______________________________________________________________________________ Sustainable
Manufacturing
Why Net Zero fell short – for food
In most instances, the economics of food manufacturing doesn’ t leave room for expensive experiments. Some industries, such as pharmaceuticals, where margins run higher, can absorb costs if results and impacts don’ t match targets. Oil and gas projects come with capital budgets that overlook most food operations, and instead spotlight regulations. Data centers and large technology companies have been so successful in driving their aggressive net-zero goals that their focus is on Scope 3 emissions, those coming from suppliers. But the food and beverage sector operates on thinner margins where every cost faces scrutiny.
Executive sponsors who assumed that netzero projects would simultaneously reduce costs and emissions found that assumption rarely survived real-world testing. Promises of lower energy bills were sometimes met with higher capital costs, throwing the capital justification into a tailspin and halting further iterations of the rollout.
In many cases, this may relate to the age and condition of the infrastructure. When food plants that have been running for decades want to update to meet modern
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