Energy & carbon

Background

The issues

Climate change is an issue of growing global concern which demands action from all sectors of society. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the world needs to seek to limit climatic change to a 2 degrees Celsius temperature increase to prevent dangerous climatic change.

To achieve this goal the world needs to reduce its emissions of the six major greenhouse gases to between 20-24 billion tonnes by 2050, a 50% cut. Whilst there remains uncertainty regarding the extent of these climatic changes, there is a clear imperative for policy makers, companies, and consumers to act.

The urgent message from the scientific community that climate change is real and needs to be dealt with rapidly, combined with the economic analysis which reveals that reducing emissions need not be a major drag on growth, is creating a clear case for policy makers to put in place a stronger emissions reductions framework.

Possible impacts of climate change are already being observed such as rising sea levels, glaciers receding, and increased incidents of severe weather events. Often it is the communities in less developed countries, which are most vulnerable to and least able to recover from these catastrophic events – such as those in Africa, Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

Why this is a priority

The effects of climate change could have far reaching consequences, particularly in terms of water availability and agricultural production – both of which are vital to the production of beer. It is in our interests to reduce our greenhouse gases emissions and to play a part in combating climate change.

In 2008 we set ourselves the challenging target of reducing the fossil fuel emissions from our on-site energy use by 50% per hectolitre of lager by 2020.