Fort Collins' Anheuser-Busch brewery steadily decreases its greenhouse gas emissions

The environmental targets rarely stay still at Fort Collins’ Anheuser-Busch brewery.

That’s by design. The purveyor of Bud Light, Busch, Michelob Ultra and 20-some other brands slashed its greenhouse gas emissions by about 20 percent between 2010 and 2017, making it the county’s only large facility to see a consistent decline in pollution.

Senior resident engineer Kim Jacobs attributes the decrease to ever-changing goals for fuel consumption, water use, efficiency and other areas. She said the Fort Collins brewery, along with 11 other Anheuser-Busch breweries in the U.S., gets new goalposts all the time.

“We always think we’re at our max, and then we find these creative ways to do a little more and a little more,” she said during a recent tour of the behemoth facility off Interstate 25 that employs more than 400 people and makes millions of gallons of beer each year.

Production hasn't necessarily increased consistently since 2010, but it's become "more complicated," Jacobs said, as customers have grown to crave more variety.

Almost all the brewery’s emissions come from the natural gas used to create heat, an integral part of the brewing process. Stationary combustion of natural gas creates a lot of carbon dioxide, so the brewery’s leaders focus on increasing efficiency and reclaiming heat to tamp down emissions.

“If we can reclaim heat, water or (carbon dioxide), then we always want to take advantage of that,” general manager Gene Bocis said. “But the first thing is always to reduce the usage.”

Related:Fort Collins' biggest polluter might surprise you

The key to reclaiming heat is a device called a heat exchanger that reclaims heat as the beer cools down during fermentation, Jacobs said. Brewery staff also monitors equipment so they can immediately fix any malfunctions, and they focus on “modulation,” which is the brewery equivalent of turning off the lights when you leave a room.

“Anytime we’re not producing, any energy going to that process is completely shut down,” Jacobs said. “When there are no cans on the conveyor, the conveyor’s not running. When there’s no beer in the brew kettle, no steam is applied.”

Anheuser-Busch’s large footprint also helps staff reach environmental goals. Jacobs is on the phone with engineers from other A-B breweries every week, sharing ideas and strategies to help the facilities meet company-wide goals. It’s a mix of friendly competition and teamwork, she said.

The brewery has also mitigated its environmental impacts by decreasing water usage to 2.82 gallons of water per gallon of beer — the next goal is 2.5 — and reaching a landfill diversion rate greater than 99 percent.

More:Meet Larimer County's 5 biggest polluters

Anheuser-Busch unveiled goals last year to reach 100 percent renewable purchased electricity and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 25 percent by 2025.

The renewable electricity goal prompted Anheuser-Busch to join several other large electricity users last year in a push for a local “green tariff” — basically a tax paid by electricity users to take credit for renewable electricity that already exists in the distribution system.

But conservation has long been a company focus, Jacobs said. She remembers working at the Cartersville, Georgia, brewery back in 2010 and trying to reach goals that seemed lofty at the time.

“Our dream at that time was to get to 3 (gallons of water per gallons of beer), and now we’ve achieved it and we’ve stretched ourselves even farther,” she said. “Every year it’s like, OK, we’ve hit our goals and we’ve gotten better, but there’s always more we can do.”

2017 greenhouse gas emissions by large Larimer County facilities

Anheuser-Busch’s emission levels come from the Environmental Protection Agency, which collects annual data from all facilities that produce a large amount of greenhouse gases. Five Larimer County spots fit the bill: 

1. Rawhide Energy Station: 2,093,713 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (unchanged since 2010)

2. Avago Technologies, 239,112 metric tons CO2e (up 489 percent since 2011, earliest year data is available)

3. Larimer County Landfill: 162,453 metric tons CO2e (up 22 percent since 2010)

4. Anheuser-Busch brewery: 48,179 metric tons CO2e (down 20 percent since 2010)

5. Colorado State University: 44,416 metric tons CO2e (down 5 percent since 2010)

Source: EPA