Pulp & Paper
The Paper Manufacturing market is made up of mills that utilize wood or recycled fiber to manufacture pulp or paper; as well as industries that use pulp and paper to make products such as paperboard boxes.1

CHP installations in our region (Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas) include newsprint mills, paper and paperboard mills, as well as setup paperboard box manufacturing facilities.

For a more in-depth look at this industry, see the EPA's Profile of the Pulp and Paper Industry.

Additional information is available about the:

• Current Status
• Future Potential
• Benefits, Challenges & Solutions

The Paper Manufacturing market is experiencing rising energy costs. In fact this issue is "the most pervasive problem facing North American mill managers today", according to a 2005 survey of pulp and paper mill managers.6 Increasing competition both at home and abroad has further highlighted the importance of cost cutting and efficiency improvements. More than 95 US mills have closed since 2000.2

Opportunities to control rising energy costs include:

• Improvements to industrial processes, such as heat recovery at the thermomechanical pulping and paper drying stages.7
• Capturing waste heat from boiler flue gasses and blowdown steam recovery7
• Improving energy reliability and quality

In addition, the industry wants to demonstrate responsible environmental stewardship.3 This market is actively working to reduce fresh water consumption, solid waste generation and emissions.

Typically, this market has:

• Large annual operating hours (most more than 8000 hrs/yr)4
• Large coincident electricity/thermal loads
• High process heat demands
• Aging plant infrastructure
• Diverse biomass fuel and fossil fuel energy stream

The paper industry is ideally suited for CHP because of these characteristics. In fact, the paper industry is second only to the chemicals industry in CHP installed capacity.5 However paper ranks first in future CHP potential.8 (For more on these topics, go to Current Status and Future Potential.)

For a diagrammatic summary of this market's energy use and loss, please see the U.S. Department of Energy's Forest Products Energy Footprint.

CHP systems reduced energy costs and generated substantial revenue from sales of excess capacity. Aging boilers were replaced.

Issues included spotty start-up reliability, underperforming equipment, and differences in corporate culture between utility and mill business partners.


For additional case studies, visit Distributed Energy Case Study Database supported by the United States Department of Energy. Cases may be searched by market sector, site name, state, power size range, prime mover, fuel type and thermal energy use.