Today's tours and presentations started out at the Coors plant in Ft Worth, Tx. We were greeted by Larry Johnson, Jr.the Environmental and Sustainability Coordinator and Rashad Alston the Trade Quality Specialist. Many companies are starting to create departments that focus on sustainable efforts. I would like to believe that its because they want to do their part in order to keep the plant around another few billion years but when its all said and done I'm sure the underlining reasons is money. Big corporate thinking is "If it doesn't make dollars than it doesn't make sense". In this case if it saves a dollar and make a dollar than it make sense. Sustainable protocols and materials can save a company thousands even millions dollars over a period of time.
Coors has started a program called FEWER- fuel energy water efficiency reduction program. The main goal of the program is to reduce its water use by 6% and energy use by 6%. Because of their efforts Coors can proudly call itself 1 in sustainability, surpassing Pepsi Co and Top 5 in energy and water use among beer breweries. From what I can tell there is a competitive drive not only to be number one in market share but to be number one in sustainability. I find that to be pretty amazing.
The process of making beer requires a lot of water so Miller Coors is involve with local farmers and ranchers who are relatively close to various water sources Miller Coors uses, to focus on soil and water conservation. I like the idea that here is a major company that is willing to offer resources such as money and technology to assist with responsible farming.
Some of the other sustainable practices they do is all of the hot water is a by product of heat transfer that takes place when they run code water over the heat transfer plats use on the massive kennels. The CO2 produced during the fermentation process is then used in the shipping and bottling process. The used mash, boiled barley and hops is sold to local ranchers as feed for their live stock.that is made. Miller Coors is always working with suppliers to come up with better shipping and storage materials for their products.
What's interesting is Miller Coors has these cooperate happy hours where companies get together share ideas a techniques on sustainable practices and discus challenges they might be facing in trying to be more environmentally responsible.
To wrap up the tour we had a chance to sample some of the different products that we saw them making and shipping. They offer tours to various groups. I would recommend going on one If your ever in Ft. Worth.
BRIT
The next stop was to BRIT (Botanical Research Institute of Texas). This building is a LEED Platinum certified building and it is beautiful The building is on the site of the old Health and Human Services building. In fact 98% of the previous building was re-used for the construction of the new building or sold. It cost a lot more to demolish the building this way but when you believe in something sometimes cost does't matter. There were three sustainable products I found to be very interesting. The first was the wood planked walls. This wood is called Sinker Cypress which are Cypress trees that were lost or sunk while be rafted to sawmills. Some of these trees are believed to have been cut 100 years ago. There are other "Sinker" type log product depending on the region that the wood comes from. The only unfortunate thing is that I'm sure there is a limited supply and once the supply is gone its gone.
The other product is the water-less urinal and dual flush toilets.
There were several other items that help BRIT obtain is LEED Platinum status such as:
- Natural light throughout 75% of the building
- Rapidly renewable resource material - Wool carpet, Linen wallpaper and Bamboo ceilings
- 6k and 55k rain water cisterns that water the landscape
- Two geothermal fields
- Cylinder shaped photovoltaic tubes mounted on 258 solar panels provide 360 degrees of surface area to produce 16% of the BRIT annual electrical needs.
- Lower emission vehicle parking
- LED and fluorescent lighting
- Living roof
- Recycled content material used for the insulation
- Low-Flow showers for those BRIT employees that ride their bikes to work.
- Recycled sheetrock for ceiling panels
- Recycled tennis shoes and tires are used in the rubber-based flooring.
- Fresh air system
- Sun shading for the eastern, western and southern facing windows.
 |
| Passive lighting, Bamboo ceiling, Sinker Cypress wall |
In all BRIT cost $48 million dollars of which $44 million was donate by four organizations and the remaining
$4 million came from donations from the public.
Mark Thompson, Green Ox Energy
Green Ox Energy is renewable energy company based out of Dallas. They focus more on the electrical aspect of renewable energy. What they do is operate as a consultant on your behalf to get the best prices on renewable energy products directly from the manufacture. Business has been picking up as environmental concerns among residential owners and businesses continue to grow. Some of those concerns evolve around the massive amounts of water associated with producing electricity. Based on the mix of fuels and cooling technologies, the average U.S. household indirectly uses 39,829 gallons of water per month as associated with producing electricity is concerned. Ouch!!! This is in comparison to the direct use of 7,336 gallons of water by that same household. Natural gas is a good alternative to electricity however the methods used to extract the gas from the Earth has created several concerns.
This leaves us with the most popular methods of renewable energy to chose from. Wind, geothermal and solar. Texas is the leading wind producer of electricity however some of the efficiency of wind is lost during the transmission of the electricity produced and the long distance the electricity has to travel from a west Texas windmill farm to a house hold appliance somewhere in east Texas. Geothermal is used more for heating and cooling purposes but doesn't create electricity. Geothermal systems can also become very expensive so depending on your average climate and energy used by your HVAC system geothermal might not be the best solution. This leaves solar energy.
The sun is the most abundant and renewable resource we have on earth. Harnessing the suns energy is accomplished through the use of photovoltiac panels or cylinders. A few of the obstacles that you will have with solar energy is some neighborhood HOAs don't allow them, if you live any anything other then a single family resident then it's probably impossible to set up panels or if your roof or grounds have tall obstructions that will block a majority of the sun exposure.
Benefits:
- 25 year supply of renewable energy
- Environmental Benefits
- Fixed cost
- you can set it and forget it
The common conception about renewable energy is that it cost a lot of money to set up. Although this can be the case but with solar products there are alternatives that can either save you money or cover the cost entirely.
•Capital
Purchase
ROI
considerations
30% Federal Tax Incentive
Possible
Local/State/TDSP Incentives
Accelerated
Depreciation
•Solar
Lease No Capital cost
No
System ownership
Actual
savings
vary
•Power
Purchase Agreements (PPA’s)
No
Capital cost
Long
Term fixed price
Mark mentioned a few ways to make money in the Solar industry:
- You can own a business that designs, install and offers maintenance agreements then sells the agreement then another company who will then maintain the system.
- Own a distributed energy generational company. These companies may own multiple roof top systems through buying PPA (power purchasing agreements) make money off the difference between what it cost to operate the systems and how much they can sell energy for.
- Solar REITs (real estate investment trusts). REITs are a form of financial vehicle that traded like stocks. There not currently available but are being considered.
With the flexibility, reduction of cost and the over all efficiency, solar is an easy choice when decided to go with green energy alternatives.
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