The British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) and Zero Carbon Forum have been awarded a grant to research the climate risks facing UK brewing supply chains.
Rising temperatures are affecting the production of barley and hops, as well as the yield and quality of crops, which can have a significant impact on UK supply chains.
The new research will therefore support the brewing sector in the face of the immediate and future impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss.
The funding, from the Brewers’ Research and Education Fund (BREF), will be used to gain a clear understanding of the scale of these risks through scientific research and modelling across geographies, timelines, and different global warming scenarios, and to identify effective measures to mitigate them.
“The brewing and hospitality industry is under immense pressure,” explained Mark Chapman, founder and CEO of Zero Carbon Forum, so the grant will allow “us to complete the final stages of our brewing risk and resilience study”.
In the first phase of the three-phase study, Zero Carbon Forum and the BBPA engaged 21 major brewers and pubs to understand what the industry believes to be the most significant climate risks to their business. The findings revealed that brewers are primarily concerned about the critical impact of climate change on their supply chains.
In 2022 the two organisations launched a bespoke roadmap specifically designed for the brewing sector. This provided support and guidance to breweries across the UK to take ambitious steps towards emission reduction targets.
According to the roadmap, UK brewers are responsible for 2.2MtCO2e every year. Scopes 1 and 2 account for 220ktCO2e and have to fall 90% by 2040, while scope 3 amounts to 2MtCO2e and must be cut by a minimum of 60% in the same timeframe.
