Sappi Somerset Mill Receives Green-e Marketplace Certification
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Sappi Fine Paper North America (SFPNA), Boston, Mass., USA, reports that its Somerset Mill in Skowhegan, Maine, has been certified by the Center for Resource Solutions' (San Francisco, Calif.) Green-e Marketplace program. The Somerset Mill secured the qualification through new investments in renewable energy generation. Sappi invested $49 million this past fall to upgrade the Somerset pulp mill's recovery boiler and related equipment.
Even before this recent investment, SFPNA notes, it has led the industry in the use of renewable energy and already has the lowest reported carbon footprint among domestic coated paper suppliers, with more than 85% of the total energy being derived from renewable resources at its coated fine paper mills.
Under the Green-e certification, 100% of the electricity used to manufacture Opus web paper at the Somerset Mill is Green-e certified renewable energy that is generated onsite by Sappi. Opus web now joins the line-up of SFPNA's current Green-e certified product offerings: Sappi's McCoy web, sheets and digital, Opus sheets and digital, Opus 30 web, and Flo sheets and digital, all of which have been Green-e certified via renewable energy generated at the Cloquet Mill in Minnesota.
Based on the audit conducted for this certification, initial estimates indicate the amount of Green-e certified renewable electricity generated from renewable resources at Sappi's Somerset Mill is approximately 260 million kWh annually, which is comparable to the yearly electrical usage of approximately 24,000 homes consuming nearly 11,000 kWh per year.
In addition to obtaining Green-e certification through the recovery cycle upgrade project, Sappi's Somerset Mill has also implemented several other major projects to improve energy efficiency and reduce the site's carbon footprint over the past year. This includes work underway to improve the efficiency of the pumping systems of PM 3 for which Sappi received an Efficiency Maine grant.
In 2008, already operating significantly better than industry average, Sappi established a five-year goal of reducing emissions from fossil fuels by 40% over its 2007 baseline. The metric for this goal includes both direct emissions from Sappi Fine Paper North America's mills, as well as emissions associated with purchased electricity. In terms of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, this is known as Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. At the end of the company's 2010 fiscal year, Sappi says it had already achieved more than a 40% reduction in just three years, outpacing targets proposed by climate change legislation.
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