The goal of International Wineries for Climate Action is to ‘galvanise action within the global community to mitigate and reverse the impacts of climate change by decarbonising the industry’, with a shared commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2045.
In a joint statement, the two family owned-companies said they wanted ‘to create a space for collaboration that encourages the sharing of best practices that reduce climate impact in vineyard and winery operations’.
They added: ‘Membership will focus on wineries who recognise that climate change is the most significant threat facing the wine industry, and who are guided by the urgency for strategic action that accelerates the implementation of innovative solutions to tackle climate change’.
The new group will begin by establishing a third-party-verified baseline of current carbon emissions, before taking a science-based approach to reducing emissions and finally using at least 20% renewable energy to offset winery energy consumption.
‘Our common goal is to move beyond conversations around the urgency of climate change by collaborating on scalable solutions to reduce our global industry’s carbon footprint,’ said Katie Jackson, senior vice president of corporate responsibility at Jackson Family Wines.
Familia Torres president Miguel A Torres added: ‘We are just at the beginning with our initiative, but we hope it will be a trigger, a boost for other wineries to join and accelerate or to start the implementation of carbon emissions reduction programmes.’
Both companies said they had reduced their carbon emissions by more than 25% per bottle since starting to audit their respective carbon footprints.
Read about the environmental impact of wine production in the April 2019 issue of Decanter.
See also: Al Gore to address wine and climate change conference
