Client & Sponsor
When you visit Southbrook's website, you'll read the above tagline, "Better grapes, better wines, better world". Southbrook certainly lives up to these statements: their facility is organic, biodynamic, treats its wastewater onsite, and they produce their wine in a LEED gold certified facility.
In a quest to reduce their environmental footprint and reduce energy costs even more, they had a conventional energy audit performed that identified opportunities to reduce electricity consumption by 5% with an average payback of 20 years. Southbrook subsequently retained Enviro-Stewards, who were able to identify opportunities to reduce both electricity and natural gas consumption by 40% with a 4-month payback. Due to the significant electrical energy savings associated with the opportunities identified by Enviro-Stewards, Southbrook required 1/3 less solar panels to provide the balance of their electrical needs. The original number of panels would have had to cover a ½ acre of vineyard. Therefore, energy conservation resulted in preserving vineyard capacity to produce 50 cases per year of VQA wine. You can read more about this award-winning project here.
Sponsor
As part of this collaboration, Southbrook sponsors the Safe Water Project by donating 5% of wine sales to the project when customers use the promotional code "Clean50" during checkout in their online store. Here is the social impact of this program to date:
Safe Water Points
4
Projects
People With Safe Water
40
People
Volume of Water Provided
80,000
Litres/year
GHG Emissions Avoided*
4.2
Tonnes/year
*Access to safe water avoids the need to boil water. These ‘suppressed demand’ credits are not certified, although they were allowed under the Paris Accord.