Customer demand

Is a growing green consciousness among beer drinkers behind the breweries’ climate change announcements? Well, not if an entirely unscientific vox pop of beer drinkers on Wellington’s waterfront is anything to go by.

Gunthel – an immigrant from Germany

"If it means they will adopt something like the Reinheitsgebot – pure beer law in Germany I would definitely support it. Beer was lousy here in the ‘80s and ‘90s but has got better with the craft beers. In principle I support them, but I won’t be switching my beer choice as a result. As long as it doesn’t put the price of beer up – it’s a good idea. Beer is too expensive here."

 

Leonie and Tracy – visitors from Auckland

Leonie: "Won’t make any difference. I support independent breweries. Not keen on corporates."

Tracy: "If they achieve carbon neutrality by offsetting it won’t make any difference to how I feel about their beer. I don’t put much stock in offsetting."

 

 

Hemi – from the Waikato

"I hadn’t heard that they were going carbon neutral. I drink Steinlager, so that’s good to know. If they’re off-setting with forests, I hope they’re planting natives not exotics."

 

Vinny – Wellingtonian

"I guess it could be a selling point. I try to avoid both DB and Lion, so I won’t be swayed by it."

Carbon News spoke to half a dozen other beer drinkers, none of them were aware of the breweries’ environmental commitments and none thought it would make any difference to their choice of brew in the future.

 

If not customers, what?

 

So, if it’s not the customer demand driving the announcements, what is it?

Both DB and Lion are small cogs in huge international machines. DB is part of the Heineken Group that used last week’s Earth Day to announce a pledge to carbon neutrality in its full value chain by 2040.

And Lion is part of Japanese-owned Kirin group which is a member of Business Ambition for 1.5c.

In future instalments of the Beer Diaries we’ll look at the influence of investors, government policies, economics and corporate responsibility on the growing trend for corporates to adopt carbon zero policies.

What does a green brewery look like?

Heineken’s Gos Brewery in Austria declared itself the first carbon neutral brewery back in 2016.

Over the previous decade it switched its entire energy needs to renewables including a 1,500-square-meter photovoltaic array and biomass district heating, in which 40 percent of the brewery’s heat requirements comes from surplus heat discharged from a neighboring sawmill.

 

 

Its grain fermentation plant converts production waste into biogas and residues are used as fertiliser.

 

Ninety percent of the waste heat generated in the brewing process is used to heat water

• A new type of boiling system is used during the brewing process, which helps to save electricity and water
• Energy generated from brewery residues will be used to generate steam and any excess volumes will be converted into electric current
• 100 percent of raw materials used at the Göss Brewery come from Austria
  

Tomorrow: how do Lion and DB’s efforts stack up against the Göss Brewery