Elsevier

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 82, 1 November 2014, Pages 16-22
Journal of Cleaner Production

Review
Unresolved issues in the accounting of biogenic carbon exchanges in the wine sector

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.06.073Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The debate on Global Warming and Carbon Footprint in the wine sector is increasing.

  • A literature review has been performed including guidelines and standards.

  • The time horizon can be methodologically important in Carbon Footprint accounting.

  • A complex mix of factors to be considered when accounting for biogenic C exchanges.

  • A set of issues needs to be addressed when accounting for CF in the wine sector.

Abstract

Carbon Footprint (CF) can be of great importance for the dissemination of life-cycle information of products. The use of CF has recently increased, despite some methodology aspects being still not sufficiently addressed. This paper deals with the accounting of biogenic carbon exchanges, focusing on the wine sector, which has been the object of several life-cycle-based studies. A review of guidelines, standards and key papers has shown that there are still unresolved issues to be considered when accounting for exchanges of biogenic carbon, such as forest management, agricultural practices and land use, soil erosion, the inclusion of all parts of a tree, the inclusion of the end-of-life phase, etc. As a result, no clear-cut conclusions can yet be drawn with regard to biogenic carbon exchanges related to the life cycle of wine products.

Introduction

Life-cycle-based environmental assessment methodologies and tools have become increasingly used for evaluating the environmental performance of goods and services, because of a number of valuable features.

More specifically, in recent years, as a result of a scientific debate and the increasing concern by the general public about Global Warming (GW), Carbon Footprint (CF), a life-cycle-based methodology focused on Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and sinks, has been spreading in various sectors, including the wine industry (Pattara et al., 2012). CF, being a “reduced scope” tool, as it focuses on only one environmental impact category, can be seen as an opportunity also for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which need to promote a proactive image and satisfy the interest of the market regarding eco-labelling initiatives (Salomone et al., 2012). Certainly, SMEs would benefit from a transition from Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to Life Cycle Management (LCM), through which life cycle (LC) issues may be manageable at the company and product chain levels, thanks to a number of factors such as, for instance: higher resource efficiency, better stakeholder involvement, improved communication and methodological simplifications (Fullana-i-Palmer et al., 2011).

Furthermore, even though wine is not meant to meet a basic human necessity, the wine sector in general has become more and more studied, due to its evolving economic significance and structure (Point, 2008, Point et al., 2012). For instance, except for 2009, wine exports have been rising ever since 2000; estimations for 2011 also show an increase in the exports reaching 99.4 million hectolitres, even though the world production remains the same as in 2010 (OIV, 2012).

According to Vázquez-Rowe et al. (2013), a number of factors influence the results of a CF analysis in the wine industry, notably: a) environmental factors, such as climatic and soil characteristics; b) changes in yield, due e.g., to change in use of fertilisers; c) technological factors, depending on the type of wine; d) methodological factors, e.g., different inventories, different time horizons, etc.; e) legislative restrictions, e.g., use of specific materials; f) aesthetic factors, e.g., label and bottle designs. Other factors may have multiple influences, such as using non-validated background databases, which may entail multiple risks, such as (Baitz et al., 2013): CO2 uptake or storage partly modelled and partly not; and biogenic and non-biogenic emissions partly separated and partly not. Vázquez-Rowe et al. (2013) found the agricultural phase to be more responsible for the GHG emissions, mainly due to fertilising-related N2O. Similarly, in a review by Arzoumanidis et al. (2013a) on food LCA studies, agriculture was the most mentioned impacting phase. When it comes to wine, processes like transport and use of electricity were also mentioned (ibid).

The exchanges of biogenic carbon (C) in the wine LC are also considered important. As it will be discussed, these normally occur during the agricultural phase (e.g., in the vine-growing stage (Smart et al., 2003)) and in the packaging one (e.g., for cork used as a bottle stopper (Rives et al., 2012)). This paper is a methodological review, which builds on the knowledge of already existing LCA case-study reviews and takes into account existing CF accounting methods, international standards and guidelines. It aims at coping with the most recent developments in accounting for biogenic carbon exchanges in the wine life cycle, which are traditionally considered as GW-neutral in LCAs, although some scientists have started to question this, as it will be described.

The methodology followed for this review was based on identifying recent case-study reviews that focused on wine, CF accounting methods and relevant international standards and guidelines. This was performed by means of searching scientific databases (such as, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Google Scholar, etc.) and using combined keywords such as “LCA”, “wine”, “review”, “Carbon Footprint”, “Greenhouse Gas”, “accounting”. The results were then screened in order to obtain the most recent and relevant ones.

The identified papers included two case-study reviews (Rugani et al., 2013, Petti et al., 2010), a series of international standards and guidelines that tackle issues on C exchanges accounting (European Commission, 2013, ISO, 2013, OIV, 2011, WRI and WBCSD, 2011, BSI et al., 2011, BSI, 2011, European Commission, 2010, BIER, 2010, WBCSD and WRI, 2004), and papers dealing with CF accounting methods and issues (Brandão et al., 2013, Helin et al., 2012, Levasseur et al., 2012a, Levasseur et al., 2012b, Kendall, 2012, Cherubini et al., 2011, Peters et al., 2011, Guinée et al., 2009, Kujanpää et al., 2009, Moura-Costa and Wilson, 2000, Fearnside et al., 2000). Finally, a review that was recently accepted for publication was taken into consideration, as well (Petti et al. n.d.).

The layout of the paper is as follows: first, some general information on existing C accounting methods and standards is provided. Then, an illustration of the carbon cycle in general and the biogenic exchanges in the wine sector is outlined. Finally, in the discussion section, issues which should be taken into consideration when accounting for biogenic exchanges in the wine sector are described.

Section snippets

Carbon cycle

Landsberg and Gower (1997, in Newell and Vos, 2012) claim that forests, which cover approximately 65% of the total land surface, hold 90% of the plant biogenic carbon and 80% of soil carbon found in all terrestrial ecosystems, and they also sequester 67% of the total carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere by these ecosystems. According to IPCC (2013), the increase in the concentration of the anthropogenic CO2 from 1750 to 2011 is estimated to be around 555 GtC, out of which 28% was absorbed

Discussion

Biogenic exchanges accounting in general, and more specifically in the case of wine, is a complex issue and should be dealt as such. There are a number of important issues that ought to be taken into consideration when it comes to the accounting of biogenic exchanges in the wine sector, which are linked to the vineyards or to the use of cork and are discussed in this Section: a) forest management and preservation; b) agricultural practices and land use; c) part(s) of the oak tree under

Conclusions

In general, the agri-food sector has been studied quite thoroughly in terms of life-cycle-based methodologies and tools. As regards to methodological issues, the time horizon chosen for the analyses was found to be especially important.

As regards the wine LC, two main issues are responsible for biogenic C exchanges: the agricultural phase (vineyards) and the use of natural cork stoppers in packaging. International standards were analysed and found to be insufficient in providing adequate

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