What Oatly’s Factory Emissions Reveal About “Sustainable” Food

I’ve been buying oat milk for three years now. Started when my daughter decided she was “mostly vegan” for six weeks in eighth grade. The vegan phase ended. The oat milk stayed. It froths better in my coffee anyway.

But here’s something I never really thought about until recently: what goes into making that carton? Not the oats and water, though that’s part of it. I mean the actual making. The factory. The energy. The emissions.

Turns out, there’s a whole world of industrial sustainability happening behind the scenes that most of us never see. And understanding even a little bit of it changes how you think about those “sustainable” labels on products.

The Hidden Energy Problem in Your Oat Milk

Oatly, the Swedish oat milk company that essentially created the modern oat milk craze, just released some interesting numbers. In 2024, 62% of the energy used in their factories came from natural gas and other fossil fuels. Sixty-two percent.

That surprised me. This is a company built entirely on being the sustainable alternative to dairy. They’ve made their whole brand about environmental consciousness. And still, more than half their factory energy comes from burning fossil fuels.

But here’s where it gets interesting, and where I actually gained some respect for what they’re trying to do. They’re not hiding from this number. They’re publishing it. And they’re working on it.

Why Heat Is the Hard Part

When a company says they’ve switched to renewable energy, they usually mean electricity. Solar panels, wind power, buying renewable energy credits. That part is relatively straightforward now.

Heat is different. Food processing requires high temperatures. Pasteurization, sterilization, cooking, drying. Most of these processes need temperatures around 200 degrees Celsius, which is about 392 degrees Fahrenheit. You can’t just plug that into a solar panel.

Traditionally, this heat comes from burning natural gas to create steam. It’s efficient, it’s cheap, and it’s everywhere. It’s also a massive source of carbon emissions that gets overlooked when we focus only on electricity.

Erin Augustine, Oatly’s VP of sustainability, put it plainly: “The first priority is energy efficiency everywhere. Use less electricity, use less steam, use less heat all across the board.”

That sounds obvious. But when you’re running six factories across multiple countries, “use less” requires entirely new equipment and processes.

The Technology That’s Actually Working

Here’s where the science gets cool. Oatly is testing several approaches at different facilities:

Heat exchangers at their New Jersey plant capture waste heat that would normally escape and recycle it back into the system. Think of it like a hybrid car capturing braking energy. Heat that was just floating away is now preheating incoming materials, reducing how much new energy they need.

Industrial heat pumps work like your refrigerator in reverse. Instead of pulling heat out to make things cold, they pull heat from a lower-temperature source and concentrate it to make things hot. The technology exists. The challenge is scaling it up. As of 2021, industrial heat pumps made up only 2% of the global heat pump market.

Biomass boilers at their Sweden factory burn organic materials instead of natural gas. Their setup is hybrid, using biomass as the primary fuel with natural gas as backup. It’s not perfect, but it’s a significant step away from fossil fuel dependence.

What This Means When You’re Standing in the Grocery Aisle

I’m not writing this to tell you which oat milk to buy. Buy whatever works for your budget and your taste buds. But understanding what’s happening in those factories changes how I read sustainability claims.

“100% renewable energy” might not mean what you think. Ask: is that electricity only, or does it include thermal energy? A company could power their lights and computers with wind energy while still burning natural gas for all their production heat.

Transparency matters more than perfection. Oatly publishing that 62% fossil fuel number tells me more about their commitment than a vague “committed to sustainability” statement. They’re showing the gap between where they are and where they want to be.

Progress is messy. These companies grew fast. Oatly went from three factories to six between 2020 and 2024. Growth and sustainability can pull in opposite directions. What matters is whether they’re working on it, not whether they’ve solved it.

Questions Worth Asking About Any “Sustainable” Product

Next time you see a green leaf logo or a “planet-friendly” claim, consider these questions:

• Does their sustainability report break down electricity vs. thermal energy? Or do they lump it all together?
• Are they setting specific, dated targets? “Net zero by 2050” is different from “40% reduction by 2030.”
• Are they reporting Scope 3 emissions? That’s the full supply chain, not just their own operations. It’s harder to measure and easier to ignore.
• How has their footprint changed as they’ve grown? Sometimes scale makes things worse before it makes them better.

You don’t need to become an expert in industrial heat pumps. I’m certainly not. But knowing these questions exist helps you sort the companies doing real work from the ones just slapping leaves on their packaging.

The Bigger Picture

Here’s what stuck with me: energy for heat makes up about 16% of Oatly’s total carbon footprint. That’s not the biggest piece. Ingredients, packaging, transportation all add up too. But it’s a piece that most of us never think about, and it’s one where the solutions are still being figured out.

The factories making our plant-based milk, our organic snacks, our “sustainable” everything face the same fundamental challenge: industrial processes need energy, and clean energy for high-temperature applications is genuinely hard.

This is actually a big topic at industry events like Natural Products Expo West, where food brands gather every March to showcase innovations. Climate Day, a pre-show event focused on sustainability, has become one of the most valuable parts of the week. The conversations happening there shape which brands get funding and shelf space.

That doesn’t mean we should stop buying products from companies trying to do better. It means we should understand that “better” is a process, not a destination. The companies worth supporting are the ones being honest about how far they still have to go.

Information in this article is based on publicly available sustainability reporting from Oatly as of early 2026. Industrial sustainability technology is evolving rapidly, and company practices may change.