Energie für nachhaltiges Recycling

En­ergy for Sus­tain­able Re­cy­cling

The Perlen Pa­pier AG im­proves its en­ergy ef­fi­ciency from year to year and even pro­duces its own elec­tric­ity. Nonethe­less, it de­pends on a se­cure and cost-ef­fec­tive en­ergy sup­ply.

Dirk Breuer ex­plains it with an image. «If you're going to cut down trees at all, you might as well turn them into a news­pa­per five times and burn the re­mains to gen­er­ate en­ergy, in­stead of feed­ing it straight into the fur­nace.», says the head of tech­nol­ogy & en­ergy at Perlen Pa­pier AG in cen­tral Switzer­land. In 2014, the com­pany pro­duced and sold 534,000 met­ric tons of newsprint and mag­a­zine paper. About 70 per­cent of this amount were de­rived from re­cy­cled paper. Pro­duc­ing paper is en­ergy in­ten­sive. Perlen Pa­pier con­sumes some 600 Gi­gawatt of elec­tric­ity and 400 Gi­gawatt of gas an­nu­ally—about the same amount as the nearby city of Lucerne with its 80,000 in­hab­i­tants. The com­pany buys its elec­tric­ity on the partly dereg­u­lated mar­ket at com­pet­i­tive prices. Eight per­cent of its en­ergy needs are cov­ered by elec­tric­ity it pro­duces at two com­pany-owned hy­draulic power sta­tions. The com­pany with its 350 em­ploy­ees is strongly af­fected by cur­rency fluc­tu­a­tions, be­cause 83% of its pro­duc­tion are sold abroad. All the more im­por­tant for Dirk Breuer not to have the com­pet­i­tive­ness of his com­pany com­pro­mised by un­nec­es­sary reg­u­la­tory ob­sta­cles. «Switzer­land still has a way to go in this re­spect.»

More about the com­pany at www.​perlen.​ch

Se­cure, Com­pet­i­tive En­ergy Sup­ply and Ef­fi­cient Pro­tec­tion of the En­vi­ron­ment

sonnePerlen Pa­pier AG ben­e­fits from a re­li­able en­ergy sup­ply at com­pet­i­tive prices. At the same time the com­pany in­vests in the per­ma­nent im­prove­ment of its own en­ergy ef­fi­ciency and in this way con­tributes to an un­spoiled Swiss en­vi­ron­ment. Under a manda­tory tar­get agree­ment with the fed­eral gov­ern­ment the com­pany is ex­pected to lower its CO2 emis­sions by at least nine per­cent by 2020. To achieve its tar­get it is ac­tively using the ser­vices of the En­ergy Agency of the Swiss Pri­vate Sec­tor (EnAW).