US-based Vermont Coffee Company has announced that its coffee roasting facility in Middlebury, Vermont is now powered by 100 per cent renewable energy, and the company claims it is the first US coffee roaster to achieve this milestone.
The facility will now be 100 per cent powered by electricity and thermal energy sourced from methane, reducing carbon emissions in the production process.
Electricity will be sourced from anaerobic digesters operated by Addison County dairy farms, which extract methane gas from cow manure.
Meanwhile, thermal energy is sourced from methane recovered from a Quebec-based engineered landfill operated by EBI Énergie, and this methane replaces propane in the production process.
To ensure the success of the new energy supply agreement, the company claims that it invested in new coffee roasting equipment over the last few years, in order to make the company’s roasting operations more efficient.