DENTREE - Rémy Cointreau and the First RESET Certified Bar with Total Carbon Neutrality
Located in Shanghai, DENTREE is a sustainability concept bar by the Rémy Cointreau group who have set their sights on setting a new precedent by achieving total carbon neutrality and demonstrating that it is possible to achieve for the F&B industry.
Total carbon neutrality consists of achieving both embodied carbon neutrality and operational carbon neutrality. Embodied carbon neutrality is achieved by measuring and calculating the embodied carbon of all the materials, including FF&E, that went into the renovation of the space and leveraging carbon credits to offset it. Operational carbon neutrality requires monitoring the operational energy consumption of the project and leveraging certified I-RECs to offset it.
The key to carbon neutrality declarations is to make sure that the source of credits is well documented and transparent, otherwise, it can be misconstrued as greenwashing. At RESET, we make sure that we conform to requirements set out by policies such as the EU Green Claims Directive for reliable, comparable, and verifiable claims.
Image Above: Ceremony of Certificate
In December of 2023, DENTREE successfully collected one year of operational energy consumption data and used that to acquire I-RECs to offset their operational carbon, achieving operational carbon neutrality between November 2022 and November 2023. This achievement, coupled with their earlier efforts to achieve the RESET Embodied Carbon Neutral certification, makes DENTREE the first RESET Certified Bar to have achieved total carbon neutrality.
What is an I-REC?
I-REC is an acronym for International Renewable Energy Certificate. It is a certificate that represents one megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity produced from a renewable energy source. The certificate is created upon a certified renewable energy provider generating the electricity and sending it into the grid. The value of the I-REC is that it can then be bought and sold on the open market as an energy commodity to neutralize Scope 2 emissions for projects that are aiming to lower their carbon footprint or to reach operational carbon neutrality. The important part of I-RECs is making sure that the renewable energy is not being double counted, so a renewable energy provider offering I-RECs cannot also be counted as renewable energy toward the grid and vice versa.
Learn more about I-RECs here: https://www.trackingstandard.org/product-code/electricity/.
Image Above: I-REC, Photo by darmau on Unsplash, Edited by Ryan Ni
How DENTREE Achieved Operational Carbon Neutrality
To achieve operational carbon neutrality, DENTREE started with data collection. DENTREE leverages the RESET Energy Standard and digital energy monitoring meters to record real-time energy data on the BEE Sense platform, a RESET-accredited data provider. This strategy helps DENTREE build an understanding of how the space utilizes energy and enables Rémy Cointreau to adjust DENTREE's operational energy usage based on their data.
Image Above: Operating Carbon Neutral Certificate
Between November 2022 and November 2023, DENTREE's operational energy footprint was 83 MWh, which was third-party verified through the continuous data audit in the RESET Energy Certification. To achieve operational carbon neutrality, Rémy Cointreau redeemed 83 I-RECs to entirely offset the operational carbon emissions resulting from energy consumption. The I-RECs came from the Rizei Grid-Connected PV Power Station and were generated in the month of February in 2023.
Total Carbon Neutrality
In February of 2023, DENTREE achieved embodied carbon neutrality. The project leveraged the RESET Embodied Standard to calculate and audit the embodied carbon, circularity, and health of the project. The third-party verified embodied data was used to establish how much carbon credits were needed. National CCER (Certified Emission Reduction) offsets were then purchased to achieve embodied carbon neutrality. Learn more about DENTREE’s embodied carbon efforts here: https://reset.build/newsroom/341
Image Above: Embodied Carbon Neutral Certificate
With DENTREE successfully achieving operational neutrality as well, RESET congratulates DENTREE and Rémy Cointreau for their efforts in sustainability and leading the way to propel the industry forward. By achieving total carbon neutrality, DENTREE is an excellent demonstration of how to make sustainability more accessible to guests, employees, and the community.
About Rémy Cointreau
All around the world, there are clients seeking exceptional experiences; clients for whom a wide range of terroirs means a variety of flavors. Their exacting standards are proportional to our expertise – the finely-honed skills that we pass down from generation to generation. The time these clients devote to drinking our products is a tribute to all those who have worked to develop them. It is for these men and women that Rémy Cointreau, a family-owned French Group, protects its terroirs, cultivates exceptional multi-centenary spirits and undertakes to preserve their eternal modernity.
With ‘Terroir, People, and Time’ sustainability philosophy, Rémy Cointreau has an ambition: reducing its carbon footprint by 50% per bottle by 2030 and reach Net Zero by 2050 under #APlanetOfException. To this end, it relies on the commitment and creativity of the whole group. Rémy Cointreau is listed on Euronext Paris.
About RESET® Energy
The RESET Energy Standard is a performance standard for continuous energy monitoring, designed to prioritize ongoing results with a focus on the operational phase of a built environment. RESET Energy requires energy consumption data to be continuously gathered through energy meters. Results are required to be pushed to the cloud and accessible in real-time, providing access to better understand how a building performs over time.
For more information about RESET Energy, please visit: https://reset.build/standard/energy