Resource and Energy Efficiency in Small and Medium Breweries

Abstract

Resource and energy efficiency in industrial production is promoted within the European Union. For small and medium size companies, resource and energy efficiency is significant for improving both the economic and environmental performance of a company. For benchmarking and the identification of potential improvements, relevant data must be collected and comparative analysis is necessary. Since the business world is driven by competitiveness, the comparison of resource and energy efficiency in companies can motivate investments in economically and environmentally beneficial improvements. Current data and benchmarks on both energy and resource efficiency should be constantly updated. The aim of this study is to analyze and compare with benchmarks the energy and resource efficiency in the brewery sector in Latvia. To promote the approach to apply national reference data, the resource and energy consumption data is collected from four Latvian small and medium size breweries. The data were acquired on-site during personal meetings with representatives of all four breweries. Based on empirical data from breweries, specific energy, resource and water consumption indicators were calculated and normalized by production amount to compare the performance of breweries. A linear regression analysis was performed to assess how the specific factors impact the overall energy consumption. The results show that all case breweries exceed the available energy consumption benchmarks, but some of them can achieve the malt and water consumption benchmarks. The comparison of these companies, although they are of quite similar in size, shows that many more factors, other than production capacity, influence their specific resource and energy consumption. The developed linear regression models of the company's energy consumption can further be used as tools for predicting energy consumption based on those individual factors that are more significant for each of the companies.