At AB InBev Europe, as part of our Global Sustainability Goals, we have committed to sourcing 100% of our purchased electricity from renewable sources by 2025 to ensure our operations are helping to power a more sustainable future.
In 2022, we were proud to announce that we have achieved this ambitious goal in the UK and the EU three years early, and all of our beers brewed in Western Europe – including Budweiser, Corona and Stella Artois – are now brewed with 100% renewable electricity* from a mix of on-site, near-site solar and wind installations and by certificated (GoOs).
In 2018, we made a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Lightsource BP to fund, develop and operate solar installations that generate enough renewable electricity to brew all our beers in the UK, connecting to the grid in 2020.
Following that we struck a virtual power purchase agreement with BayWa r.e. in 2020 to enable the brewing of all our beers in the EU with 100% renewable electricity*. In September 2022, we opened (along with our partners BayWa r.e. and Verbund) the Solar Park in Pinos Puente, Spain, which provides 250 gigawatt hours of renewable electricity per year.
On top of this we have been, and continue to be, actively investing in on-site and near-site solar and wind installations on our breweries, warehouses, and offices.
In numbers:
- The 15-year PPA with Lighthouse BP provides 100 megawatts of solar power to power breweries in the UK, the equivalent of powering 18,000 homes.
- The 10-year VPPA with BayWa r.e is one of the largest cross-border corporate solar energy deals in Europe to date, providing electricity from two solar parks in Spain, one of which is operated by Verbund.
- The Pinos Puente Solar Park provides enough energy to power the equivalent of almost 670,000 European homes, or 100,000 stadium football matches. This allows us to produce over 55 million kegs of beer each year and around five million bottles of Budweiser each week.
- Wind turbine power for Magor brewery provides an output of up to 3.5 megawatts, generating 9 million kilowatt hours of electricity each year – the equivalent of powering 2,300 Welsh homes – while saving more than 2,600 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
- The 2,117 solar panels installed on the roof of Stella Artois brewery in Leuven cover an area of 3,800 m2 and produce 576,000 kWh of green energy annually. It is enough to supply the annual consumption of about 150 families or the production of nearly 30 million 25cl beer bottles per year since 2020.
- Our Jupiller brewery has gained 2,111 new solar panels in 2021, to add to the already existing 6,000 panels on its roof, while our Hoegaarden brewery had 2,100 solar panels installed on its roof in 2019.
*Electricity is only one of the energy sources we use to brew our beers
