Carbon Dioxide Supply Expected to Meet Increased Demand

The nation’s supply of carbon dioxide is expected to be able to meet brewers’ needs, even as the dry ice industry’s demand increases for the shipment and storage of COVID-19 vaccines.

“There is enough capacity in the system to meet the 5% we’re anticipating that the dry ice needs will increase by,” CGA president and CEO Rich Gottwald told Brewbound.

The first shipments of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine began rolling out over the weekend from the pharmaceutical company’s Portage, Michigan-based facility after obtaining Food and Drug Administration approval last Friday.

The Pfizer vaccine must be kept at extremely cold temperatures, which requires dry ice, carbon dioxide in its solid form. The Compressed Gas Association (CGA) expects the nation’s carbon dioxide inventory to remain sufficient to meet the demand.

Context: The three industries that consume the most CO2 are food, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, and dry ice. Both dry ice and beverages each account for 15% of the country’s CO2 supply.

The CGA expects vaccine shipping and storage to require a 5% increase in the dry ice industry’s CO2 use.

What It Means for Breweries: Production of CO2 has ramped up since the spring and summer, when craft brewers faced shortages of the gas, which is used to purge tanks, package beer and push beer through draft lines.

Then, craft breweries such as Santa Rosa and Windsor, California-based Russian River Brewing Company faced rising costs and slashed orders. A craft brewery in the northeast had taken to importing CO2 from Canada because its U.S. supplier could not meet demand.

However, these issues are unlikely to occur again. Localized shortages may pop up, but Gottwald said there is no reason to expect widespread inventory depletions.

“There’s always going to be spot shortages caused by issues unrelated to this,” he said. “They shouldn’t have a problem.”

CGA members have been in close contact with Operation Warp Speed, the Department of Health and Human Services’ project team overseeing COVID-19 vaccine and therapeutic development, and Pfizer, which did not participate in Operation Warp Speed, to discuss CO2 distribution.

What Has Changed Since the Spring: Most commercially used CO2 is a byproduct of ethanol production, which is used for gasoline. If ethanol is not produced, neither is CO2. When most states were under strict stay-home orders in the spring, gasoline production dropped precipitously; however, a reprise of such sweeping shutdowns seems unlikely.

“The primary difference back in the spring was the economy basically shut down for a month or two and everyone stopped driving back in April,” Gottwald said. “As we’ve learned to live with COVID, [driving] is significantly back up. If the country was to go into some sort of major shutdown again, then there may be different stories but we really don’t see that happening.”

As COVID-19 cases continue to surge, some states and cities have been implementing stricter stay home orders.

Earlier this month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced a new regional stay home order that goes into effect whenever a region’s hospitals’ intensive care unit capacity dips below 15%. Currently, the Southern California and San Joaquin Valley regions fall under Newsom’s stay-home order, and counties in the Bay Area have opted to enact their own stay-home order. About 33 million Californians are affected by the orders.