Coopers Brewery

Coopers Brewery relocated to accommodate its growing business in 2001 and had the foresight to install an energy cogeneration plant. Colloquially known as “co-gen”, the plant halves the carbon emissions of energy used in brewing beer. In this case, natural gas goes into the plant, which makes electricity on-site, and also captures heat from the process to make steam. This is not a renewable form of energy, but it is twice as efficient as conventional processes in Australia to provide large amounts of process heat and power. Another way the brewery re-captures and reuses resources is through a unique filtering process that gives a better yield of grain to sugar, creating a distinctive flavour in the process. During fermentation, a heat exchanger captures hot air which is re-used for cleaning and sterilization, instead being lost to the atmosphere. Chilling is provided by three regular compressors, and one absorption chiller. An absorption unit is effectively recycling waste heat without generating any extra emissions – it cost three times as much as a conventional chiller but it is totally free to run.