Energy Reduction Examples

Kimberly-Clark Peru was first in the country to have its own natural gas decompression plant. We have installed a plant at our Puente Piedra mill. The natural gas generates 50 percent less carbon dioxide than R500. Since natural gas usage began in April 2009, the mill has seen significant cost savings.

The New Milford, Connecticut, mill started a combined heat and power plant in 2008 to supply heat and electricity. The plant has reduced demand on the local electric system by up to 35 MWh (offsetting the facility's electrical load) and having the capacity to generate a surplus of 20 MWh electricity. This surplus is distributed through the transmission system, and provides power for approximately 35,000 homes.

In Kentucky, the Owensboro mill installed a heat recovery system to capture heat from one of its process exhaust stacks to use to heat rooms throughout the mill. The installation eliminated natural gas usage during winter months. The benefit is a reduction in natural gas of 100,000 MBTUs/yr and the associated GHGs.

In November 2008, our Correia Pinto facility in Brazil commissioned a new boiler that burns approximately 80 percent biomass fuel to replace its current fossil fuel boiler. This reduces the mill's annual energy costs by approximately $1 million and reduces annual carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 15,000 metric tons per year. The mill also burns 20 percent of the sludge produced at the waste water treatment plant, which equals 12 tons per day or 4,300 tons per year. The process diverts this waste stream from entering the landfill.

Kimberly-Clark is an Energy Partner of the EPA Landfill Methane Outreach Program, which promotes the use of methane produced within landfills to replace fossil fuels as an energy source and thereby reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

From 2007 to 2010, our mill in Alanno, Italy, invested in electrical efficiency and delivered CO2 emission savings of 10,000 tons. Investments included new high efficiency engines, installation of inverters on pumps and ventilators, switching from mercury to sodium lamps, installation of lamp dimmers, continuous monitoring to avoid energy waste caused by pressure leaks and an employee engagement campaign targeting savings on lighting and air conditioning. The mill also reduced emissions through heat reuse by recovering steam exhaust to be reused in the tissue making process. Additional projects planned in the next two years are expected to generate a further 5 percent energy savings.

Increasing our use of renewable energy is a key part of our strategy to reduce GHG emissions. During the past year,
several of our facilities found ways to use solar energy, methane gas and biomass fuel:

• Solar thermal panels for water heating were installed on the roof at our operating headquarters in Roswell, Georgia, U.S.
• Landfill gas provides steam for our mill in Beech Island, South Carolina, U.S., replacing 20 percent of the natural gas usage in one boiler.
• A new boiler that uses wood waste was installed at a Kimberly-Clark Safeskin facility in Thailand.
• We partnered with Duke Energy to place 361 solar panels on the property of our Berkeley Mills manufacturing plant in Hendersonville, North Carolina, U.S. Ground-mounted solar panels covering approximately 10,000 square feet now generate enough electricity to power 10 average-size homes. The 83-kilowatt system is one of 18 sites across North Carolina participating in Duke Energy’s distributed solar generation program.

Using landfill methane (a powerful greenhouse gas) as an alternative fuel source reduces the need for natural gas use at our mills, and it captures and uses a fuel which is normally flared off and wasted at the landfill site. Kimberly-Clark, an energy partner of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Landfill Methane Outreach Program, worked with the EPA during 2010 to identify potential sites to capture methane near many of our facilities in Mexico, Europe and Latin America. Based on this investigation, Kimberly-Clark de Mexico has identified one landfill that is a candidate for a direct-use landfill gas project.

We’ve made substantial progress in reducing GHGs from our supply chain. In 2010, Kimberly-Clark dedicated the first U.S. multi-use industrial park hydrogen-fueling station at its distribution center in Graniteville, South Carolina – a move that is expected to dramatically reduce GHG emissions from our supply chain. The new station supplies hydrogen directly to Kimberly-Clark’s entire fleet of 25 hydrogen-powered forklifts. By replacing lead acid batteries with new fuel-cell powered equipment, Kimberly-Clark expects to reduce carbon emissions by 90 percent, lower costs and drive efficiencies. The hydrogen-powered forklifts take approximately 75 percent less time to fuel and need to be refueled less frequently.

Through involvement in the EPA SmartWay Transport Partnership, Kimberly-Clark is reducing carbon dioxide emissions intensity and saving fuel through logistics and supply chain involvement. Since we joined the program in 2006, Kimberly-Clark has reduced the miles traveled for U.S. shipping by 7 percent. In fact, Kimberly-Clark was awarded the SmartWay Excellence Award three consecutive years in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Kimberly-Clark’s Global Energy Solutions Team (GEST) identified locations where solar would be a potential alternative energy source. In October 2011 our mill in Romagnano, Italy, completed the installation of rooftop solar panel system. The project is expected to enable the mill to reduce its energy purchase from the Italian electricity grid by 10 percent while reducing annual greenhouse gas emissions by 600 tons of CO2e – the equivalent of taking 200 cars off the road. The solar panel installation, which was done in conjunction with a necessary roof upgrade, was undertaken with financial assistance from the Italian government. Building on the Romagnano achievement, a solar feasibility study focused on Asia Pacific facilities was conducted in 2011 with potential sites in India and Malaysia under evaluation.

In July 2011, Kimberly-Clark began purchasing wind power for its World Headquarters in Dallas, Texas, U.S., through the use of Green-e energy certified power from Constellation Energy. The certificates will match 100 percent of electricity use at our Dallas headquarters (approximately 3,300 megawatt-hours of electricity per year) from July 2011 through June 2014. Kimberly-Clark’s certificates are sourced from wind-energy facilities in Texas. One certificate is created for each megawatt-hour of renewable power that is delivered to the electric grid. Once a certificate is sold, it is retired, ensuring that each is used only one time.

Yankee dryers are used on Kimberly-Clark tissue machines to remove water in the final step of the tissue manufacturing process. This is a very energy intensive part of the tissue manufacturing process and has a large impact on manufacturing costs. In 2009, Kimberly-Clark installed insulation panels on the dryers at our Koblenz and Reisholz mills in Germany to reduce energy loss. The project was so successful that we expanded the insulation program to 26 additional global tissue mills. In 2011, the modifications yielded an estimated reduction of 10,290 metric tons of CO2 emissions and an average 5percent reduction in Yankee Dryer steam usage on each tissue machine.

The Family Care Production Facility at Kluang in Johor, Malaysia, manufactures a range of paper products, including Kleenex facial tissues and Scott paper towels. Aiming to reduce energy consumption and improve visibility within the plant, in 2011 the company replaced the metal halide lighting fixtures on the manufacturing floor with Light Emitting Diode (LED) High Bays lighting fixtures. The Kluang team determined that the product offered the best combination of efficiency, payback period and lifespan. The 150-watt LED High Bays lights have resulted in a 60 percent reduction – 208,500 kWh of electricity – in annual lighting energy consumption in 2011. The Kluang mill continues to explore other uses for this energy-saving lighting technology.

In 2011, Kimberly-Clark announced a $65 million reinvestment in its Australian manufacturing facilities. Of this, $6.5 million is directed to the Albury plant to expand its capability to make innovative products and reduce carbon emissions. The Millicent Mill in South Australia, which produces Kleenex tissue products, is receiving $30 million to finance the installation of a combined heat and power generation project. When complete in 2013, these investments will result in annual CO2 reduction of approximately 90,000 tons, the equivalent of removing 32,000 small cars from the road.