St. Louis Post Dispatch
07-31-07
Anheuser-Busch explores crops as renewable energy source
By Jeremiah McWilliams
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
For 21 years, Dwayne Westfall has kept watch over a sprawling agricultural site
owned by Anheuser-Busch Cos. in Fort Collins, Colo. As a nearby A-B brewery
pumped nutrient-rich residual water to the site, Westfall — a professor of soil
science at Colorado State University — checked how well corn and other crops
soaked up the nutrients.
Now, he has a new project: researching the growth of new crops such as canola
and a broad-leaved plant called camelina, which the St. Louis company has
spread over 170 acres there.
The country's biggest brewer is not interested in making salad dressing or
cooking oil — two of canola's uses. But it is very interested in converting the the
harvest of canola, camelina and safflower into "biodiesel" — a family of nonpetroleum –fuels derived from vegetable oils and animal fats — for the
company's trucks and heavy equipment.
The plot of land devoted to renewable fuels — covering about a tenth of A-B's
irrigated acres in the Fort Collins area — is one of the latest outgrowths of the
company's effort to beef up its "green" fuel pipeline.
In the face of high energy costs and corporations' heightened scrutiny of their
impact on the environment, Anheuser-Busch is joining with universities and
smaller companies to research the best ways to convert its crops — and weeds
— into useful fuel such as biodiesel, cellulosic ethanol and gas-form synthetic
fuel.
It wants to nearly double its use of renewable fuels by 2010 — to 15 percent of
its overall energy usage from 8 percent now. A key component of A-B's
renewable fuel program is the bio-energy recovery systems, which use waste
nutrients from the brewing process to create methane that helps power nine
breweries in the U.S. and two overseas.
"None of these solutions is the magic bullet," said John Stier, A-B's director of
environmental affairs. "What we've learned is we're going to need a variety of
things to meet that goal."
The brewer's plan is to create what Stier calls a "closed loop." The idea is that
spent water from its breweries in Florida and Colorado would irrigate crops. A-B
then would harvest and send the crops to a renewable fuel company, which
would convert the material into fuel sources to power the brewer's trucks, heavy
equipment and possibly breweries in Florida and Colorado.
Some of the experiments have humble beginnings. The company has planted
switchgrass on two acres in Jacksonville, Fla., so University of Florida
researchers can determine which native grasses yield the most "cellulosic
ethanol," alcohol derived carbohydrates in cell walls of wood chips or grasses.
Alternatively, a mulching process could convert the plants to gases to fire the
boilers in the company's Jacksonville brewery, Stier said.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been pumped into building plants to process
corn into ethanol. But cellulosic ethanol is years away from being commercially
viable, industry watchers say.
"It's technically feasible to make ethanol out of a lot of things. It's just not costeffective," said Chad Hart, a scientist at Iowa State University's Center for
Agricultural and Rural Development. A-B will be "in on the ground floor if they
can get this thing up."
For ethanol to be produced from plant stalks, complex cellulose molecules must
be broken down into simple sugars, said Timothy Donohue, a professor at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison who works as scientific director for the Great
Lakes Bioenergy Research Center.
The technology doesn't yet exist to do that.
"This is not your favorite TV show where you give me a sample, and I tell you
who the murderer is," said Donohue. "This is going to take some time."
Still, cellulosic ethanol might someday help A-B solve a puzzle: how to hop on
ethanol without driving up corn prices.
The recent surge in ethanol demand has sent corn prices spiraling higher. That's
a serious issue for A-B, which uses corn as an ingredient in some of its beer.
The brewer already is facing higher commodity costs next year as ethanol
demand helps drive up corn prices.
Anheuser-Busch executives stress that the company is making progress on the
"green" fronts — both burnishing its environmentalism and saving cash. "The key
here is this is just one piece of an overall plan" to lower greenhouse gas
emissions and squeeze out renewable sources of fuel, Stier said.
Anheuser-Busch is not alone. Rivals also are focusing on renewable energy use.
At London-based SABMiller — the parent company of Milwaukee's Miller
Brewing Co. — some of its operations in India use energy from the combustion of
coconut and rice husks. In Honduras, its sugar mill uses sugar cane scraps as a
fuel source.
Coors Brewing Co. has an ethanol plant at its flagship brewery in Golden, Colo.
The plant can convert brewing wastes into 3 million gallons of ethanol a year.
The ethanol is mixed into gasoline sold at Valero Energy Corp.'s Diamond
Shamrock gas stations in Colorado, providing a nifty sideline for the country's
third-largest brewer.
"A lot of cars in Colorado drive around on Coors beer," said Bob Merchant, vice
president of product supply and manufacturing at Coors Brewing.
jmcwilliams@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8372