Potential for reducing paper mill energy use and carbon dioxide emissions through plant-wide energy audits: A case study in China

The pulp and paper industry is one of the most energy-intensive industries worldwide. An energy audit is a primary step toward improving energy efficiency at the facility level. This paper describes a plant-wide energy audit aimed at identifying energy conservation and carbon dioxide (CO₂) mitigation opportunities at a paper mill in Guangdong province, China. We describe the energy audit methods, relevant Chinese standards, methods of calculating energy and carbon indicators, baseline energy consumption and CO₂ emissions of the audited paper mill, and nine energy-efficiency improvement opportunities identified by the audit. For each of the nine options, we evaluate the energy conservation and associated CO₂ mitigation potential. The total technical energy conservation potential for these nine opportunities is 967.8 terajoules (TJ), and the total CO₂ mitigation potential is equal to 93,453 tonnes CO₂ annually, representing 14.4 percent and 14.7 percent, respectively, of the mill's total energy consumption and CO₂ emissions during the audit period.