The sunny side of suds: beer maker goes solar
In yet another example of a company using “green marketing” to differentiate its products, Anderson Valley Brewing Co. in California is using a 125 kilowatt-hour solar PV system to produce about 40 per cent of the electricity needed to operate its beer-making operation. It might have cost nearly $900,000 to install, but every dollar spent may be worth the eco-friendly bragging rights that come with it — not to mention the year’s worth of energy savings. “We’ve got solar-powered beer going on here,” said one employee of the brewery. “You can drink it and feel good that you’re helping preserve the environment.”
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca