Beer Company Provides Beer-Fueled Cars for the DNC

DENVER, CO -- Organizers for the Democratic National Convention want it to be the "greenest" convention ever, so they've contacted the Molson Coors Brewing Company for help.

Coors' Golden plant produces roughly 3 million gallons of ethanol a year.

The company has agreed to supply all the E85 ethanol needed to power the fleet of GM flex-fuel vehicles being driven at the DNC in August.

Andrew Ballard, the director of transportation for the DNC, says Molson Coors has been named the official ethanol provider for the DNC.

"Hey, I'm always up for free gas, especially with prices being what they are today. We're going to have 450 cars in our fleet; 20 percent of our fleet will run on E85," he said.

While most ethanol comes from corn, Molson Coors' ethanol is produced from waste beer.

The beer is lost during packaging or is considered substandard for public consumption.

Company representative Al Timothy says Coors is the country's first major brewer to convert waste beer to ethanol.

The brewery started doing it in 1996."We have beer that doesn't meet our quality standards and so that beer is sent to ethanol towers down here and distilled down into 400 proof fuel-grade ethanol.

That fuel grade ethanol is blended with 15 percent gasoline and sold as E85 fuel here in Colorado," said Timothy.

The donation is part of Coors $1 million DNC sponsorship commitment.