Innovations for a competitive energy supply in the paper industry
From packaging to newspapers, from toilet paper to banknotes: paper is an essential part of our daily lives. Germany is the fourth largest paper producer in the world after China, the USA and Japan, producing approximately 21.6 million tonnes in 2022.
However, the industry faces national and global challenges: high energy costs, international competition, sustainability issues, digitalisation of production and changing demands for graphic paper and packaging materials.
In particular, high energy costs cannot be underestimated. For example, electricity costs in Germany are two to three times higher than those of European and international competitors. This hits hard for companies in energy-intensive industry, which are currently making giant strides in decarbonisation. The ecological footprint of the paper industry is immense: producing one tonne of paper consumes as much energy as producing one tonne of steel. To make one kilogram of paper requires: 2.2 kilos of wood, 5 kilowatt-hours of energy, 50 litres of water and 15 grams of chemical pollutants.
The sector is being urged to transform its energy supply to achieve the climate goal of CO₂ neutrality by 2045 while simultaneously securing affordable energy prices.
This is where ifesca comes in with data-driven solutions. Our goal is to facilitate the transition to renewable energies through intelligent energy management and create the possibility for a competitive energy supply.
Find the right strategy to transform your energy supply!
ifesca supports the desire to produce in a climate-neutral manner and is aware that the transformation is already underway.
With ifesca’s energy screening, you can take the first step. Energy screening is a data-based examination of the current energy supply at a location, where future cost reduction measures are sought in close coordination with the site. The result of the energy screening is a report on cost development, potential savings and investment costs required in the coming years. This also allows the economic impacts of possible use cases to be calculated, such as: optimised and decentralised own electricity supply through wind and photovoltaics; grid tariff optimisation through peak shaving and the use of flexibility; load shifting depending on volatile electricity prices; green hydrogen production; the use of excess electricity for steam generation; conversion to hydrogen-capable gas power plants; etc. This way, you can find the right strategy to achieve your company’s sustainability goals.
Our intelligent tool ifesca.ENERGY® also proves that with smart energy management, saving energy costs in ongoing operations has never been easier. ifesca.ENERGY® connects the data of your energy components into a smart overall system, ensuring a balance between energy supply and usage at all times. It intelligently combines energy flexibility, purchasing and marketing strategies to provide your operation with the greatest possible advantage through self-consumption and/or market-oriented recommendations for action.
Savings and efficiency gains through energy management solutions for the paper industry
The implementation of our innovative energy management solutions has already delivered outstanding results for industrial customers.
Our example customer, a large company in the paper industry with a connected load of over 50 megawatts, impressively demonstrates the benefits of intelligent energy management. The energy screening conducted revealed impressive electricity cost savings of over €2 million.
It was worthwhile to investigate the energy demand of energy-intensive machines and processes. It was found that mechanical wood pulping is particularly suitable for load shifting in the paper industry. In mechanical wood pulping, solid round wood is broken down into wood fibres using a grinding process, which requires electrical energy. Due to the possible storage of the pulp, the energy-intensive industrial process can be scaled down or up at certain times in order to adapt to fluctuating electricity prices.
Further savings were achieved by optimising intraday trading thanks to precise forecasts of the downtime of paper machines, expansion of the company’s own photovoltaic systems and grid tariff optimisation by means of storage (peak shaving).