Vermont Coffee Company has announced that it is using 100% renewable biogas to roast its coffee.

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Image: Vermont Coffee Company products are recognizable on store shelves with its environmentally-friendly brown paper bags. Photo" Courtesy of PRNewsfoto/Vermont Coffee Company.

Vermont Coffee Company has been trying to get to this place—roasting coffee with 100% renewable energy—for a very long time.

Vermont Coffee Company founder and CEO Paul Ralston said: “Renewable electricity was the easy part. The real challenge was getting a renewable thermal energy source to replace propane.”

Methane is the input for both forms of renewable energy. Anaerobic digesters operated by Addison County dairy farms extract valuable methane gas from cow manure and convert it into electricity. Known as Cow Power, this renewable energy source is delivered by Green Mountain Power. The source for the company’s renewable biogas is methane recovered from a Quebec-based engineered landfill operated by EBI Énergie Inc. and delivered by Vermont Gas Company.

Before making the conversion to 100% renewables, Vermont Coffee Company implemented a multi-year investment to make its roastery more energy efficient.

Ralston said: “It’s hard to believe, but we reduced the amount of fuel used to roast a pound of coffee by more than 70%, and electric consumption per pound has also been reduced dramatically.”

Energy efficiencies have come from adopting new roasting technology and modifying roasting processes.

Ralston said: “The capital investment to upgrade our roasters was significant, but our first responsibility is efficiency, and increased efficiency makes the higher cost of renewable energy less of an issue.

“Renewable bio-energy costs more to produce, and we voluntarily pay a premium price to our suppliers for the renewables we consume. It’s important that we invest in better technology so we’re not passing our higher utility costs on to our customers.”

Moving to renewable energy is very much in line with the company’s philosophy. Ralston said: “Our mission is ‘Coffee Roasted for Friends’, and our customers care that our coffee is 100% certified organic. We believe they’ll be excited that our energy now comes from 100% renewable sources.”

Source: Company Press Release