Diageo on target to meet ambitious green target

Drinks giant Diageo, has announced it is confident of reaching its ambitious target of reducing its carbon emissions by 50% by 2015.

The Roseisle distillery

The company recently reported that it has already reduced its carbon footprint by 50% and it has a “big roadmap of projects” in place, to help it hit its target within two years.

Speaking to businessgreen.com, Diageo’s head of environment, Michael Alexander, said he was confident of hitting the ambitious carbon target. He pointed out that while emissions have been cut by 26% since 2007, the company has also hugely increased production within that time as well.

Alexander said: “Cutting it by 26% thus far is a very big achievement, and we’ll do our very best to hit the 50% mark by 2015.

“We’ve got a big roadmap of projects in place over the next 18 months that will get us a long way to achieving 50% if they’re all implemented. It’s been a big investment from our part in time and effort.”

Diageo is increasingly looking towards renewable energy to help reduce emissions, with projects like the Roseisle Scotch whisky distillery in Speyside. Since opening in 2010, the bioenergy plant has provided half of Roseisle’s electricity needs.

Alexander added that the company is now looking to implement some of the lessons learned in projects like Roseisle, to help reduce emissions in other parts of the world, in particular in Africa.

He said: We’ve obviously been working on reducing energy and water consumption in our African breweries already, but, once you’ve got programmes in place to continue that, then you’ve got to look at alternative energy sources, and that might well be something not too dissimilar to what we’ve done elsewhere in the world.

“We’re looking at all opportunities there, but we’re certainly learning from our opportunities in distilling.”