Anheuser-Busch—the St. Louis-based brewer behind Budweiser, Busch, Michelob and more—announced Tuesday a seven-year deadline on a slew of sustainability targets.
The company's new U.S. 2025 Sustainability Goals focus on four key areas: renewable electricity and carbon reduction, water stewardship, smart agriculture and circular packaging.
Among the goals, the company wants 100 percent of its purchased electricity to come from renewable sources by 2025, as well as a 25 percent reduction of carbon dioxide emissions across the value chain.
It also wants 100 percent of its facilities to be engaged in "water efficiency efforts," and all of its packaging to either be returnable or made with majority recycled content by the same deadline.
"More and more, consumers are choosing to engage with companies that are doing good in the world," said Anheuser-Busch President and CEO Michel Doukeris in a statement provided to EcoWatch. "As the leading American brewer, we have a responsibility to set an example and be good stewards of the environment. It's not just the right thing to do, it's good for business."
Also Tuesday, along with Anheuser-Busch's 2025 goals initiative, Budweiser announced that all Buds sold in the U.S. will feature the "100% Renewable Electricity" symbol. The new logo will start appearing this Earth Day on April 22.
"The symbol celebrates that Anheuser-Busch, through its partnership with Enel Green Power, now secures 50 percent of its purchased electricity from wind power—more than the electricity used to brew Budweiser in the U.S. each year," Anheuser-Busch touted.
Cheers! Budweiser Switches All U.S. Brewing to Renewables https://t.co/xDxGY92umV @RenewablesNews @Good_Energy @rechargenews— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1516882516.0
Anheuser-Busch's new initiatives build on the 2025 Global Sustainability Goals recently announced by Belgian parent company and world's largest brewery, AB InBev. Last year, the global beer giant vowed to completely shift from fossil fuels by 2025, including investing in their own renewable energy sources.
"We take great pride in our sustainability efforts and our long history of striving to be good stewards of the environment. Now, we are challenging ourselves to do more," Doukeris said. "Our company has been around for 165 years, and these goals will ensure that we continue to make meaningful contributions toward building strong communities and a healthy environment for the next 165 years."
Doukeris told FOX Business that the company's new green efforts will not increase the price of its brews. Rather, President Trump's new 10 percent tariff on aluminum will.
"We are always concerned with the cost of input and output costs for consumers and retailers. Aluminum is a very important item, so as these costs [go] up, it will dramatically impact the final cost of beer and can have impact on the number of jobs," he said.
Last month, AB InBev CEO Carlos Brito told Bloomberg that the cost could increase up to 3 percent.
"When you put tariffs on aluminum in the U.S., for sure that will increase the price of beer for consumers," Brito said. "For example, 10 percent on aluminum at the current prices, that will represent 2 percent to 3 percent more pricing for the consumer. That's more than inflation."
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Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker vetoed a sweeping climate bill on Thursday that would have put the commonwealth on a path to eliminating carbon emissions by 2050.
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By Ajit Niranjan
World leaders and businesses are not putting enough money into adapting to dangerous changes in the climate and must "urgently step up action," according to a report published Thursday by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
Adaptation Has a Long Way to Go
<p>The Adaptation Gap Report, now in its 5th year, finds "huge gaps" between what world leaders agreed to do under the 2015 <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/5-years-paris-climate-agreement/a-55901139" target="_blank">Paris Agreement</a> and what they need to do to keep their citizens safe from climate change.</p><p>A review by the Global Adaptation Mapping Initiative of almost 1,700 examples of climate adaptation found that a third were in the early stages of implementation — and only 3% had reached the point of reducing risks.</p><p>Disasters like storms and droughts have grown stronger than they should be because people have warmed the planet by burning fossil fuels and chopping down rainforests. The world has heated by more than 1.1 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution and is on track to warm by about 3°C by the end of the century.</p><p>If world leaders <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/climate-change-performance-index-how-far-have-we-come/a-55846406" target="_blank">deliver on recent pledges</a> to bring emissions to <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/joe-bidens-climate-pledges-are-they-realistic/a-56173821" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">net-zero</a> by the middle of the century, they could almost limit warming to 2°C. The target of the Paris Agreement, however, is to reach a target well below that — ideally 1.5°C. </p><p>There are two ways, scientists say, to lessen the pain that warming will bring: mitigating climate change by cutting carbon pollution and adapting to the hotter, less stable world it brings.</p>The Cost of Climate Adaptation
<p>About three-quarters of the world's countries have national plans to adapt to climate change, according to the report, but most lack the regulations, incentives and funding to make them work.</p><p>More than a decade ago, rich countries most responsible for climate change pledged to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 in climate finance for poorer countries. UNEP says it is "impossible to answer" whether that goal has been met, while an OECD study published in November found that between 2013 and 2018, the target sum had not once been achieved. Even in 2018, which recorded the highest level of contributions, rich countries were still $20 billion short.</p><p>The yearly adaptation costs for developing countries alone are estimated at $70 billion. This figure is expected to at least double by the end of the decade as temperatures rise, and will hit $280-500 billion by 2050, according to the report.</p><p>But failing to adapt is even more expensive.</p><p>When powerful storms like cyclones Fani and Bulbul struck South Asia, early-warning systems allowed governments to move millions of people out of danger at short notice. Storms of similar strength that have hit East Africa, like <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/zimbabwe-after-cyclone-idai-building-climate-friendly-practices/a-54251885" target="_blank">cyclones Idai</a> and Kenneth, have proved more deadly because fewer people were evacuated before disaster struck.</p><p>The Global Commission on Adaptation estimated in 2019 that a $1.8 trillion investment in early warning systems, buildings, agriculture, mangroves and water resources could reap $7.1 trillion in benefits from economic activity and avoided costs when disasters strike.</p>Exploring Nature-Based Solutions
<p>The report also highlights how restoring nature can protect people from climate change while benefiting local communities and ecology.</p><p><a href="https://www.dw.com/en/climate-fires-risk-climate-change-bushfires-australia-california-extreme-weather-firefighters/a-54817927" target="_blank">Wildfires</a>, for instance, could be made less punishing by restoring grasslands and regularly burning the land in controlled settings. Indigenous communities from Australia to Canada have done this for millennia in a way that encourages plant growth while reducing the risk of uncontrolled wildfires. Reforestation, meanwhile, can stop soil erosion and flooding during heavy rainfall while trapping carbon and protecting wildlife.</p><p>In countries like Brazil and Malaysia, governments could better protect coastal homes from floods and storms by restoring <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/mudflats-mangroves-and-marshes-the-great-coastal-protectors/a-50628747" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">mangroves</a> — tangled trees that grow in tropical swamps. As well as anchoring sediments and absorbing the crash of waves, mangroves can store carbon, help fish populations grow and boost local economies through tourism. </p><p>While nature-based solutions are often cheaper than building hard infrastructure, their funding makes up a "tiny fraction" of adaptation finance, the report authors wrote. An analysis of four global climate funds that spent $94 billion on adaptation projects found that just $12 billion went to nature-based solutions and little of this was spent implementing projects on the ground.</p><p>But little is known about their long-term effectiveness. At higher temperatures, the effects of climate change may be so great that they overwhelm natural defenses like mangroves.</p><p>By 2050, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/rising-sea-levels-should-we-let-the-ocean-in-a-50704953/a-50704953" target="_blank">coastal floods</a> that used to hit once a century will strike many cities every year, according to a 2019 report on oceans by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the gold standard on climate science. This could force dense cities on low-lying coasts to build higher sea walls, like in Indonesia and South Korea, or evacuate entire communities from sinking islands, like in Fiji.</p><p>It's not a case of replacing infrastructure, said Matthias Garschagen, a geographer at Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany and IPCC author, who was not involved in the UNEP report. "The case for nature-based solutions is often misinterpreted as a battle... but they're part of a toolkit that we've ignored for too long."</p>- Beavers Could Help in Adapting to Climate Change - EcoWatch ›
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