New Craft Beer Shows What is Possible with Solar Energy | Article

Pollinators play a critical role in global food production. In the United States alone, over 100 crop plants require pollination. However, wild and managed pollinator populations, particularly bees, are rapidly declining due to habitat destruction, increased development, and exposure to pesticides and parasites. Since 2006, U.S. beekeepers have lost over 30 percent of their colonies each year.

Credit: Atlas Brew Works

In an effort to combat this problem, Atlas Brew Works, a fully solar-powered brewery in Washington, D.C. offers a surprising solution - a pollinator-friendly beer, Sunny Honey Saison. Brewed using solar power and with honey harvested from pollinator-friendly solar arrays, this limited-edition beer not only promotes pollinator populations but also shows the public what is possible with solar energy.

“We have a lot of practices that we try to instill in our people and our operations to focus on being environmentally-friendly,” Atlas Brew Works founder and CEO Justin Cox said. “I think everyone needs to understand the position that the planet and the environment is in and so as part of our company, we wanted to incorporate that into what we do.”

Atlas Brew Works collaborated with Fresh Energy, a clean energy non-profit based in Minnesota, to produce the beer. Fresh Energy provided honey to Atlas Brew Works that was harvested from pollinator-friendly solar sites, which use the land beneath the panels to plant vegetation that is beneficial to local pollinators. According to Rob Davis, the director for the Center for Pollinators in Energy at Fresh Energy, the land surrounding ground-mounted solar arrays can be designed in a variety of ways - from using gravel and turf grass to, in the case of pollinator-friendly solar, ecologically beneficial vegetation.

“When we are using prime and arable land, we can actually design something that is meaningfully better for agriculture and ecosystems,” Davis said. “So pollinator-friendly solar is really about rethinking the seed mix that is used on the solar projects for the majority of the site and making an incremental improvement in the seed mix designs so that they benefit both managed and native pollinators.”

According to Davis, pollinator-friendly solar is one way to accomplish both clean energy and sustainable agricultural goals, which is exactly why Atlas Brew Works and Fresh Energy decided to collaborate. To them, this collaboration can show consumers that investing in clean energy can bring more than just electricity. It is a way to preserve habitats and ensure a stable food supply, as well as an opportunity for new innovations and partnerships.

“We could solve multiple problems at the same time, we can tackle all of these environmental and agricultural challenges that we have and celebrate a delicious future,” Davis said.

Credit: Atlas Brew Works

Sunny Honey Saison is proof that this delicious future is closer than it seems. This innovative beer is not only unique in its production but also in its taste. Daniel Vilarrubi, head brewer at Atlas, designed the beer with a simple grain build to keep the taste profile centered around the honey, which was harvested from apiaries just outside the fence of two pollinator-friendly solar arrays in Minnesota owned by Annapolis-based climate investment firm Hannon Armstrong and Chicago-based ENGIE Distributed Renewables.

“Many people have heard to add honey during the boil because it helps it mix better,” Vilarrubi said. “But, we wanted to try something different because, overall, there’s all of these wonderful aromatics from the honey, all of these awesome volatile flavor compounds that if you boil the honey, will flow right out of the air.”

So, Vilarrubi decided to add in the honey during the fermentation process. Since honey tends to be 100 percent fermentable, the honey did not add a lot of sweetness to the beer, but instead, added a lot of body.

“The really interesting thing is that you can really taste the flowers where the honey was made, Cox said. “It’s kind of a really complex flavor that sort-of changes as you continue to drink the beer and it’s very reminiscent of the different flowers that the pollinators were traveling to. It’s a pretty incredible taste.”

Credit: Rob Davis

The Fresh Energy and Atlas Brew Works teams hope that more collaborative initiatives continue to crop up in the future. According to a recent report by the Clean Energy States Alliance, seven states have passed legislation that allows solar projects to claim they are pollinator-friendly.

“From a policy perspective, communities can welcome solar developments with conditions. And that is a meaningful lever,” Davis said. “So when the communities buy clean energy, they can all be asking for more of these kinds of collaborations.”

Atlas hopes to continue making solar-powered pollinator-friendly brews in the future to show consumers that environmental solutions come in many forms.

“From our perspective, I think showing that even with environmental stewardship, you can still do some really cool, fun stuff,” Vilarrubi said. “I think people treat it like it’s a punishment but I think overall, it’s a reward.”

Author: Sydney O’Shaughnessy