The Brewing Climate Change Agreement and Solar (2026)

The one line on your energy bill worth protecting

Running a brewery in 2026 is a margin-defence exercise. There are 1,578 breweries left in the UK as of January, and the sector is losing roughly three a week. Energy is one of the few big costs you can actually bend, and the single most valuable lever most breweries never fully use is the Climate Change Agreement (CCA).

A CCA is not a grant. It’s a standing discount on the Climate Change Levy (CCL), the per-kWh tax added to every unit of business electricity and gas you buy. Hold a valid agreement and hit your efficiency target, and you pay a small fraction of that levy for six years. For an energy-hungry site running glycol chillers around the clock, that discount compounds into real money. This guide explains how the brewing CCA works in 2026, what the new scheme changed, who actually qualifies, and exactly where solar strengthens the position rather than sitting beside it.

What a Climate Change Agreement actually is

The CCL is charged on taxable supplies of electricity and gas. In 2026 the electricity main rate is 0.801p/kWh, small per unit, but a regional brewery buying millions of kWh a year pays tens of thousands in levy alone.

A CCA lets you swap most of that bill for a commitment. In return for meeting a sector energy-efficiency or carbon-reduction target, the Environment Agency grants a reduced CCL rate. The scheme is run sector by sector through umbrella agreements held by trade bodies:

• Brewing sits under the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) umbrella.
• Malting is covered separately by the Maltsters’ Association of Great Britain (MAGB).

The trade body holds the umbrella agreement and negotiates the collective target; your site holds an underlying agreement beneath it, reports its energy and output every target period, and either meets the target or buys out the shortfall. Miss it and you can pay a modest buy-out to stay in, but the discount is only ever as safe as your efficiency performance, which is precisely where on-site generation starts to matter.

The 2026 numbers, what SI 2025/813 changed

The previous CCA scheme was due to lapse. It has been replaced by a new six-year scheme under the Climate Change Agreements regulations 2025 (SI 2025/813), extending CCL relief to 31 March 2033. Two headline rates matter for a brewery from 1 April 2026:

• Electricity: you pay 8% of the main rate, a 92% discount.
• Gas: you pay 11% of the main rate, an 89% discount.

Put plainly: without a CCA you pay the full 0.801p/kWh electricity levy on every purchased unit. With one, you pay roughly eight-hundredths of a penny. On a 500,000 kWh annual electricity spend that’s the difference between about £4,000 and a few hundred pounds, every year, for years, guaranteed by statute rather than by a supplier’s goodwill.

The higher discount on gas is deliberately generous, and it matters because roughly 70% of a brewery’s energy is thermal, the wort boil, hot liquor and steam, and most of that is gas. The CCA is the main relief available on that thermal load, which is exactly the part solar cannot offset directly.

The honest catch: not every brewery qualifies

Here’s the part the levy salesmen skip. A CCA is not open to every business that brews. Eligibility rests on an energy-intensity threshold, the process has to be energy-intensive enough, or the site has to clear a throughput test, to be admitted to the sector scheme. Brewing is a listed eligible sector, so larger regional and national breweries generally qualify comfortably. Many small craft and nanobreweries do not, their absolute energy use, or their energy-per-unit-of-output, falls below the bar.

If you run a growing regional operation, the CCA is very likely worth pursuing and the numbers above are yours to claim. If you’re a taproom brewpub or a nano turning out a few hundred hectolitres a year, treat eligibility as an open question, not a given. Don’t build a savings case on a discount you can’t access. The only reliable answer is to check your eligibility and the current entry window directly with the BBPA before you assume it. We will never tell you a relief applies when it may not, that honesty is the whole point.

Where solar fits: three separate wins

Solar and the CCA are often pitched as alternatives. They’re not, they stack. There are three distinct ways on-site PV strengthens your position.

1. Self-generated solar is outside CCL entirely

CCL is a tax on supplies of electricity, units bought from a supplier. Electricity you generate on your own roof and consume on site is not a taxable supply, so it carries no levy at all. Not 8% of it. None.

Brewery self-consumption is unusually high, typically 75-90%, because refrigeration and glycol chilling run 24/7 through fermentation and make up around 35% of your electrical load. That baseload soaks up daytime generation, so most of the solar you produce is used on site. Every one of those kWh is a unit you didn’t buy, didn’t pay CCL on, and didn’t expose to a volatile ~25p/kWh import price. A CCA discounts your levy; solar removes the levy, and the unit price, on the portion you self-supply.

2. Solar helps you hit the CCA target

The discount is conditional. You keep it by meeting your sector energy-efficiency target every reporting period, and that target is measured against your output, energy per unit produced. On-site renewable generation reduces the bought-in energy behind each hectolitre, which improves the intensity figure you report. In other words, the same array that cuts your bill also helps protect the CCA discount that governs the rest of your energy tax. Miss the target and you face a buy-out; a well-sized system makes the target easier to defend.

3. It gives you a route at the 70% thermal load

Solar PV is electrical, and the electrical mix, refrigeration, packaging, compressed air, pumps, is only about 30% of brewery energy. But surplus generation on long summer days doesn’t have to be exported at a modest 12-16p SEG rate. Diverted into an immersion element in the hot liquor tank, or used to run an industrial heat pump (COP typically 2.5-3.5), it starts chipping at the thermal 70%, the same load the gas-side CCA discount is protecting. Attacking that load from both directions is how you build genuine resilience rather than a green headline. There’s more on this in our guide to sizing solar for a brewery.

Stacking the reliefs into a margin case

The CCA is one plank. Around it, on-site solar in England currently sits outside business rates until 31 March 2035, and the array itself qualifies for the Annual Investment Allowance, 100% of the cost written off against tax in year one, up to £1m (solar is special-rate plant, so it’s outside full expensing and the 40% first-year allowance; be wary of anyone who tells you otherwise). Layer the CCA discount, the CCL-free self-supply, the rates exemption and the capital allowance together and the picture stops being about carbon and starts being about survival economics.

That’s the case worth modelling properly. Our cost guide sets out realistic system sizes and payback for each brewery scale, grants and funding covers what’s genuinely available in 2026, and if you’d rather compare finance routes first, see financing brewery solar. When you want numbers against your own meter data and output, request a quote and we’ll size it around your CCA position, not despite it. Regional operators can start with our regional independent brewery page; smaller sites weighing it up should read is solar worth it for a brewery.

Common questions

Does my brewery automatically get a CCA?

No. Brewing is an eligible sector, but individual sites must meet an energy-intensity threshold to join, and you apply through the BBPA umbrella scheme. Larger regional breweries usually qualify; many small craft and nanobreweries don’t. Confirm your eligibility and the current entry window with the BBPA before assuming the discount.

How much is the CCL discount worth from April 2026?

Under the new scheme (SI 2025/813) you pay 8% of the electricity main rate, a 92% discount, and 11% on gas, an 89% discount, with relief running to 31 March 2033. On the 2026 electricity main rate of 0.801p/kWh that’s a substantial annual saving for any site buying six or seven figures of kWh.

Do I pay CCL on the electricity my solar panels generate?

No. CCL is a tax on electricity supplied to you. Power you generate on your own roof and use on site isn’t a taxable supply, so it carries no levy, separate from, and on top of, any CCA discount on the units you still buy.

Can solar cover my whole brewery energy bill?

No, and be sceptical of anyone who says so. Around 70% of brewery energy is thermal and solar PV can’t offset that directly. PV targets the ~30% electrical load, but with 75-90% self-consumption, plus surplus diverted to hot water or a heat pump, it makes a serious dent while the gas-side CCA discount covers the thermal side.