World's largest beer maker Anheuser-Busch InBev commits to 100% green energy by 2025

The company’s announcement comes the same day US President Donald Trump signs an executive order to unravel rules to combat climate change

AB InBev makes hundreds of leading brands including Stella Artois and Hoegaarden (Rex)

Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s biggest beer maker, plans to get all of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025.

The move will require shifting six terawatt hours of electricity from fossil-fuel plants to wind, solar and other renewable sources, the Belgium-based company said in a statement on Tuesday. That’s almost enough to power all of Spain for a month.

The company’s announcement came the same day US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to unravel rules to combat climate change, including cutting power-sector emissions.

The timing was a coincidence, according to Carlos Alves De Brito, AB InBev’s chief executive. Fighting climate change with renewable energy was good for the bottom line, he said.

“This has no political connotations at all,” Mr Brito said. “We just think this is good for our business and the environment.”

AB InBev plans to generate as much as 25 per cent of its electricity itself, including by installing solar panels on its facilities. The company will buy the rest directly from wind and solar farms.

The plan includes an agreement to buy 490 gigawatt hours annually from Spanish utility Iberdrola to power AB InBev’s facilities in Mexico. Iberdrola will build a 220-megawatt wind farm in the state of Puebla that will begin operations in 2019 to help supply the power.

Bloomberg