Bottoms-up: Australia's excess beer turned into renewable energy

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With the coronavirus hitting the local brewing industry hard, leading to an oversupply of beer, many breweries have turned to biogas production to ensure that not all is lost.

When Australia's coronavirus lockdown forced bars and restaurants to shut down in March, breweries were left with huge inventories of unsold, stale beer. 

At the Glenelg Wastewater Treatment Plant in South Australia, millions of liters of unused beer from local breweries have been converted into renewable energy to power its water treatment process in recent months, resulting in the production of 654 MWh of electricity in June. 

The Glenelg plant typically uses industrial organic waste feed to produce biogas via Anaerobic Digestion (AD) which provides 80% of the plant's energy needs. The expired beer is effectively added to this feed...