Today we Salute You, Mr. Anheuser-Busch Sustainable Brewery Guy
Green beer? Not likely anytime soon (we hope), but breweries are another story.Anheuser-Busch, the dominant American brewer that makes Budweiser, will soon begin powering its breweries in Houston and Fairfield, CA, with biogas and solar energy, as it looks achieve sustainability goals it pledged to meet by 2010.
In Houston, Anheuser-Busch is building a six-mile underground pipeline to transport biogas from a local landfill to its brewery there, one of its largest at about 2 million square feet. Burned as a substitute for natural gas, the biogas is a natural byproduct from waste decomposition at the landfill.
The Fairfield brewery, a 700,000-square-foot plant about halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento, will also use biogas, but the process is a bit more complicated.
In addition to a 1.18-megawatt solar system under construction there, Anheuser-Busch is developing a Bio-Energy Recovery System (appropriately nicknamed BERS) that converts wastewater from brewing into biogas. The process involves microorganisms that feed on nutrients in the wastewater, producing the gas as they digest the nutrients. The gas is siphoned out of huge, airtight tanks and used to fuel boilers that provide energy to the brewery.
Anheuser-Busch operates BERS at nine of its 12 U.S. breweries, including the Houston facility, as well as a brewery in China. Last year, BERS-generated energy reduced the company's greenhouse gas emissions by more than 250 million pounds.
The brewer previously committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its U.S. operations to five percent below 2005 levels, and use renewable fuels to meet 15 percent of its U.S. energy demand, both by 2010.
Anheuser-Bush owns a LEED-certified building at its headquarters in St. Louis, and is seeking LEED at two other new facilities, according to its website.
source: http://www.costar.com/News/Article.aspx?id=34081A369F352A6D686F1C8144A96FC4
