increasing attention to sustainability is pushing the construction sector to build more sustainable buildings (Navarro et al ). In this regard, the wine sector has placed environmental sustainability in a priority position, due to both the consumer's demand for more information regarding the environmental impact of their purchases and the growing interest in environmental issues (Moscovici and Reed ).…”

“…The global dissemination of sustainability indexes and that of their configurations are treated as proxy variables for the appraisal of ‘green buildings’. Current evaluation systems range from energy utilisation assessment systems to life cycle analysis and total quality evaluation schemes (Navarro et al ); improving energy efficiency is the underlying factor behind them.…”

“…As a result, the UC Davis winery complex achieved the Leadership in Energy and Enironmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification, and it was ranked in the top 3% of all LEED Platinum buildings finished in that period; it was also the first water and energy self‐sustainable building. Navarro et al () proposed a novel carbon footprint approach, claiming that their approach might be convenient for pushing small and medium enterprises towards eco‐innovation and sustainability because of its simplicity. They presented data for promoting eco‐innovation, since their inventory can enable wineries to benchmark their data with that from the study.…”

Plataforma comparativa para consumos de energía, agua y huella de carbono en bodegas de vinos

“…Respecto al cálculo de la huella de carbono, para fines de este trabajo se consideró el análisis del Alcance 1 y Alcance 2, que corresponden aproximadamente al 10% del total de la huella, alcanzando un valor de 0,22 kg CO2 equivalente/litro de vino [17,18]. En relación a los valores th World Congress of Vine and Wine obtenidos, se debe verificar la información reportada por parte de las viñas pilotos ya que son muy bajos en comparación a los referencias lo que hace inferir que la información se encuentra incompleta.…”

Sustainability evaluation of a Portuguese “terroir” wine

“…Other studies considered only specific indicators, especially the carbon footprint (CF) and the water footprints (WF) [28][29][30]. Extensive reviews on the application of the carbon footprint concept to wine production can be found in the literature [32][33][34][35]. Both indicators are directly linked to various key aspects of wine production such as energy consumption, land management and transportation related to the CF, and water usage for the WF.…”