Heineken has announced a new programme to grow its share of renewable energy to 70% by 2030 and slash greenhouse gas emissions in the process.

The beer producer’s ‘Drop the C’ initiative, the name of which refers to reducing carbon dioxide, aims to increase the proportion of heat and power from clean sources from the current level of 14%.

It also plans to set new goals making distribution, packaging and cooling more sustainable, with these targets to be externally verified by the Science Based Targets initiative.

Since 2008, carbon emissions at the company’s breweries have decreased by 41% and it reached its 2020 emission targets for production three years early.

CEO Jean-François van Boxmeer said: “With all the good progress made in reducing our carbon dioxide emissions, now is the right time to set ourselves new targets.

“When I visit our breweries I want to see that we are brewing with real green energy and that we are not achieving our reduction targets by buying unbundled certificates.”

The beermaker has also vowed to continue working on reforestation projects with the goal of offsetting carbon emissions and supporting water preservation.

Budweiser is now brewing all its beer in the US using green power.