Georgia-Pacific ends coal usage at Broadway mill
Broadway Mill stops using coal after transition to natural gas completed, also will remove 400-foot smokestack in 2021
Georgia-Pacific’s Green Bay Broadway plant shut down the last coal-fired boiler at the end of December 2020. This occurred after the installation of a second natural gas boiler at the facility, which became operational in September last year.
According to We are Green Bay, GP invested nearly $ 27 million to purchase and install the boiler, which produces steam for process use and power generation at the mill. The mill’s first natural gas boiler was installed in 2015, which replaced the facility’s largest coal-fired boiler, helping the mill reduce air emissions and meet future regulations.
As soon as the coal boiler is switched off, the plant’s greenhouse gas emissions will be drastically reduced. According to the Green Bay Press Gazette, Mike Kawleski, a spokesperson for Georgia-Pacific, said the transition complements other sustainability initiatives at the plant, which include recycling two-thirds of the water used by the plant and projects that reduce consumption of electricity.
The vice president of manufacturing for GP’s Green Bay Operations commented that with the addition of the second boiler and the elimination of coal, the facility’s SO2 emissions will be reduced to almost zero and NOx will be reduced by 90 percent.
The most visible change in the transition from the coal to natural gas plant will be the removal of the last 120-meter smokestack from the plant’s site in 2021.
For the next two years, Georgia-Pacific is also scheduled to spend more than $ 14 million to bring down and remove coal handling systems, coal boilers and other obsolete equipment and buildings.
