Life Cycle Assessment and Carbon Footprint in the Wine Supply- Chain Claudio Pattara • Andrea Raggi • Angelo Cichelli Received: 23 November 2010 / Accepted: 7 March 2012 / Published online: 11 April 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012 Abstract Global warming represents one of the most critical internationally perceived environmental issues. The growing, and increasingly global, wine sector is one of the industries which is under increasing pressure to adopt approaches for environmental assessment and reporting of product-related greenhouse gas emissions. The Interna- tional Organization for Vine and Wine has recently recog- nized the need to develop a standard and objective methodology and a related tool for calculating carbon footprint (CF). This study applied this tool to a wine pre- viously analyzed using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The objective was to test the tool as regards both its potential and possible limitations, and thus to assess its suitability as a standard tool. Despite the tool’s user- friendliness, a number of limitations were noted including the lack of accurate baseline data, a partial system boundary and the impossibility of dealing with the multi-functionality issue. When the CF and LCA results are compared in absolute terms, large discrepancies become obvious due to a number of different assumptions, as well as the modeling framework adopted. Nonetheless, in relative terms the results seem to be quite consistent. However, a critical limitation of the CF methodology was its focus on a single issue, which can lead to burden shifting. In conclusion, the study confirmed the need for both further improvement and adaptation to additional contexts and further studies to validate the use of this tool in different companies. Keywords Wine industry  Carbon footprint (CF)  Life cycle assessment (LCA)  Vine Introduction For many years the wine industry was dominated by European countries, but more recently it has become increasingly ‘‘global’’ due to the challenge from expanding wine industries in the Americas, Australia and Asia (especially China). Recently published data from the principal internationally recognized intergovernmental organization dealing with scientific and technical aspects of viticulture and winemaking, the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV), showed that in 2010 almost 8 million hectares were used worldwide for viticulture and the annual world production of wine was about 270 million hectoliters (OIV 2011). The increasing trend towards globalization in this industry is highlighted by the fact that over the last 15 years the European share of wine pro- duction worldwide has decreased from 73.1 % in 1995 to 66.5 % in 2010, to the benefit of all other world regions, which have seen an increase in their percentage shares (Fig. 1) (OIV 2011). Worldwide wine consumption (Fig. 2) has shown an overall increase over the last 15 years, rising from a global consumption of 222 million hectoliters in 1996 to an esti- mated 238 million hectoliters in 2010, with the trend showing a recovery after the decrease recorded in 2008 and 2009, which was most likely due to the international crisis (OIV 2011). Moreover, the data show a redistribution of the percentage shares among the various world regions as regards consumption, similar to that described above for production (Fig. 1). Even though wine is not a basic necessity, for some economies it is of significant importance in terms of export, and accounts for a large percentage of the GDP from the agro-industrial sector (Point 2008). After a continuous period of significant growth from 2000 onwards, global C. Pattara  A. Raggi (&)  A. Cichelli Department of Economic Studies, University ‘‘G. d’Annunzio’’, viale Pindaro, 42, 65127 Pescara, Italy e-mail: a.raggi@unich.it 123 Environmental Management (2012) 49:1247–1258 DOI 10.1007/s00267-012-9844-3