Fresh Roasted Coffee's Sustainability Report - December 2025
Welcome back to Fresh Roasted Coffee's monthly Sustainability Report!
As December wrapped up, winter conditions across Pennsylvania continued to influence our renewable energy production. Shorter days, lower sun angles, and frequent cloud cover all played a role, but this seasonal shift doesn’t change our commitment to operating as a renewable energy powered, environmentally conscious, and resource-efficient roasting facility.
Sustainability isn’t about chasing peak numbers every month. It’s about building low-impact, resilient systems that perform consistently across the entire year, especially when conditions aren’t ideal.
Here’s how December shaped up.
Renewable Energy & Sustainability: Winter Reality, Real Results
December brought some of the lowest solar generation conditions of the year, and our system responded exactly as designed. Our on-site solar array produced 16.95 MWh of renewable electricity during the month.
That energy production allowed us to avoid approximately 12 U.S. tons of CO₂ emissions, helping reduce our overall environmental footprint even during the least productive solar season.
For comparison, 16.95 MWh of energy would
- power 19 average U.S. homes for a month (assuming ~899 kWh per home/month) US EPA
- brew 169,500 cups of coffee (assuming 100Wh per brew on a standard machine) Silicon Valley Power
We used the EPA’s 2022 national average emissions factor of ~1405 lbs CO₂ per MWh, to determine that our facility avoided 25.0 U.S. tons of CO₂ emissions by using a renewable energy source for power.
The decrease compared to fall and summer months is expected, and worth revisiting briefly. Winter solar production in northern climates naturally slows due to:
Fewer daylight hours
Lower sun angles
Increased cloud cover and weather variability
That’s why our system is intentionally grid-tied, ensuring we remain energy-efficient, and operational year-round. This approach keeps our facility sustainablity-focused, resource-efficient, and designed for long-term impact, not just seasonal highs.
Clean Roasting: Low-Impact by Design
While solar production fluctuates seasonally, our roasting efficiency remains constant. Fresh Roasted Coffee roasted about 197,535.85 pounds of coffee across our Loring Smart Roasters in December.
Loring Smart Roasters are widely recognized for being significantly more energy-efficient and low-impact than traditional drum roasters with thermal oxidizers. These systems reduce roasting-related emissions by approximately 80%, making them a critical part of our planet-forward sustainability strategy.
In December alone, our clean roasting technology avoided 10.79 U.S. tons of CO₂ emissions, a meaningful reduction that’s independent of weather, sunlight, or season.
Combined with our solar offset, December’s total emissions avoided came to 22.79 U.S. tons of CO2 avoided.
For comparison, that equals
Lower than peak summer months? Absolutely.
Still impactful? Without question.
Winter serves as a reminder that sustainability isn’t about perfection—it’s about consistency, transparency, and being climate-aware in how systems actually perform. Every ton avoided matters, regardless of the season.
Thoughtfully Produced, Year-Round
From responsibly sourced coffee to thoughtfully produced, low-impact roasting practices, our sustainability approach is built to last. Being environmentally conscious doesn’t mean ignoring the realities of climate and geography. It means designing systems that work within them.
By investing in sustainability-focused, energy-efficient, and resource-efficient infrastructure, we continue to move forward with intention, reducing our environmental footprint while delivering quality coffee without compromise.
We’ll continue tracking, reporting, and sharing our sustainability data openly, because being planet-forward means showing the full picture, even when winter slows things down.
Real data. Real systems. Real progress.
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