Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. has 710 KW solar installed awarded Platinum certification
 

It is good to see a company care about the environment.

Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. has 710 KW solar installed and now awarded Platinum certification.

http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1466016618

Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. - Sundance PowerSundance Power
Sierra Nevada brewery awarded Platinum certification

Sierra Nevada brewery awarded Platinum certification | BlueRidgeNow.com

Too bad that can't do anything about the few billion BTUs of natural gas, or all the chemicals they use every day.

Really?
All they have done and many other have done nothing.
Is glass is really half empty for you?

One example of what they have done.
"Water use, recovery and treatment — A brewerywide initiative to conserve water has reduced water consumption to only 3.5 barrels of water to make one barrel of beer, a near-historic low in the brewing business. Additionally, the Mills River brewery has made stormwater runoff, reuse and recovery a priority."

Where I normally work did the same thing. In 2009 they cut water consumption by 1/3. They were pushing 130,000,000 gallons per day and cut back to about an even million.
This kind of stuff is normal for industrialized food and beverage processing.

Maybe this is normal in the industrialized brewery but is seems pretty cool.

I do not keep up with how many business get LEED Platinum certification. Maybe it is common practice. I just read all the things they have been doing and thought it was great.


“the brewery uses Capstone Microturbine technology to convert methane biogas captured from their on-site wastewater treatment plant into electricity. Between the solar array and the microturbines, in Mills River Sierra Nevada produces an average of 1 megawatt of AC power on site,”

Where I work also makes bio gas, they started the project just as natural gas prices went high in 2008. It saves them about $1,000 in natural gas every day.

Our landfill has been selling it to BMW for about 10 years now.
They use it in there gas turbines.

That is very cool. I love projects like this.

I do not believe it is very common at all. All new US Government buildings are required to be constructed under LEED Silver requirements, while older buildings are to be upgraded to LEED Certified (at some point). These are office buildings, mind you, so much cheaper to construct than Sierra Nevada.

Actually, they are. They are reusing much of the CO2 they are generating, biogas, and other things:

Resource Recovery | www.sierranevada.com