Grapegrowers & Vignerons
March, 2008 Page: 95
Grant Taresch saves more than 400 tonnes of greenhouse gases annually by hooking his 600 tonne winery and cellar door to electricity produced via a wind turbine. The co-owner of Elgo Estate in the Strathbogie Ranges spent five years of his own time and money investigating, researching and installing the $300,000 turbine, a feat he proudly regards as a triumph of renewable energy.
His Australian winemaking colleagues, far from curious about Taresch's pioneering work, apparently regard him and his turbine merely as publicity seekers. The wine producer has received just one positive inquiry from a winemaking colleague wanting to know more about the turbine's power output - 1000 kilowatts a day - since his story made news in July last year. The rest have been less than enthusiastic or polite. "The response from talking with other wineries is that they believe we're using it as a PR exercise and that it is not sustainable," Taresch said.
The general mood among Australian wine companies when it comes to renewable energy and self-sustainability appears to be caution edged with a dose of cynicism. Taresch and others like David Lloyd of Eldridge Estate who heads a new Mornington Peninsula pilot carbon footprint group, have found producers tend to worry more about the cost of implementing change to combat carbon emissions than the need for change itself.
"Our mission statement tries to convey the message that it's not only great for the environment but it will also save you money," stresses Lloyd. "There are direct commercial benefits." Lloyd's group, which includes well-known peninsula producers like Yabby Lake and Paradigm Hill, is carrying out a carbon audit of members' wineries while also getting straight to the heart of reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions. Lloyd says much of what he has learnt so far is simply commonsense. There should be no debate, for example, when it comes to choosing a 500 gram wine bottle over a heavier 750g bottle or sending the winter prunings to the mulching heap instead of setting them alight.
For power, Lloyd and his group favour solar power in the form of solar photovoltaic (PV) cells over wind-derived energy. Solar PV cells convert light energy into electrical energy. In their smallest form they power tiny electronic calculators. They're also pretty handy in remote regions where access to power is unavailable. "photovoltaics have much less embodied energy than wind generators hence our push towards this," Lloyd said. Translation: the cells have no moving parts that can break down and need servicing.
Paradigm Hill, a member of the peninsula pilot group, recently installed a 10 megawatt solar panel system to fuel its house, 20 tonne winery and cellar door at Merricks. The system comprises 54 panels each producing up to a possible 175 watts generating a total of 14 megawatt hours each year. Owners George and Ruth Mihaly spent six months last year researching their energy needs and ways to reduce their carbon footprint before installing the solar panels in June.
The couple is confident the $100,000 unit will meet their needs, even at the height of the 2008 vintage, but they can tap into additional energy from the grid if required. "The power we generate goes straight into the grid and we draw from the grid our needs," Ruth Mihaly said. Meters have only just been installed so the Mihalys aren't sure how much energy they are producing or using but Mihaly says it's not uppermost on their minds. "First of all, ethically it was the right thing to do," she said.
In the Australian wine industry, it appears to be determined individuals like Grant Taresch and the Mihalys who are driving the early adoption of different forms of renewable energy. This perhaps helps explain why uptake has been slow. There's no critical mass forcing change. Taresch, in particular, has been frustrated by the lack of support from government agencies and privatised electricity retailers, even the so-called green energy providers. "There is no incentive to do this unless you are a high power user," he said.
"We're just a small, family-owned business." To Taresch, it's been nothing short of a bureaucratic nightmare. No such nightmare seems to exist in Europe where it is governments that are driving change through generous incentive schemes. Wind turbines dot the winemaking landscape noticeably across Portugal, Austria and Germany.
Each vintage in the northern hemisphere sees Yarra Valley winemaker Mac Forbes working against a backdrop of rhythmic sweeps of giant turbine rotors in Carnumtum, 35 kilometres east of Austria's capital, Vienna, He consults to 38 winemakers in the region and has come to all but ignore the now commonplace wine turbines. In Carnumtum local winemakers receive a government grant to provide land for the wind turbines as well as a rebate once they're installed. Any excess energy produced by the machines can be sold to the electricity supplier, often at more than three times its original cost.
"It is all driven by financial considerations," Forbes said. "The only reason it has progressed as much as it has is because it's great for the bottom line." That "bottom line" also extends to receiving a warm reception in one of the world's biggest wine markets, the United Kingdom. Consumer demand for information on carbon footprints is growing in the UK, so much so that the Department of Environment and Rural Affairs is reported to be developing a system for measuring the carbon footprint of a range of products, including wine, in preparation for the day when, or if, the information is required on labels. Countries like Austria can expect more favourable consideration from the UK's powerful supermarket chains, leaving Australian wine producers wondering why they have been so slow to adapt.
Even a go-getter like Yalumba which recently worked with the Australian Winemakers' Federation of Australia (WFA) on the creation of an international protocol for the calculation of greenhouse gas emissions, admits it has yet to invest any major funding into renewable energy. But it is working on it. "We have done a bit of joint research with a university on the concept of passive refrigeration, taking heat energy and turning it into cold energy," Yalumba's director of winemaking Brian Walsh said. "It's little things at the moment. We're still just nibbling at the edges." Sounds like a fitting analogy for the Australian wine industry.
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