Decarbonising the Food Supply Chain: From Measurement to Meaningful Emissions Reduction

About ORE

Our Resources Emissions (ORE) Limited is an early-stage climate venture focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions across food supply chains and transport. Led by founder Dr Aminu Owonikoko, whose research background is in renewable energy from biomass and agri-food waste, ORE develops science-led solutions that combine alternative biofuels with lifecycle-based approaches to deliver practical decarbonisation outcomes.

About Minviro

Minviro is a lifecycle assessment and sustainability intelligence company that helps organisations measure and reduce the environmental impacts of complex supply chains. Through its LCA platform, XYCLE, Minviro turns detailed lifecycle data into clear, actionable insights - enabling credible emissions hotspot analysis and decarbonisation planning across Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions.

The Challenge: Tackling Emissions Uncertainty in the Food Supply Chain

• The food system is responsible for roughly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions.
• Yet, the sector is uniquely complex: emissions come from millions of small and large producers, each with distinct practices, energy sources, and supply networks.
• Over 90% of industrial heat used in food production still relies on fossil fuels, making decarbonisation technically and economically demanding.
• The challenge isn’t only technological, it’s systemic: fragmented data, variable farming methods, and limited traceability make accurate accounting extremely difficult.

The Pain Point: The Food System’s Transformation Gaps

Despite growing momentum toward net-zero goals, deep decarbonisation in the food sector remains hindered by several structural gaps in performance, infrastructure, sustainability, regulation, and market alignment. Each represents both a challenge and an opportunity for collaborative innovation.

• Performance Gap: Many food producers still operate with outdated processes and limited visibility on energy efficiency and emissions intensity. Integrating lifecycle data and digital tracking tools can expose inefficiencies and drive measurable performance gains.
  
• Infrastructure Gap: Cold chains, logistics networks, and food processing facilities often rely on legacy systems. This opens new markets for low-carbon design and construction, enabling both emissions reduction and resilience building.
  
• Sustainability Gap: Localised supply chains in emerging markets lack access to robust sustainability frameworks. By building local growth teams and partnerships (like the ORE-Minviro collaboration), data-driven capacity can be developed regionally.
  
• Regulatory Gap: Inconsistent carbon accounting rules and fragmented reporting standards make compliance costly. Shared data infrastructure and cross-sector collaboration can help reduce these barriers while improving data quality and comparability.
  
• Preferences Gap: Consumer awareness is shifting, but sustainable choices remain underdeveloped in key markets. Aligning data-driven transparency with local preferences can unlock growth and ensure equitable participation in the green transition.

These gaps together define the transformation agenda for the food system, one that requires synergy between technological innovation, lifecycle intelligence, and partnerships to convert fragmentation into coordinated climate action.

Lifecycle Thinking In The Food Supply Chain

• A key insight emerging from new food industry research is that emissions data accuracy improves through supplier collaboration, not estimation alone.
• Lifecycle-based methods (LCA) make it possible to trace emissions back to each stage of production, identifying specific hotspots and inefficiencies.
• Engaging suppliers enables co-creation of emissions data, where producers input actual energy use, feed types, and transport patterns rather than generic averages.
• This dual approach, lifecycle modelling + supplier engagement, builds a foundation for credible decarbonisation strategies and science-based targets.

The Role of Technology: From Measurement to Meaningful Reduction

Reducing emissions across the food value chain requires more than incremental efficiency. It demands a complete understanding of where and how energy and materials are used.Technology enables this by capturing data at every link in the chain and transforming it into actionable insights for decarbonisation.

• Primary Production (Farm to Regional Distribution Centre): Monitoring oil, gas, and electricity use across farming and early-stage processing. Lifecycle data helps track refrigerant losses, energy for irrigation and lighting, and on-farm fuel consumption. Digital sensors and emissions-tracking platforms can identify hotspots in real time, informing targeted interventions such as electrified machinery, renewable heat, and regenerative practices.
  
• Distribution and Retail: Between regional distribution centres (RDCs) and retail, digital twins and emissions dashboards quantify fuel use, refrigeration energy, and equipment-related losses. Optimisation algorithms support route planning and refrigeration efficiency, reducing both operational costs and embodied carbon.
  
• Transport to Home: Consumer logistics are a hidden but important emissions source. Data from mobility tracking and delivery models can quantify the carbon intensity of food transport from store to home, enabling low-emission delivery strategies and consumer awareness campaigns.
  
• Food Service and Domestic Use: IoT-enabled kitchen systems and smart metering reveal energy intensity in commercial and household cooking, cooling, and reheating. Tracking these micro-level emissions supports targeted technology adoption (e.g., induction cooking, efficient cooling) and the design of low-carbon menus and appliances.

Investigative Approach

The investigative framework follows the entire food journey, from farm to fork and beyond, linking sectoral emissions data to lifecycle impact categories.

Using LCA-based digital platforms like Minviro’s XYCLE, we map every energy input, refrigerant, and fuel source to create a live emissions inventory. But we go a step further with Energy Loss Mapping.

To put it in perspective: in the food industry, a typical pizza oven only transfers about 10% of its fuel energy into the pizza itself - the rest is simply lost to the room. Our goal is to close that loop. By pinpointing exactly where energy is being lost, we can answer the most important question for our clients: "Where can we put this wasted heat to work?" Recovering this energy means you need to generate less in the first place, benefiting both the planet and your bottom line.

This approach allows stakeholders to:

• Identify sector-specific hotspots, and apply Energy Loss Mapping to quantify the wasted heat (e.g., methane from livestock, energy losses in cold chains).
• Model scenarios for substitution, such as replacing fossil-based refrigeration with low-GWP refrigerants.
• Benchmark and track progress toward net-zero targets using standardised, comparable data.

Key Impact Summary

1. Climate Mitigation: Data visibility drives emission reductions across production, logistics, and consumption. Prioritising low-GWP refrigerants and energy-efficient technologies can significantly lower Scope 1-3 emissions.
2. Digital Innovation: Emissions-tracking technology enables real-time decision-making and supply chain collaboration, transforming data into a sustainability management tool.
3. Circular Economy Integration: Lifecycle visibility promotes system redesign, enabling reuse, recycling, and resource recovery across packaging and equipment.
4. Equitable Growth: Technological modernisation of cold chains in emerging markets supports food security while embedding sustainability principles.
5. Policy and Research Influence: Standardised emissions data provides the evidence base for regulation, certification, and investment aligned with deep decarbonisation pathways.
6. Entrepreneurial Leadership: Founding ventures (ORE Limited, MINVIRO) that drive climate tech innovation, building scalable solutions with commercial and environmental value.

Slicing into Sustainability: A Pizza LCA Case Study

To bring the complex world of agricultural LCAs to life, we've modeled the environmental impact of something everyone loves: pizza. This case study tracks the journey of pizza, from the farm to your plate, providing a tangible look at how every ingredient, the wheat for the dough, the tomatoes for the sauce, the milk for the cheese, and various toppings, contributes to the product's overall environmental footprint.

Our research highlights the Food-Energy-Water Nexus, a complex web of interactions where each system depends on the others. For example, energy is required to treat water used in food processing, while water is essential for all food production.

Both are critical inputs for every slice of pizza produced and consumed in the UK and globally.

The analysis identified a significant environmental hotspot within the production chain of mozzarella, specifically concentrated in the rearing of the cattle.

Hotspots and Ingredient Contributions

The analysis identified significant environmental hotspots within the production chain, particularly in animal-based ingredients.

1. Mozzarella and Salame: The Animal Impact

The most significant hotspots are concentrated in the rearing of livestock.

• Feed Production: For Salame production, compound pig feed contributes 59.54% (1.28 kgCO₂e) of the impact for 1 kg of live weight pig. Similarly, for Mozzarella, the cultivation and processing of cattle feed are major contributors.
• Methane Emissions: Enteric fermentation (cows and sheep "burping" methane) remains a potent greenhouse gas source.
• Decarbonization Strategy: Mitigation involves changing feed formulations, such as experimenting with seaweed to reduce methane, or switching species.

2. Energy, Cooling, and Logistics

Beyond the farm, the "Pizza flow chart" reveals that cooking and refrigeration are rooted deeply in energy sources.

• The Refrigeration Challenge: Keeping ingredients cold is energy-intensive; for some food manufacturers, refrigeration accounts for up to 80% of total energy use. Furthermore, research indicates that 20% of energy in the food industry is lost just to reduce friction and protect bearings from water ingress.
• Solutions:
  • Switching to low-GWP (Global Warming Potential) refrigerants like R-290 (propane) or cleaned CO2 is essential, alongside strict leak detection to prevent the release of greenhouse gases.
  • For logistics, the adoption of solar-powered refrigeration vehicles offers a path to cleaner transport.
  • Transitioning to green energy tariffs is a vital step in reducing the Scope 2 emissions associated with this energy use.

3. The Hidden Cost of Waste

• Waste is a significant, yet often overlooked, contributor to a product's footprint. Nearly 24,700 tonnes of food waste significantly inflated their total energy consumption.

4. Beyond Carbon: Air Pollution

The LCA also highlights impacts beyond climate change, specifically air quality. The use of diesel vehicles and farm machinery emits particulates and nitrogen oxides NOx, which pollute the air and directly impact public health.

Looking Ahead

The decarbonization of food supply chains depends on one thing above all: supply chain transparency.

We cannot manage what we do not measure. From the methane emitted on the farm to the refrigeration requirements, every data point reveals a new opportunity for intervention. By combining data intelligence, supplier collaboration, and technological innovation, the food industry can turn complexity into coordinated climate action.

The path toward deep decarbonization involves:

• Innovating at the Source: Transitioning to low-emission feed and optimised livestock systems.
• Powering the Process: Moving to green energy to eliminate Scope 2 emissions.
• Refining the Cold Chain: Switching to low-GWP refrigerants and renewables-powered logistics to tackle the energy-heavy refrigeration sector.
• Eliminating Waste: Reducing the tonnage of food waste to significantly lower the energy demand of the entire group.

The journey from a carbon-intensive slice to a net-zero pizza is complex, but by uncovering these hotspots, we are building the pathways necessary for a sustainable food future.