New Belgium Brewing Co, makers of Fat Tire, 1554, Mothership Wit, etc., is well known by this time as being proactively environmental.  They already use methane from their water treatment plant along with some other very nifty stuff to reduce their strain on the power grid, but now they're going solar.  The brewery is about to begin installation of what will be Colorado's largest privately owned solar array!  The array will produce 16 percent of peak electrical load and 3 percent of the brewery's total electrical load.

Jennifer Orgolini, New Belgium's sustainability Director,had the following to say: "We’re excited to include a fairly large solar PV installation as part of our total load reduction project portfolio.  It nicely compliments our current on-site generation which uses methane from our process water treatment plant, and the new generation capacity, thermal storage and demand response technologies we’ll also be adding for peak reduction. The five projects we’re doing to reduce peak will cost over $3 million, but the DOE grant and partner contributions allow us to help further research required to make distributed generation and smart grids a reality for the whole country."

New Belgium should be applauded for their efforts in finding more efficient ways of making use of that they produce.  Now, I'm not saying that New Belgium is the only brewery doing good things for the environment.  Many breweries are disposing of their grains by giving them to farmers to use in compost and some are even using them as fuel for power production.  The craft brewers in America are really doing their part to reduce their carbon footprint and make the world a better place.