There is a theory that the origin of civilisation lies at the bottom of a beer glass. To grow the hops and barley needed to brew, ancient people had to settle in one place to tend their crops. From this basic desire to have a good time, the reasoning goes, evolved everything needed for a good pub: bread, plumbing and culture.
Not everyone agrees – others suggest bread baking came first – but what matters is that beer has been with humanity for thousands of years. With the existential threat of climate change posing a risk to civilisation, brewers and drinkers are increasingly turning their attention to how exactly their favourite brew gets made.
Carbon dioxide may give beer its bubbles, but the dirty little secret is that the process of brewing your favourite IPA takes heat, water and fossil fuels. Whether you just want a Friday knock-off that doesn’t harm the environment, or you’re a brewer looking for ideas, here’s a quick guide to how some craft brewers have been thinking about, and tackling, the problem.
Zero-carbon beer is a myth
Though it is possible to make a zero-carb beer, the first thing to understand about brewing, says Scott Shomer, founder of Helios Brewing in Brisbane, is that there can be no zero-carbon beer.
“Anyone who says they are carbon-neutral, or zero-carbon – that’s not possible,” Shomer says.
“We purchase grain, for instance, and hops. They’re crops – and so somebody else has a massive footprint in growing the crops, using pesticides sometimes, bringing water to the crops, and then it all has to be trucked.”
Many breweries – big and small – will often tackle this problem by buying carbon credits, or offsets, but there are serious questions over the auditing, transparency and effectiveness of these schemes. They also still allow businesses to emit carbon.
Knowledge is power
Even if drinkers and breweriesare skeptical about ambitious claims relying on offsetting, Laurence Kain, founder of Capital Brewing in Canberra, says understanding the process can be useful.
Capital Brewing was initially signed up to a carbon offsetting scheme but ended its participation in December last year. Kain says the company pulled out for several reasons, but running the numbers as part of the process did help identify where the business could make improvements to reduce its carbon intensity.
“For example, we could see in our supply chains that we were using too many imported ingredients,” Kain says. “The freight miles in terms of the carbon intensity of freighting malt from England to Australia, a lot of fossil fuel gets burned, carbon emissions get created in that process.”
“We’ve now got a number of different projects in the works to further improve our environmental performance, from water consumption per litre to reducing chemical consumption per litre.”
Though he says he is suspicious about anyone claiming to be carbon-neutral thanks to offsetting, he suggests it is a good idea to look for certification schemes such as B-Corp. These are good indicators of how seriously a business takes sustainability, but also how it treats its workers, engages with its local community and addresses its environmental impact.
Look for change you can see
For drinkers who want to reduce the environmental impact of their favourite brew, a good idea is to support breweries making active efforts to directly tackle their emissions intensity. Solar arrays are a good start, but any business seriously committed to sustainability will be looking to make changes elsewhere.
As a good portion of brewing involves heating up and cooling down liquids, Shomer, a former environmental engineer, built his brewery from the ground up to maximise sustainability and efficiency, such as installing more efficient motors and a custom-designed thermal hot-water system.
The result of these and other changes is an operation that uses a tenth of the gas and electricity an equivalent brewery might use, and a third of the water. Each week, the waste Helios produces fills a residential-sized green bin.
“Everything I did here, for about a $2m operation, the extra stuff cost me around $30k to $35k,” he says. “That money – the solar PV, it paid for itself in under a year. The hot-water system, because it’s so efficient, it paid for itself in under six months.”
There are still limits
Surprisingly, one of the largest source of emissions in any brewery is the humble aluminium can. Making aluminium is often described as the act of turning electricity into metal – a process that uses a tenth of Australia’s entire electricity output.
Because Australia remains dependent on coal – and the aluminium industry has a mixed history on climate change and lobbied against efforts to green the grid – it will remain a major source of emissions until the creation of a green aluminium industry.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other things to be done, Shomer says, and with gas, electricity and petrol prices rising, using less and transitioning away from these where possible is also good for the bottom line.
“I would have long, long ago been out of business if I had not been green and sustainable,” he says. “The commercial reality is that being green and sustainable boosts our ability to stick around.”
