(Photo: Kimberly-Clark’s Chester facility. Credit: Cavalier92, Flickr Creative Commons)[/caption]
Kimberly-Clark Corporation is investing more than $150 million in energy upgrades for the company’s mill in Chester, Pennsylvania. The three-year project includes replacing an onsite coal-fired plant with a more efficient gas-fired one.
The Chester mill mainly manufactures Scott bath tissue for the company’s North America market, a type of product the facility has been making for more than 100 years. According to the company, the mill produces 2 million rolls of toilet paper daily.
In addition to the company’s investment, the project received a $6 million grant from Pennsylvania’s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program administered by the Delaware County Commerce Center.
“The energy supply modernization investment would increase energy efficiency, and allow the mill to transition away from the use of waste coal to cleaner burning fuels for energy supply,” State Senator Tom Killion (R-9) and Representative Brian Kirkland (D-159) said in announcing the grant. “This change would substantially reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions and also eliminate the need for 75 truck trips per day related to the use of waste coal at the plant.”
Last year Kimberly-Clark announced plans to build a $75 million combined heat-power plant at its mill in Mobile, Alabama, in order to increase the mill’s efficiency while lowering long-term costs and emissions, AL.com reported. The new co-generation plant is expected to come online during the first quarter of 2019. Another co-generation project is underway at a manufacturing plant in Puenta Piedra, Peru.
For 2022, the company’s goal is an absolute 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to a 2005 baseline. “We deploy energy conservation and alternative energy programs to minimize climate change impacts, reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our operations and transform our financial performance,” Kimberly-Clark’s 2017 sustainability report published this summer says.
The company’s 2017 target was reducing Scope 1 and 2 absolute greenhouse gas emissions by 18% over a 2005 baseline. “Through deployment of our energy conservation and alternative energy programs, we achieved this goal and our cost savings targets,” the company reported in June.
