(Beaune) Burgundy wines are aiming for carbon neutrality by 2035, well before the national objective of 2050, the interprofession said on Wednesday.
Posted at 10:47 a.m.
“We are aiming for carbon neutrality by 2035”, announced Laurent Delaunay, Deputy Chairman of the Bureau interprofessionnel des Vins de Bourgogne (BIVB).
“We can be faster” than the national objective – carbon neutrality in France by 2050 – specified the president during the BIVB’s back-to-school press conference.
“A whole lot of preparatory work has been done by Adelphe, a non-profit company that aims to help companies reduce the impact of their packaging on the environment, “and this shows us that we should be able to do it” on that date, he added.
The specific objective is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from viticulture in Burgundy by 60% by 2035, which would make it possible to reach the “incompressible base of emissions below which the viticultural activity is impossible,” Jean-Philippe Gervais, technical director at the BIVB, told AFP.
This threshold of around 40% can then “be compensated by the planting of hedges, plant cover, forests…”, he explained.
From October, six workshops – on packaging, transport, energy, etc. – will bring together stakeholders in the profession in order to establish, by next July, an “action plan”, indicated Mr Delaunay.
The main item to tackle will be packaging, which accounts for 34% of the 380,000 tonnes of CO emissions2 Burgundy wine, ahead of freight (13%), according to BIVB figures.
“One of the main axes is the weight of the bottles”, explained Mr. Delaunay, a Burgundy merchant who also owns a Languedoc brand, Les Jamelles, which has reduced “in ten years by 200 g, out of a total of 700, the weight of his bottles. “And we had no negative comments,” he said.
“It’s about making luxury in a sober way,” said Mr. Delaunay.