SOUTH AFRIDCA – The South African Breweries (SAB), maker of Castle Lager, has inked a Power Purchase Agreement with a Black-Woman Owned industrial scale biogas waste-to-energy company, Bio2Watt.

Following the agreement, South Africa’s largest beer maker will soon be using the manure of over 7 000 cows to power its operations.

The renewable energy will be supplied from the Bio2Watt’s Cape Dairy Biogas Plant once it reaches commercial operation.

Currently the biogas plant is in the process of being built and once completed, it will make use of waste collected from one of South Africa’s largest dairy farms and make use of slurry manure with a mix of other wastes from the surrounding region to produce renewable electricity.

The plant, according to reports by Fin24, is part-funded by the Industrial Development Corporation, the Norwegian Investment Fund – Norfund, the Public Investment Corporation and Bio2Watt.

It is Bio2Watt’s second commercial biogas project with the first project located in Bronkhorstspruit, Gauteng.

Under this Power Purchase Agreement and installed renewable electricity, SAB will achieve 23% contracted renewable electricity.

SAB Procurement Director for Africa, Kyle Day says, “We have made a global commitment to explore renewables to reduce carbon emissions and reach 100% contracted renewable electricity by 2025. We also believe we have a duty to ease the pressure on the national grid.

“Through this partnership, we are proud to progress on both fronts as we make our way to a cleaner, greener and more self-sustainable future.”

The move is in line with holding company Anheuser-Busch InBev’s global 2025 sustainability targets for climate action –   100% of its purchased electricity will come from renewable sources and carbon emissions will be reduced by 25% across its value chain.

“As we accelerate our sustainability strategy, we are looking forward to collaborating with more partners in the renewable energy space,” Ruff stated.

All of SAB’s Breweries in South Africa already use solar power, which we are currently expanding and the Alrode brewery in Johannesburg is also making use of a biogas facility.

As of January – August 2021, SAB had already generated over 9.7GwH of renewable electricity. This switch has also resulted in 9 443 tons of Co2 emissions reductions since the start of the year.

Most organizations in South Africa are making the shift to use of renewable energy to sustainably run operations but also beat the load-shedding blues and ongoing power constraints in the country.

Leading retailer, Shoprite Group added 22 new solar PV (photovoltaic) sites between February and September 2021, more than doubling its solar capacity, as it aims to power 25% of its operations with renewable energy over the next five years.

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