Energy Management for Improved Energy Efficiency in the Pulp and Paper Industry : Success Factors for Strengthening Drivers and Overcoming Barriers

Abstract: Industrial energy efficiency improves the profit and competitive advantage of companies. The pulp and paper industry (PPI)being one of the five most energy-intensive industries uses 5.6% of global industrial energy, according to the InternationalEnergy Agency. It is one of the key sectors that is faced with the challenge of improving energy efficiency (EE). The PPI isnot less important in Sweden where it uses approximately 52% of the total industrial energy, employing more than 20000people and where improvement of the energy end-use by 1% corresponds to estimated savings of approximately 218 MSEKannually. Energy management (EnM) is a means for improving EE. However, despite research showing the possibility forannual improvement of the energy end-use by 5.5-19.4% by technical measures, EnM is not always used to its full potentialor often hardly implemented, resulting in an EE gap, i.e. the difference between the theoretical practically and cost-effectivelyachievable EE and actual EE. Why then does this EE gap exist? What are the drivers for and barriers to practicing EnM to itsfull potential and thus improving energy efficiency? What are the success factors for encouraging the drivers and overcomingthe barriers? What practical recommendations can be made that could lead to the improvement of energy efficiency? Afterextracting information from historical and current information using tools from multivariate data analysis (MDA), this PhDdissertation presents new knowledge that intends to contribute to overcome the challenges of improving energy efficiency inthe PPI. Specifically, international research primarily addressing EnM in the PPI showed that EnM in the PPI is perceived asEnM via technology, despite that EnM contains other aspects than EnM via technology, e.g. proactive EnM practices. Thisresult indicates the presence of a knowledge-gap on how to deploy EnM in the PPI. Studies on the PPI in Sweden showeddifferent EnM practices among the individual types of mills, i.e. pulp mills, paper mills and integrated-pulp and paper mills.Integrated mills seemed to measure the energy-related performance more than pulp mills and paper mills. However, the resultsalso suggested that the Swedish PPI worked continuously and regularly with EnM. Further, aside from the top ranked perceiveddrivers being economical and the barriers being organizational, knowledge related drivers and barriers were amongst the mostimportant. The results also showed that commonly only selected employees were trained in EnM, which indicated thatcommunication between the trained employees and operations personnel as well as the absorptive capacity for energy issuescould potentially be improved. Additionally, research showed that by using MDA, previously unstudied and unidentifiedconnections could be discovered. Namely, MDA showed that during the ten-year voluntary agreement policy program knownas PFE (Program for improved electricity efficiency in energy-intensive industry), less financially stable and less experiencedwith EnM companies tended to save electricity more than the more financially stable and more EnM experienced companies.Altogether, the success factors for EnM for improving energy efficiency could be summarized in the versatile 4M memorytool - The “4M for energy efficiency”: mind, measure, monitor and manage. The “4M for energy efficiency” suggests that allthe four “Ms” should be practiced simultaneously in order to maximize the achievement of goals of EnM.