Chinese wine culture has a long history. After thousands of years of development, the wine industry can be said to be the mainstay of China's food industry.

However, wine is a high-input, high-consumption, and high-pollution industry, and the traditional development mode is bound to be eliminated by the low-carbon economy. Take beer as an example. Each ton of beer consumes 20-50 tons of water. The discharged wastewater is high in alkalinity, high in temperature, and high in concentration of organic matter. The pollution to soil, water bodies, and drinking water is particularly serious. Coupled with supporting factors such as packaging, transportation, warehousing, and refrigeration, the carbon footprint of beer production is not a small number.

Advantages of installing photovoltaics in wineries

Low-carbon transformation is by no means an easy task for the wine brewing industry. From fermentation, filtration to packaging and logistics, every link in wine production consumes energy and produces varying degrees of carbon emissions.

1. There are many Chinese wine companies, including some world-renowned wine companies. "Sustainable development" is the foundation of the wine company's business. Installing photovoltaic power stations can improve the application of renewable energy electricity and energy efficiency of wine companies.

2. The costs of raw materials, labor and energy in my country's wine industry are all rising. The use of photovoltaic power generation by wineries can not only reduce costs and bring good economic benefits, but also reduce indirect carbon emissions during production and transportation, setting a good example for practice.

3. The installation of photovoltaic power in wineries demonstrates the environmental protection responsibility of wine companies as light industrial enterprises. It promotes the high-quality development of the local green economy and helps the country achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality.

Looking back at the development history of my country's liquor industry from 2000 to the present, the number of listed companies has reached 22, and the market value of companies well-known to the people, such as Moutai and Wuliangye, has long entered the trillion-yuan era. Looking back at the threshold of 2025, Wuliangye's cross-border is by no means an isolated case. These traditional wine companies are injecting millennium brewing wisdom into the new energy track.

In October 2022, the distributed rooftop photovoltaic project of Kweichow Moutai Distillery was successfully completed. The lightweight flexible solar panels flowed on the cellar like liquid gold, providing safe, continuous and reliable green electricity for Moutai Distillery.

The project has an installed capacity of about 84.8 kilowatts, and a total of 320 lightweight flexible components are arranged. The components are mainly tailored to the size of the roof, with a thickness of only 3 mm, which is more than 70% lighter than conventional single-glass solar panels, making full use of the roof space and reducing the roof load pressure. The lightweight components are directly installed on the surface of the building through structural adhesive, without the risk of wind exposure, and the workshop building of the winery is covered with a beautiful photovoltaic coat.

On December 26, 2022, the rooftop photovoltaic project of the Dongshan plant of Anhui Kouzi Wine Co., Ltd. was connected to the grid. The Kouzi Wine photovoltaic project was constructed by Anhui Comprehensive Energy Company in the PC engineering general contracting mode, using the roof area of ​​the Kouzi Winery brewing workshop for engineering construction. The rooftop utilization area is about 77,223 square meters, and the total installed capacity is about 5.7MWp.

The project adopts the mode of "self-generation and self-use, surplus power to the grid". While the power generation meets the normal power demand of the winery's production and life, it can also obtain the income of grid-connected power. After the completion of the Kouzi Winery photovoltaic power station, the annual average power generation is expected to be 5.621 million kWh, which is equivalent to saving 1,798.7 tons of standard coal per year compared with the same power generation of thermal power.

In September 2019, the distributed photovoltaic power generation project on the roof of Shuanggou Winery was successfully connected to the grid for power generation, with an estimated annual power generation of 5 million kWh, accounting for 31.25% of the total power consumption of Shuanggou Winery.

Under the blue sky and white clouds, the blue ocean formed by 14,394 330-watt monocrystalline silicon solar panels absorbs the energy of the sun. The project installed photovoltaic modules on the roof of the winery, greatly reducing the land cost and achieving both photovoltaic power generation and wine production.

At present, the three major wine production bases of Yanghe, Shuanggou and Siyang have built photovoltaic power generation projects. As of the end of 2018, the average annual power generation of the photovoltaic project of the Yanghe base was 18.91 million kWh, and the average annual power generation of the Siyang base was 4.5 million kWh.

In mid-April 2022, the 3.69MW distributed photovoltaic project of Budweiser (Xinxiang) Factory was successfully connected to the grid. The project adopts the "self-generation and self-use, surplus power to the grid" model, and is expected to provide more than 3.9 million kWh of clean electricity to the company each year, reducing carbon emissions by about 2,800 tons. By the end of November of that year, the photovoltaic power station had generated nearly 2 million kWh of electricity, reducing carbon emissions by about 2,000 tons.

In May 2023, the distributed carport photovoltaic of Budweiser Foshan Factory was officially put into use. This is the first distributed carport photovoltaic project factory in Budweiser Asia Pacific after the workshop roof photovoltaic project. It has also planned to promote the construction of the photovoltaic project of the sewage treatment center in the factory. After the project is fully constructed and put into use, it is expected that the self-produced photovoltaic green electricity will reach 6 million kWh/year.

On August 11, 2023, the photovoltaic project of Budweiser (Wuhan) Wine Co., Ltd. was connected to the grid. The project has a total capacity of 4.23MW, with an annual power generation of approximately 4.5 million kWh, which can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 4,486 tons per year, injecting new confidence and vitality into its determination to "become a regional low-carbon construction leader".

Photovoltaics are also present in a 50-acre vineyard in West Paso Robles, California! A photovoltaic power station was installed near its winery, which is completely self-sufficient and operates independently of the power grid.

The installation of the solar energy system provides the winery with a parking space for agricultural vehicles, a small warehouse for tools, and a covered open-air storage space for the storage of livestock supplies.

For wine companies, the driving factors for promoting low-carbon transformation and establishing carbon neutrality goals are different for domestic and international companies. For multinational companies, their industry itself faces risks such as the sustainable supply of raw materials brought about by climate change, and the production process also involves a lot of energy use and carbon emissions. Internationally, both the mainstream trend and the transformation race of similar companies are requiring low-carbon transformation of wine companies. At the same time, with the drive of capital such as green investment, it is also affecting companies to transform in a more low-carbon and sustainable direction.

For domestic wine companies, due to the transmission of the dual-carbon policy and higher requirements for energy conservation, emission reduction and information disclosure for central enterprises, state-owned enterprises and other wine companies, low-carbon transformation is also imperative.

More importantly, some wine companies have seen the corresponding financial risks brought about by climate change, which will bring development pressure to the company. Early transformation can help companies improve operational efficiency, reduce long-term costs, enhance the company's climate risk resilience, and bring potential business value-added.

The construction of distributed photovoltaic power generation projects in wineries is not only an innovative exploration of the organic combination of green photovoltaics and traditional brewing industries, but also one of the most easily achievable carbon reduction paths for current wine companies.

When photovoltaic panels become the "yeast" of the new era and when electronics complete an alternative "fermentation" in silicon wafers, this cross-border revolution that began with carbon reduction eventually produced the mellow aroma of China's industrial upgrading.