Sustainable practices in managing carbon dioxide emissions during a brewing process: a case study of HEINEKEN
Summary
The brewhouse is a large energy consumer in the brewery. The paper reviews and evaluates environmental, particularly energy and CO2 emissions challenges, that breweries face during the brewing process. Taking the case of HEINEKEN, where carbon footprint takes up a huge part of their business philosophy, this paper identifies possible methods of reducing energy input during brewing process and this way lowering CO2 emissions. After an overview of the beer making process and carbon dioxide usage during brewing, methods are presented containing cleaner production, energy conservation and renewable energy application. Measures for cleaner production are based on equipment that can be introduced in the operation process. The suggested equipment for improvement such as low pressure wort boiling, vapour compression, filtration systems etc. are applied for wort boiling and mashing, since they are the main energy consumers in the brewhouse. Presented opportunities for saving and recovering energy can help to improve beer quality and reduce CO2 emissions. For the implementation of technologies in individual plants, further research is needed on economical and applicability measures. The practices for energy savings, such as continuous maintenance, monitoring, good housekeeping and replacement or improvement of inefficient equipment, introduced in this paper, can be easily incorporated into daily operations. These measures have very little or no investment, do not require specific installation knowledge and action can be taken immediately. The applicability of renewable energy sources was assessed according to several criteria including: Area requirements, Levelised cost of electricity (LCOE), Capital investment costs, CO2 emissions, Efficiency of electricity generation and Water consumption. Amongst the various renewable energy technologies, solar energy was ranked as one of the best possible options. The financial feasibility of photovoltaics in several geographic locations was evaluated using LCOE generation in order to be compared to regional electricity tariffs. The chosen locations were Singapore, Brazil and USA. The results revealed that only in Singapore the grid parity can be reached.