Procter & Gamble Fires Up Massive Biomass Investment
- by Heather Clancy, March 3, 2015, Forbes
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"409","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"311","style":"width: 333px; height: 216px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"480"}}]]With companies like Apple and Google regularly stealing headlines for their solar and wind investments, it’s easy to forget “renewable” energy comes in many forms.
For consumer products giant Procter & Gamble biomass continues to be highly strategic. Indeed, it’s working on one of the biggest corporate biomass plants in the United States, a 50-megawatt installation at its Bounty and Charmin manufacturing plant in Albany, Georgia.
The $200 million project, spearheaded by Exelon subsidiary Constellation, is actually a replacement for a much smaller boiler that’s been in service for more than 30 years. The new cogeneration technology will provide 100% of the steam needed to run the production line, and approximately 60-70% of the energy for the facility, said Len Sauer, P&G’s vice president of global sustainability. The previous technology contributed about 30% of the total energy needed at the site.