Just the same day when US-President Donald Trump signed an order to dismantle regulations for environmental protections, AB InBev, the world’s leading brewery, announced that it will source in all markets, where AB InBev operates, 100 percent of its electricity needs from renewables by 2025. The company said it intends to source 15 to 25% of its electricity needs onsite from technologies, including solar panels, with the rest coming from direct power purchasing agreements. This decision will reduce AB InBev’s operational carbon footprint by 30 percent, which is about the same as taking almost 500,000 cars off the road, the company said.
"Cutting back on fossil fuels is good for the environment and good for business, and we are committed to helping drive positive change," AB InBev CEO Carlos Brito said on Tuesday. "We have the opportunity to play a leading role in the battle against climate change by purchasing energy in a more sustainable way. Climate change has profound implications for our company and for the communities where we live and work," he added.
During his electoral campaign, Donald Trump denied the existence of climate change. “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” he posted in a tweet in July last year.
Although it looks like Brito is opposing Trump for the sake of environment, in fact the AB InBev boss is trying to appeal younger and better educated customers, who turn away from traditional mass-produced beers such as Budweiser, Miller or Coors to more spirit of age beers. Those beers, mainly produced by the growing community of craft brewers, jump on the bandwagon of clean energy and environmental awareness and making more and more inroads into traditional beer markets.
“From a passion standpoint, we understand that we have consumers for whom this is a passion point,” Tony Milikin, AB InBev’s chief sustainability and procurement officer, said in an interview. “We are matching our passion point with their passion point,” he added.
