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Bourgogne Wine Industry Partners Gather to Drive Carbon Neutrality

07/05/2025

Committed to reducing its carbon emissions, the Bourgogne wine industry brought together around one hundred of its partners on late April for a groundbreaking initiative. The goal: to challenge the action plan launched by the Bourgogne Wine Board (BIVB) and to co-create joint projects aimed at achieving carbon neutrality by 2035.

The primary objective was to give a voice to the stakeholders who actively contribute to the Bourgogne wine industry. Laurent Delaunay emphasized this right from the start: “As suppliers, service providers, or solution partners, your challenges are ours too. By exchanging ideas and sharing best practices, we can accelerate our journey toward the ambitious goal of carbon neutrality by 2035. I hope this gathering becomes a regular, perhaps even annual, event.”

Accelerating the Carbon Reduction Roadmap

The BIVB President then reflected on the origins of the Bourgogne Carbon Neutrality 2035 project, before providing an initial update nearly two years after its official launch. Since the appointment of a dedicated Carbon Project Manager at the BIVB in late 2024, progress has significantly accelerated.

In just six months, the Carbon Project Manager has energized the initiative, multiplying field activities with professionals and groups such as appellation ODGs, Bio Bourgogne, the Chambers of Agriculture of Côte-d'Or and Saône-et-Loire, cooperative wineries (notably the Vignerons Associés, which includes Vignerons des Terres Secrètes and Nuiton-Beaunoy), the Artisan Vignerons de la Bourgogne du Sud, among others.

More than fifty awareness-raising and discussion sessions have already taken place, encouraging estates, wine merchants, and cooperatives to either initiate or further advance their reduction and compensation projects.

At the same time, the BIVB organized around ten training sessions to help professionals get started with WinePilot©, developed with Adelphe. Today, more than 150 companies are using the tool to measure their carbon footprint and implement emission reduction actions. Their feedback has been instrumental in refining the tool to better meet professional needs. A new module, dedicated to action plans and carbon emission reduction trajectories, is now close to being launched.

Working with Industry Partners to Accelerate Emissions Reductions

The morning largely focused on workshops, organized into practical themes such as Freight, Mobility, Packaging, Viticulture, and Winemaking. This core part of the program allowed suppliers, freight operators, financial experts, technical bodies, and advisors — all partners of Bourgogne’s winegrowers and wine merchants — to share their own initiatives and objectives. It provided a concrete assessment of partner engagement levels and helped identify areas for improvement.

Several key points emerged from these dynamic discussions:

• There is strong collective commitment across the industry to tackle carbon emissions. All participating companies have already launched initiatives to reduce their CO2 emissions, with many also adopting Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) approaches for their products and services.
• The diversity of initiatives highlights the importance of coordinated collective action. This reinforces the BIVB’s key role in facilitating dialogue among the many actors in the industry, helping to coordinate efforts and foster synergies in decarbonization.
• The relevance of the WinePilot© tool was reaffirmed. During feedback sessions, several groups expressed a desire to better communicate their efforts to clients and raise awareness about actionable strategies. It was suggested that partners could contribute additional information to enhance this innovative tool.

This seminar, a new milestone in the Bourgogne Carbon Neutrality 2035 roadmap, also opened up new areas for collaborative work, including:

• How can data sharing among stakeholders be improved to accelerate progress and optimize actions?
• How can rail transport be prioritized for shipping orders, given that trains can reduce freight’s carbon footprint by 95%?
• How can wine collection be optimized across Bourgogne’s fragmented landscape, home to over 3,000 businesses?
• What is the real carbon impact of wine tourism, and how can more sustainable mobility options be developed in partnership with local authorities?

About the Bourgogne Carbon Neutrality 2035 project

The Bourgogne wine industry aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035 by reducing emissions by 60% and offsetting the remainder. A plan comprising 38 concrete, actionable measures for professionals supports this ambition. These measures — from bottle reuse to reducing air freight — span the entire value chain, from vineyard to distribution. In parallel, efforts are underway to enhance carbon sequestration in soils through practices such as cover cropping and vine shoot composting.

Contact :  Cécile Mathiaud – Head of PR at the BIVB
Phone: +33 (0)6 08 56 85 56 – cecile.mathiaud@bivb.com