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posted by on Wednesday January 18 2017, @11:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-in-time-for-st-patrick's-day dept.

The Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. is using a bunch of Tesla batteries, along with solar power and a microturbine generator, to help make beer brewing more environmentally friendly at its Chico, California facility.

The company has installed a 1MWh Tesla Powerpack battery system, taking power from an existing 10,751-panel, two-megawatt solar installation — the largest owned by any US brewery — and a two megawatt microturbine. In all, the setup allows Sierra Nevada to offset around 20 percent of its yearly electricity use.

[...] The beer-brewing process uses a lot of electricity, heating and cooling batches of water and beer over several weeks of production. Big industrial operations like Sierra Nevada pay for electricity both on overall use as well as peak usage over the course of a month — and anything companies can do to reduce that peak use can result in significant cost savings.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:12PM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:12PM (#455368) Homepage Journal

    We've done "green" beer before. I know we have. I distinctly remember pointing out that alcoholic fermentation kicks out shit tons of CO2 and isn't remotely green in any way, shape, or form.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:18PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:18PM (#455370) Journal

    I don't think it's a dupe. Just dumb.

    I like Sierra Nevada but I'm making most of my own alcohol now.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:54PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:54PM (#455386)

      I don't understand your response; is it just an insecure neckbeard's way of telling others that he homebrews?

  • (Score: 2) by WalksOnDirt on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:48PM

    by WalksOnDirt (5854) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:48PM (#455382) Journal

    Nearly everything organic eventually decays into CO2. Clearing the land to grow hops and grains might add a little but that's minor and self limiting. Worry about coal, oil, natural gas, cement and refining iron, in roughly that order, but not beer.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:50PM (#455385)

    That CO2 is released from the malt sugar; it just gets bound up again in new grains, making the process neutral.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by theluggage on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:55PM

    by theluggage (1797) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:55PM (#455388)

    I distinctly remember pointing out that alcoholic fermentation kicks out shit tons of CO2 and isn't remotely green in any way, shape, or form.

    However, you've conveniently forgotten the difference between carbon released from fossil fuels and carbon released from last summer's barley harvest.
    You know, the way one has been out of circulation since it was captured 300 million years ago and increases the net CO2 levels in the current atmosphere, while the other is offset by the CO2 absorbed by next year's barley crop?

    OK, so there are wider environmental issues vis. cutting down rain forests to grow barley etc. but the climate change problem is primarily caused by the human race's current determination to find, dig up and release a whole geological era's worth of ancient carbon in the space of a century, because anything else would require thinking beyond next quarter's profits.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 18 2017, @05:59PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @05:59PM (#455561) Journal

      I think we should bioengineer forests of truly giant trees to absorb all the extra CO2 and allow us to live like Ewoks.

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      • (Score: 2) by wirelessduck on Thursday January 19 2017, @03:27AM

        by wirelessduck (3407) on Thursday January 19 2017, @03:27AM (#455871)

        I think we should bioengineer forests of truly giant trees to absorb all the extra CO2 and allow us to live like Ewoks.

        Surely the Wookies had bigger trees on Kashyyyk than the Ewoks did on Endor?

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday January 18 2017, @10:12PM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday January 18 2017, @10:12PM (#455732) Homepage Journal

      That would be a valid point except for the fact that any other crop would be greener than fermentation fuel. You're taking up acres and acres of land that would otherwise be actively sequestering carbon and turning it carbon-neutral. That is a step in the wrong direction for those who say the sky is falling.

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      • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday January 20 2017, @03:32PM

        by theluggage (1797) on Friday January 20 2017, @03:32PM (#456565)

        You're taking up acres and acres of land that would otherwise be actively sequestering carbon and turning it carbon-neutral.

        Except this thread was talking about using solar power to save fossil carbon emissions when making beer. I completely agree that schemes to produce massive quantities of alcohol for biofuel need very, very careful scrutiny...

        ...and if you want to cut beer production to save the planet then for fuck's sake start with the mighty Bud and its frosty piss cousins - certainly not Sierra Nevada, which is rather nice!