Energy and English wine production: A review of energy use and benchmarking

Abstract

The English (and Welsh) wine production industry, with more than 120 wineries, has many challenges linked to its northerly cool climate conditions and youthful status as a quality wine-producing country. The subject of sustainability remains important for producers, particularly as a means of improving the economic viability of wine production.This paper presents energy usage within English winemaking facilities based upon energy audits conducted at an individual winery level. The survey did not include vineyard operations or energy usage. The wineries surveyed were representative of the geographic distribution of producers in England and included a range of production scales from a few thousand bottles per year to over 300,000 bottles per year. The combined (average yearly) bottle production for the wineries surveyed was 1,032,194 bottles, representing almost 26% of the total wine production capacity in England and Wales, expending 512,350kWh of energy. Almost 44% of the energy expended in English wine production is related to heating, cooling and ventilation (HVAC) requirements, with 22% related to lighting. Extrapolating the study findings to the entire English winemaking industry (winery only) indicates that 2008MWh of energy was expended in 2011. The average energy benchmark for English wine production is 0.557kWh/l, ranging from 0.040kWh/l to 2.065kWh/l, which compares favourably with other wine producing regions.