Brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev sets global renewable electricity goal by 2025

World’s largest brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev SA – parent to brands including Budweiser, Corona, Rolling Rock, Michelob, and Stella Artois – has committed to sourcing its electricity entirely from renewable sources by 2025.  The move would make AB InBev the largest corporate direct purchaser of renewable electricity in the global consumer goods sector.

AB InBev makes 30% of the world’s beer, operating breweries in 50 countries. Collectively, these facilities consume 6 terawatt-hours of electricity a year, of which 7% is currently renewable-sourced.  According to a March 28 press release, changing to 100% renewable electricity will reduce the company's carbon footprint by 30%, an estimated reduction of about 2 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.

While many multinational companies “invest” in renewables by buying renewable energy credits or certificates known as "RECs", AB InBev’s plan involves no REC-buying. The company reportedly intends to obtain 75 to 85 percent of its electricity through direct power purchases under a power purchase agreement or similar commercial arrangement, with remaining 15 to 25 percent coming from on-site distributed generation installations at its facilities, like solar panels. The company has committed to producing the energy in the country in which it is to be consumed.

Sourcing renewable energy is relatively easier in some countries, like Mexico. AB InBev announced that its largest facility, a Grupo Modelo brewery, had signed contracts to get all its electricity from wind power, including 220 MW to be built by Iberdrola SA in Puebla. Those new wind projects alone, destined to supply the brewery, represent a 5% increase to Mexico's renewable energy capacity. But in other countries, most notably in Africa, a lack of markets and infrastructure to connect industrial consumers with renewable energy may prove challenging. Also worth noting is that the company's commitment relates to electricity, and not directly to fuels or heat required for beer production and distribution. 

Nevertheless, Anheuser-Busch InBev's commitment to sourcing 100% renewable electricity by 2025 across its global portfolio of facilities represents another data point in the trend of corporate direct investment in renewable energy.  Corporations including Apple, Google, and Amazon have made a variety of commitments relating to renewable electricity, citing benefits ranging from environmental sustainability to locking in power pricing.

Emerging technologies and the electric grid

A task force examining the deployment of emerging technologies across the North American electric grid has identified three imperatives necessary to ensure the continued reliability and efficiency of the bulk electricity system, relating to: renewable supply and integration; greater situational awareness; and controlling an increasingly distributed energy system, with increased deployment of distributed energy resources.

The 39-page report, “Emerging Technologies: How ISOs and RTOs can create a more nimble, robust electricity system,” was published on March 16, 2017, by a group of nine Independent System Operators (ISO) and Regional Transmission Organizations (RTO) known collectively as the ISO/RTO Council (IRC).

With respect to integrating renewable resources, the IRC noted that it "[s]upports policies and positions recognizing the electricity system’s ability to accommodate large amounts of renewables and realizing their growing potential."  While remaining "agnostic to specific technologies that may faciiltate renewable integration", IRC supports policies that accommodate emerging renewable integration technologies, while "avoiding early technological lock-in."

With respect to situational awareness, the IRC notes the lack of available data on the penetration of distributed energy resources, but that a lack of data or its sharing should not limit grid operators' understanding of what's happening on the grid.  IRC suggests the development of a general operational data framework, "where increasingly comprehensive operational data from the distribution system is provided as DER penetrations reach different thresholds."

The report also notes, "Because of emerging technologies, North America’s electricity systems are moving toward a more distributed arrangement." In 2016, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in which it proposed rule changes "to remove barriers to to the participation of electric storage resources and distributed energy resource aggregations" in organized wholesale electric markets.  Recognizing that such a rule change could set a framework for future DER growth, the IRC calls for continued coordination, data sharing, and flexibility.