Emissions Management

Adaption strategies are essential, but we also have a responsibility to engage in direct mitigation strategies. Australia’s grape and wine producers are well placed to embrace the opportunities as they arise during our transition to a lower emissions future.

The Emissions Reduction Roadmap demonstrates a pathway for reducing our Carbon emissions by 42% by 2030.  We encourage the sector to collectively commit to achieving this target.  This will require a two-pronged approach that will focus on reducing our net direct emissions at the same time as working with the supply chain to tackle the significant emissions embedded in packaging and transport.

We remain hopeful that we can also achieve net zero across all scopes by 2050. However much of the technology required to decarbonise does not yet exist so we remain cautiously optimistic.

What we can commit to is that we will work to encourage investment by business and government to expediate these new enabling technologies.

Collectively, we all have an important role to play in encouraging:

• Continuous improvement by the Australian wine sector in greenhouse gas management, including minimising emissions;
• Decarbonisation of our supply chain including rapid uptake by industry of lower emissions solutions as they become available:
• That the grape and wine sector reports on emissions of all grape and wine producers and measures progress against sector targets;
• Uptake of Sustainable Winegrowing Australia membership to ensure consistent reporting; and
• That businesses making carbon neutral claims ensure consistency with Australian and international reporting standards.

We advocate for:

• Research that supports an enhanced understanding of the sources of carbon emissions from all stages of grape growing, wine production, bottling/packaging, logistics and sales, both in Australia and overseas;
• That our efforts to offset emissions and/or move towards carbon emissions reduction are promoted to, and recognised by, our governments;
• A consistent approach to mitigation and adaptation policies across States and Territories;
• A rigorous economic assessment by the Australian Government on climate change/greenhouse gas policies to determine the impact on regional, state, and national economies;

• That the Australian Government collaborates and consults with the sector on any policies impacting the Australian wine sector; and
• Recognition that our vineyards deliver a tangible benefit and carbon offset due to carbon sequestration during each growing season and, with that recognition, allow the carbon sequestered to be offset against the annual carbon footprint.