Cutting CO2 emissions

Reducing CO2 emissions remains the cornerstone of the industry's efforts to increase the sustainability of food and drink manufacturing and contribute to the growth of a greener economy in the UK.

Our Commitment

To work collectively to tackle climate change by making an absolute reduction in CO2 emissions of 20% by 2010 and 35% by 2020 against a 1990 baseline.

Progress Made

Our last progress report (based on 2009 data) showed cumulative savings of 21%, passing our 2010 milestone a year early.

Latest figures for 2010 show we have actually achieved savings of 25%, while continuing to increase output – a substantial productivity gain.

Co2 emissions reduction

FDF has continued to work with Government and a range of other partners to deliver year on year savings. In particular, we have worked with the British Standards Institution on revising methodologies for assessing the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of goods and services (PAS 2050). We are a leading participant in the work of WRAP's Product Research Forum project to improve the availability and accuracy of wider environmental impact data for consumer products.

We are also participating in similar work at European level in the Food Sustainable Consumption and Production Roundtable.

Given the importance of incentivising further progress, we were pleased at the announcement in the March Budget that the existing food sector Climate Change Agreement will continue until 2023 at least. This provides a vital framework to support and measure what our members are achieving.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is currently consulting on ways to streamline administrative arrangements and we are actively engaging in this process.

We have also continued to work with the Carbon Trust and others on the Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator (IEEA) programmes for the industrial bread baking and the sugar confectionary sectors. Stage 1 of the programme, to identify potential energy savings, has been completed and a number of companies have progressed to implementing identified solutions in Stage 2.

Our last report looked forward to a third IEEA programme covering the frozen and chilled food. But following the withdrawal of funding for this in the Government's Spending Review we are exploring alternative projects to support energy efficiency in these important sectors.

We also committed to review our reporting methodology for the CO2 Ambition to align more closely with recognised publicly-available standards and to explore reporting of other greenhouse gases aside from carbon dioxide. This work is still ongoing as it depends on possible changes to the form of future Climate Change Agreements resulting from the DECC review and on developments in regulations relating to fluorinated greenhouse gases (F gases).

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Last reviewed: 06 Dec 2011