Climate change is the major environmental issue of our time. The world is over-populated and our lifestyle and exploitation of natural resources impacts on the climate - primarily though emissions of greenhouse gases. The most significant of these gases is carbon dioxide. How does SCA fit into all this?
Producing and consuming forest products creates carbon dioxide emissions. At the same time, forestry activities restrict the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Forests store CO2 as they grow and forest products do the same during their life. Forest products can also replace products that have a higher carbon load. Biofuels are an energy source that does not increase net emissions of CO2 and can replace fossil fuels.
The chain from tree to the disposal of a wood or paper product in an incinerator or its biodegrading on a rubbish dump is a long and complex one, with many pluses and minuses along the way. On these pages we will try to explain how SCA Forest Products and the products we manufacture affect the global climate.
Forests store carbon
Wood fibre collects and stores CO2, as trees absorb CO2 from the air when they grow. When a forest adds one cubic metre of timber it absorbs 1.4 tonnes of CO2. One cubic metre of timber weighs about half a tonne. The fact that the CO2 absorbed exceeds the additional weight is because the tree only stores the carbon from the gas, releasing the oxygen back to the atmosphere.
With 2.5 million hectares of forest in northern Sweden, SCA is Europe's largest private forest owner. Annual growth in our forests is just under 7.5 million cubic metres, of which around 5.5 million cubic metres is harvested. Hence, the volume of wood in our forests is growing at the rate of nearly two million cubic metres each year, which equates to 2.6 million tonnes of CO2 being stored every year. Compare this to transport journeys in Sweden, which emit some 20 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year.
Around 60 per cent of the timber that SCA Forest Products uses comes from our own forests. The rest we buy primarily from private forest owners in northern Sweden, Austria and neighbouring countries. Both Sweden and Austria have comprehensive forestry legislation that requires replanting after felling, and overall forest volume is increasing in both countries. This means that harvesting activities do not result in a reduction in the total volume of forest and therefore do not increase CO2 emissions on a net basis.
Recycled paper stores carbon too
SCA's Laakirchen and Aylesford plants, located in Austria and the UK respectively, use a substantial amount of recycled paper in their products. Recycled paper contains wood fibre too. Using recycled paper keeps the wood fibre "in circulation" and stops it returning to the atmosphere as CO2 - for a while at least.
Providing wood for SCA Forest Products' factories does create CO2 emissions. Harvesting machines, tractor-trailers and recycling paper trucks run on diesel, and it takes just under two litres of diesel to fell and transport one cubic metre of timber to the factory. Small amounts of fossil fuel are also required to produce seedlings and to transport them to planting areas.
SCA is currently testing synthetic diesel in its tractor-trailers and transport vehicles. Synthetic diesel is currently produced from natural gas, which limits the net benefit in terms of lower CO2 emissions. Work is under way to develop biomass as a source of synthetic diesel, and if successful this could dramatically reduce SCA's transport CO2 emissions. SCA drivers have also been trained in ecodriving, which can cut consumption by at least 15 per cent.
SCA Forest Products strives to use locally sourced raw materials. In Sweden, our pulp and paper production is based solely on fresh wood fibre, and this is often sourced locally from SCA's own forests. Laakirchen uses wood from forests in Austria and neighbouring countries, as well as recycled paper from major Central European cities. Aylesford Newsprint, just outside London, uses only recycled paper and thus avoids long transport journeys.
Energy a key issue
Östrand pulp plant produces chlorinefree bleached sulphate pulp and a smaller amount of CTMP pulp. During the sulphate process, cellulose fibres (accounting for roughly half the volume) are separated from other wood residues. The residues are then incinerated in the soda recovery boiler, generating steam at high pressure. The chemicals used in the pulp treatment process are also recovered at this stage, while the steam is used to generate electricity in a turbine and to dry the pulp. When as much energy as possible has been extracted from the steam, the remaining hot water enters the local municipal heating network.
Östrand pulp factory is a major energy producer. Not only is it energy-sufficient, it also contributes power to the national grid. The plant also supplies the local Timrå municipality with its entire heating needs. Östrand uses minimal amounts of fossil fuel, primarily in its mesa oven which is used to prepare some of the chemicals used in pulp production.
Ortviken paper mill produces newsprint and coated publication papers, mainly using mechanical pulp. The pulp is produced on-site, using fresh spruce pulpwood that is ground up in large mills, or refiners. Though the refiners are energy-intensive - Ortviken is Sweden's second largest electricity user - the process of converting the wood into paper is highly efficient.
The Ortviken mill also uses large quantities of steam to dry the paper, producing the steam primarily from wood residues such as bark and twigs as well as excess heat from the refiners. Ortviken also uses steam to produce electricity and consumes some 1.9 terawatt hours from the national grid.
Ortviken's fossil fuel consumption is limited, so CO2 emissions are minimal. Sweden meets its electricity needs almost entirely from hydropower and nuclear energy, neither of which emits greenhouse gases. Hence, the mill's electricity consumption creates no significant carbon footprint.
Steam and electricity
SCA's Laakirchen plant produces SC paper, an uncoated publication paper used in magazines and catalogues. For raw material it uses timber (which just as at Ortviken is ground into mechanical pulp) and recycled paper. The latter is de-inked and washed before re-use. The Laakirchen mill requires electricity for the production of mechanical pulp and for producing the steam to dry the paper. Electricity and steam are produced at a jointly-owned plant fuelled by natural gas, which may be a fossil fuel but emits far less CO2 than oil or coal. Laakirchen also meets some of its electricity needs from a hydropower plant on the River Traun.
At Aylesford, SCA produces newsprint from recycled paper, and just as at Laakirchen, electricity and steam are produced by a natural gas-fuelled plant.
SCA Forest Products' eight sawmills consume substantially less energy than the paper mills but still need electricity to power their saws and conveyors and to dry the timber. Arrangements vary from sawmill to sawmill. Some produce energy from bark and other residues, while others rely on energy produced by local industry.
Wood dust from the sawmills is used to produce pellets, which are in turn used to replace oil for both household heating and large energy production plants. SCA's produces 800 gigawatts of pellets per year, sufficient to heat 30,000 homes.
Transport - a major CO2 source
We sell finished products - wood products, pulp and paper - to customers around the globe. Sixty eight per cent of SCA Forest Products' transport shipments are by boat, 24 per cent by truck and eight per cent by rail.
Although ships run on oil, they transport large quantities of goods, so their emissions per tonne and kilometre are relatively low. SCA's ro-ro vessels transport most of the pulp and paper from Östrand and Ortviken to terminals in the UK and continental Europe. These ships run on low-sulphur oil, are fitted with catalytic converters and are among the cleanest ships in northern Europe. In 2004, SCA Transforest received the European Union Clean Marine Award for its environmental achievements. SCA ships carry raw materials and industrial goods to northern Sweden when returning from continental Europe.
Rail is an energy-efficient mode of transport that SCA uses for consignments of wood and finished goods. Regrettably, railway tracks do not penetrate deep into the forest or to the customer's door and must be combined with toad transport.
CO2 emissions from rail transport depend on how the electricity used to pull the trains is generated. In Sweden, this electricity generally comes from hydropower or nuclear energy and is therefore CO2-free. By contrast, Germany's electricity grid relies heavily on coal-fired power plants.
The final leg of the journey - to the customer - is invariably by lorry, and lorries run on diesel and emit CO2. SCA is working hard to improve its carbon footprint in this area by making deliveries more efficient, reducing dispatch distances and maximising loads. The ultimate choice of transport is a compromise between service, cost and environmental impact.
Products in use
Once we have delivered our products to the customer we no longer have control over them. But further processes - printing of newspapers and magazines, transport to the newsagent's or subscriber, and the customer's car journey to the newsagent's - also cause CO2 emissions.
When a newspaper or magazine has been read it may end up in a recycling container, it may be burnt (with or without energy recovery) or it may end up on a rubbish dump where it slowly biodegrades. In all cases, the carbon that the tree once used to bind the wood fibres returns once more to the atmosphere as CO2. However, this CO2 does not represent a net increase in greenhouse gases because it was once absorbed from the atmosphere by the tree.
Though forest products do not result in any net gain in CO2 their effect on climate can still vary widely. A magazine made from paper produced by a mill that uses high amounts of fossil fuel, that is transported over long distances, and which ends up on a rubbish dump, does not have the same positive effect as a magazine produced in a mill with low emissions of fossil CO2, which is transported efficiently and which is reused several times before finally being incinerated in an energy-efficient plant.
Wood products can be good substitutes for materials like steel, concrete and plastic as they generate much lower CO2 emissions. Wood is light, has strong insulation properties, can store CO2 for a century or more and is an effective biofuel.
Positive impact on climate
Forests, wood fibre and products made from wood fibre offer an excellent opportunity to avoid CO2 emissions or replace materials and fuels that release large quantities of CO2. When we fell a tree and process it efficiently to make products, only half of the energy content of the tree is consumed during the production process (discounting the fact that the finished products may later be burned for energy). Branches and treetops are collected for biofuel while bark and other residues are used as industrial fuel. A sulphate pulp plant uses half of the raw wood for energy production. Sawdust is collected and turned into fuel pellets. Were the entire tree used for fuel it would only increase biofuel supply by around 50 per cent - and at the cost of losing all the benefits of wood products, pulp, and publication paper.
Forests can have a beneficial impact on climate in other ways. SCA has teamed up with Norwegian energy utility Statkraft to build wind farms on forest land in northern Sweden. A total of 400 turbines with combined generation capacity of 2.8 terawatt hours of electricity per year are in the pipeline at a cost of €1.7 billion. This is more electricity than SCA uses in a year and is three times the amount of wind power that Sweden produced in 2006.
SCA has introduced the fast-growing contorta pine on 280,000 hectares, an area equivalent to 14 per cent of its forest holdings. Contorta grows about 40 per cent faster than Swedish pine, and this fast growth results in some 2 million tonnes of CO2 being collected every year - double the total amount of CO2 emitted by SCA Forest Products' operations every year.
Björn Lyngfelt, Vice President Communications, SCA Forest Products AB
Source: PaperGram 1/2008