Energy Conservation
Anheuser-Busch is committed to reducing the energy and emissions in both the brewing and transportation of our beers.
Our operations have reduced energy use by more than 25 percent since 2008 and today more than 11 percent of our energy is generated from renewable resources, including biomass, wind and landfill gas. Examples of how our state-of-the-art breweries are using innovative ways to source energy include:
Bio-Energy Recovery Systems (BERS): Anheuser-Busch is the world’s largest operator of BERS, a method of turning the nutrients in wastewater from the brewing process into renewable biogas. Used at ten U.S. breweries, BERS is responsible for generating approximately 8 percent of our fuel needs. Our communities also benefit from our use of BERS technology because it lowers the electricity demand on community wastewater treatment facilities by reducing organic material in the leftover water. Substituting biogas for fossil fuels also reduces brewery emissions of carbon dioxide and reduces other air pollutants that would result from community wastewater treatment facilities.
Landfill Gas: More than 60 percent of the Houston, TX brewery’s steam requirements are supplied by capturing biogas emitted from decomposing materials at area landfills. This alternative fuel option reduces the use of fossil fuels.
Solar and Wind Power: Solar arrays are located at our Newark, N.J., Fairfield, CA, and Cartersville, GA breweries as well as installations at our Eagle Packaging plant and our corporate offices in St. Louis. At peak production,the arrays provide 2.7 MW of electricity. The renewable energy from these arrays are sold to third parties.
In 2014,we commissioned a second wind turbine for our Fairfield, CA brewery. With the additional turbine online, the Fairfield brewery has the ability to produce more energy that it consumes, and exports the extra power back to the electrical grid
Nutri-Turf Farms: Located near the Jacksonville, FL and Fort Collins, CO breweries, Anheuser-Busch’s Nutri-Turf farms apply nutrient-rich leftover water from the brewing process to help grow crops.
Transportation Logistics: Anheuser-Busch aspires to be the brewing industry leader in sustainable logistics. To accomplish the mission, we focus on shipping the fewest loads possible at the lowest emission transportation methods.
We utilize our logistics planning systems to completely fill out each load to the legal limit, partner with over 30 other companies to share empty trailer space and eliminate empty miles, and constantly look to engineer solutions to service customer demand with the fewest miles possible.
To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, our Houston brewery converted their entire fleet to 23% cleaner-burning Compressed Natural Gas engines. We have tripled the use of intermodal transportation over the past four years and recently added capabilities into the St. Louis brewery to ship train cars full of beer eliminating the need for up to four trucks per rail car shipped.