We’ll be hitting New Belgium’s brewery in December with video camera in hand to get up-close and personal, but in the meantime, the Rocky Mountain News (Denver, Colo.) has a quick-hit profile worth checking out:
But underneath any deliberate silliness is a dead-serious commitment to sustainability. Alternative energy provides nearly 100 percent of the brewery’s energy needs. Since a unanimous employee vote in 1999, New Belgium has purchased more than 6.6 million kilowatt hours of wind energy from a wind farm in Wyoming, providing 85 percent of the energy needed. Most of the other 15 percent comes from burning methane recaptured from the wastewater treatment facility built in 2002. The brewery also is working with a local energy startup to make biodiesel fuel from algae that grows partly from the carbon dioxide byproduct of fermentation.
The story also points out that New Belgium is now the nation’s ninth-largest brewer.