Feb. 9. The City of Charlotte on Tuesday announced a partnership with Anheuser-Busch that debuted a sustainable beverage can made with a first-of-its-kind, low-carbon technology.

As a result of this partnership, Anheuser-Busch will donate to the city renewable energy credits, the equivalent electricity used to power all city-owned facilities for a week, which is equal to more than eight million kilowatt-hours.

Beginning Wednesday, Feb. 10, people will be able to purchase the low-carbon cans as part of a pilot with Michelob ULTRA. More than 2.5 million of the innovative low-carbon cans will hit shelves across North Carolina.

“The city is thrilled that Anheuser-Busch has chosen Charlotte to release its low-carbon-can pilot. Piloting new, disruptive technologies to reduce the carbon footprint of a product is exactly the type of innovation essential to making progress towards our Strategic Energy Action Plan goals,” said Sarah Hazel, the chief sustainability and resiliency officer for the City of Charlotte.

Last October, in a first for the canned-beverage industry, Anheuser-Busch announced a global partnership with Rio Tinto to produce cans that are infinitely recyclable and made from responsibly produced, low-carbon aluminum.

“At Anheuser-Busch, we strive to find a better, more sustainable way in all that we do. Building strong communities means building more sustainable communities and by bringing these low-carbon cans to North Carolina and partnering with the City of Charlotte, we are proud to set an example of how corporations, their supply chains, local government, and consumers can all work together to create a more sustainable future,” said Ingrid De Ryck, Chief Procurement and Sustainability Officer at Anheuser-Busch.

According to Anheuser-Busch, the low-carbon cans are the first in the world to be made using metal produced through a revolutionary, new, zero-carbon, aluminum-smelting process. This technology eliminates all direct greenhouse gases from the aluminum-smelting process, and instead produces oxygen.

In leveraging this metal, combined with Rio Tinto’s low-carbon aluminum made with renewable hydropower and recycled content, Anheuser-Busch produced its most sustainable beer can yet. It reduced carbon emissions by more than 30% per can compared to the brewer’s 2019 aluminum-can baseline.