(Credit: Devil's Canyon Brewing Company)Devil’s Canyon Brewing Company has become the first craft brewery in Northern California to implement carbon capture technology and reduce their CO2 emissions. Large craft breweries like Sierra Nevada have recovered CO2, a natural waste product of beer fermentation, but this technology was previously too costly for the average craft brewer.
Devil’s Canyon partnered with Earthly Labs to use a plug-and-play carbon capture technology called CiCi, which enables craft breweries to capture up to 100,000 pounds of expended CO2 a year and reuse it to carbonate and package beer.
According to Earthly Labs, half of all CO2 emissions come from small sources in businesses, buildings, and homes, representing an untapped opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And breweries across the nation are starting to push for sustainability.
In October 2019, Carlsberg’s Fredericia brewery was selected as a test site for its first total water recycling plant. This plant will reduce average water consumption at the brewery from the current 2.9 hl of water per hl of beer to 1.4 hl of water per hl of beer, which will make it the first brewery to virtually eliminate water waste.
And in June 2018, beer giant MillerCoors announced it increased water efficiency in its Milwaukee brewery operations by employing monitoring and processing systems to the extent that the brewery has been certified as conforming to the Alliance for Water Stewardship’s International Water Stewardship Standard (AWS Standard). The AWS Standard is the first comprehensive global standard for measuring responsible water stewardship across social, environmental and economic criteria.
