Ita.ca Italian Wine Carbon Calculator - First result of calculation of the Italian wineries' carbon footprint

During last years, the issue of calculation of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in production cycles has been the subject of great international interest. Several national Agencies have developed in 2007 the Version 1.0 of the International Wine Carbon Calculator (IWCC), later further updated. In this context, Sata agronomic consulting Agency, by previous agreement with WFA, and in collaboration with the DIPROVE of Faculty of Agriculture of Milan University, transformed IWCC into Ita.Ca.®, Italian wine carbon Calculator, the first calculator for the monitoring of emissions of Italian wine industry. The Calculator divides emissions into three levels. The Scope 1 includes the emissions for which a company has a direct control. The Scope 2 takes into account indirect emissions generated to the purchase of electricity; the Scope 3 considers indirect emissions related to production of all materials and services that are purchased from other companies. Since 2011, the method of data collection and processing of them has been and will be conducted according to the new OIV Protocol. Ita.Ca.® takes also into account, by appropriate coefficients of multiplication, the Carbon dioxide removals related to turfed vineyards. The calculator gives to Farms a tool, shared internationally, to monitor the environmental impact in order to develop best strategies to decrease emissions, and to prove formally and pragmatically to the consumer's successful approaches adopted. For managing the weaknesses of the system it is necessary to ensure the implementation of a program of continuous improvement based on the review of the emission factors used. Today Ita.Ca.® is still the only Calculator of CO2 emissions for the Italian wine industry, internationally shared. It is carried out from about 50 companies located in different Italian wine regions. Annual or multi-year data collection allowed to produce a first summary of the total emissions. Where the monitoring was carried out for more than a year, it has been also possible to obtain the first results of decreasing of emissions.