Opportunities and barriers for efficient energy use in a medium-sized brewery

Since the 1970s prices for fuel and raw materials have steadily risen. This development has put the brewing industry under pressure to reduce production costs by intensifying their production process. Additionally in recent years environmental concerns over green house gas emissions and climate change have arisen amongst consumers and legislative requirements are getting stricter. Because of these developments, small and medium-sized breweries are increasingly forced to apply strategies for economic, environmental and social sustainability, too. This paper gives an overview over the state of the art in the brewing industry commonly realised in large breweries and presents important barriers to efficiency in smaller companies. The production process of a typical medium-sized brewery in the UK was analysed to identify principal measures to reduce energy and water demand. The case study also examines the particular problems preventing the brewery from realising these measures. The analysis of the process shows that even basic and easily applicable efficiency measures have so far been neglected. Improving insulation and implementation of basic heat recovery measures could potentially reduce energy demand by 20% and would result in a payback period of 1.3 years. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.