diff --git a/poetry.lock b/poetry.lock
index 5bbae83..97ba4e1 100644
--- a/poetry.lock
+++ b/poetry.lock
@@ -1968,6 +1968,20 @@ files = [
 [package.dependencies]
 six = ">=1.5"
 
+[[package]]
+name = "python-dotenv"
+version = "1.0.1"
+description = "Read key-value pairs from a .env file and set them as environment variables"
+optional = false
+python-versions = ">=3.8"
+files = [
+    {file = "python-dotenv-1.0.1.tar.gz", hash = "sha256:e324ee90a023d808f1959c46bcbc04446a10ced277783dc6ee09987c37ec10ca"},
+    {file = "python_dotenv-1.0.1-py3-none-any.whl", hash = "sha256:f7b63ef50f1b690dddf550d03497b66d609393b40b564ed0d674909a68ebf16a"},
+]
+
+[package.extras]
+cli = ["click (>=5.0)"]
+
 [[package]]
 name = "python-json-logger"
 version = "2.0.7"
@@ -3182,4 +3196,4 @@ multidict = ">=4.0"
 [metadata]
 lock-version = "2.0"
 python-versions = "~3.9"
-content-hash = "a24553fd7a42ac559e92918bcbd66d82ef33c612bab0b82fd3e7d80028de20d1"
+content-hash = "f2e49221bcfc547489177a844a2baea7775f0cffb3ced19b18a65b36ac9f0f50"
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index c63e68d..186fd73 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@ aws-error-utils = "^2.7.0"
 moto = "^4.1.11"
 torch = "2.0.0"
 cpr-data-access = {git = "https://github.com/climatepolicyradar/data-access.git", tag = "0.4.0"}
+python-dotenv = "^1.0.1"
 
 [tool.poetry.dev-dependencies]
 black = "^22.1.0"
diff --git a/src/config.py b/src/config.py
index 0b7d497..73dc82f 100644
--- a/src/config.py
+++ b/src/config.py
@@ -3,6 +3,9 @@
 import os
 from typing import Set
 import re
+from dotenv import load_dotenv, find_dotenv
+
+load_dotenv(find_dotenv())
 
 SBERT_MODEL: str = os.getenv("SBERT_MODEL", "msmarco-distilbert-dot-v5")
 INDEX_ENCODER_CACHE_FOLDER: str = os.getenv("INDEX_ENCODER_CACHE_FOLDER", "/models")