Denmark: Carlsberg converts Danish brewery to oil from gas

Carlsberg A/S has converted the brewery supplying beverages to its homeland of Denmark to run on oil instead of gas to avoid having to shut it down amid Europe’s escalating energy crisis, Bloomberg reported on September 29.

The beermaker is also working on similar measures for its other European facilities so that they, from Nov. 1, “will be ready to switch to oil if needed,” Tanja Frederiksen, a spokeswoman for the Copenhagen-based company, said in an emailed reply to questions.

Danish authorities have this year included Carlsberg on a list of about 50 large gas users that won’t be protected in case the country needs to reduce gas consumption. While the Nordic country is in a better energy-supply situation than most European peers thanks to local biogas supplies, authorities aren’t ruling out power or gas outages this winter.

The Fredericia brewery in western Denmark produces almost all of the Carlsberg beer sold in the country, where the company has a 63% market share. Carlsberg didn’t disclose how much gas the facility normally uses nor how much oil it consumes with the new set-up.

“The brewery is now running on oil, but we also have projects underway to make us non-reliant on natural gas,” Frederiksen said. The company plans to make all its breweries carbon neutral by 2030.

“In terms of scarcity of energy and supply, we have long been prepared for this situation,” Frederiksen said. “We have listened to the European Union recommendation and switched away from the use of natural gas in Fredericia due to reduced supplies.”

30 September, 2022