Budweiser to put a label on all its beers brewed with renewable energy

Budweiser will put a clean energy label on all its beers brewed in the US after it announced that its entire US-based brewing operations will be fuelled by wind energy.

Starting this March, all its US beer cans and bottles will have a ‘100 percent renewable electricity’ logo to communicate the green message to beer consumers and raise awareness.

With Budweiser selling more than 41 million beers around the world every day, the equivalent  carbon savings would be similar to taking 48,000 cars off the road annually.

Brian Perkins, Budweiser’s Vice President of Global Marketing, said: “What’s interesting and different about this is it’s a consumer-facing symbol on the packaging, so when people are getting together for beers all over the world, they’re going to know those beers were brewed with 100 percent renewable electricity”.

“That, to me, is a seismic shift because then we’re going to have everyday people talking about it and talking about the issue”, he added.

The electricity will be sourced from Enel Green Power’s 300 megawatt (MW) Thunder Ranch Wind Farm in Oklahoma.

“And that’s just the beginning”, Mr. Perkins commented. “There’s a solar field in Texas coming online in the next couple of years, as well as more similar infrastructure and deals happening in some of the bigger countries where we operate”, he added, indicating that such initiatives will be rolled-out in additional countries where Budweiser brews beers.

With this move, the beer company aspires to create an impetus and trigger consumer engagement, as consumers will be able to directly support companies with green initiatives. This will send a commercial signal to other companies to follow suit.

To this end, Budweiser aims to partner with other businesses and NGOs to manage the campaign to spread the renewable energy symbol.

“Beer has been around for 3,000 years – we would like that to continue for another 3,000 years”, Mr. Perkins concluded.

The company announced the new initiative during the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos. The news furthers Budweiser’s parent company AB InBev’s goals to brew all its beer bottles with renewable energy  by 2015.

In another pledge to reduce operational emissions, Budweiser ordered 40 Tesla Semi trucks by the end of 2017 to be integrated into the brewer’s distribution network.