Wine sector strikes C02 emissions deal

The international wine sector has reached agreement on a system for calculating the industry’s carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions.

The deal was agreed by the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) and ensures all businesses around the world producing, supplying, transporting and retailing wine will be able to rate their environmental performance according to a standard methodology.

The result is the Green House Gas Accounting Protocol. It has two main elements:

Enterprise Protocol – a tool enabling consistent assessment of greenhouse gas emissions associated with vine and wine companies’ activities.

Product Protocol – general guidance on emissions associated with vine and wine products enabling companies to collate information against an agreed benchmark about carbon footprint.

The Wine and Spirit Trade Association in the UK has been working with the Department for Food and Rural Affairs and with the global trade to persuade other countries to adopt a harmonised system, believing such an arrangement to be particularly important in a sector involving worldwide transportation of significant quantities of product.

In recent years the WSTA worked with logistics companies to develop a carbon calculator that provides an estimate of transport-related carbon emissions.

Companies will be able to use this calculator in fulfilling the terms of the new system.

WSTA wine policy director John Corbet-Milward said: “The increasing focus of policy makers on the impact of greenhouse gasses means it is vital we are able to accurately calculate the contribution the wine sector makes.

“The harmonised system will ensure that businesses and governments have a common approach to enable performance measurement.

“The wine sector is one of the first trade sectors worldwide to develop such a system.”