New steam turbine in Russian pulp and paper company improves environment

The company is a leading pulp and paper producer with over 75 years of history. The company permanently invests in new equipment, environmental measures and development of own staff, as the well-being of the whole city depends on its success. However, the pulp and paper industry is highly energy intensive and energy costs constitute a large share in the total production costs.

To reduce the energy costs, the company decided to replace the obsolete turbo generator. The investment was financed through ECO Leasing scheme of a RuSEFF Participating Financial Institution (PFI). The low efficient old turbo generator, producing power for the paper mill, was causing a costly problem by requiring more coal, than the modern equipment.

The RuSEFF team supported the company with analysis of the proposed technology, in particular, the potential of energy savings, financial-technical parameters and profitability of the project.

The €9.7 million investment allowed the company to reduce its energy consumption by 170,000 MWh per year, leading to substantial cost savings of €1.65 million per year. It means the investment will be repaid from energy savings in just six years. The company will feel the benefits of this replacement immediately with the decreased energy bill and improved production process. In addition, the company reduced its CO2 emissions by ultimate 40,000 tonnes per year, making its valuable input to mitigation of the negative effect of human activity on climate.

This project demonstrates that energy efficiency investments deliver extremely high production costs’ savings for large production companies. Therefore, it is worth checking the energy saving potential of possible investment measures to choose the most profitable and attractive investment.