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Home / Washington Business - July/August 2004 / TransAlta and Georgia-Pacific Share Win-Win Situation |
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TransAlta and Georgia-Pacific Share Win-Win Situation |
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Written On: July/August 2004 |
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Written By: by Daniel Brunell |
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Plugging in a toaster in Yakima or flipping on a light switch in Seattle may actually be triggering the production of wallboard in Tacoma.
In this case, the old cliché, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” perfectly describes the by-product and raw material relationship between TransAlta’s Centralia Power Plant and Georgia-Pacific (GP) Gypsum of Tacoma. As a result, the air from Centralia to Mt. Rainier is cleaner and some of the “sheet rock” now being hung in your home or office is “greener” and better.
It is a win-win situation because two important facilities where employers provide family-wage jobs have bright futures.
It started in September 1996 when officials at Centralia Power Plant pledged to cut emissions by 90 percent over the next six years. That meant removing tons of pollutants from the smoke stack.
Air Around Mt. Rainier Cleaner
Built in 1971, the coal-fired power plant generated 1,320 megawatts of electricity but in the process spewed out more than 116,000 tons of sulfur-dioxide each year. The plant provided enough power to light Seattle.
To make the facility more environmentally friendly, the plant needed a major overhaul. With these challenges and financial burdens, the consortium of local power companies decided to sell the power plant and adjacent low sulfur coal mine to TransAlta in 2000.
“We were looking to grow in the United States, and one of our strengths is operating coal-fired power plants,” said TranAlta’s Tim Richter. “We operated a successful energy trading operation in the region for a few years before that and saw Centralia as a great opportunity to enter a strong regional electrical market.”
TransAlta is Canada’s largest non-regulated power generation and wholesale power marketing company. The Calgary-based firm has coal-fired, gas-fired, renewable, and hydro-electric facilities in Australia, Canada, the United States and Mexico.
TransAlta Has Aggressive Emission Reduction Plan
With nearly 10,000 megawatts of generating capacity, TransAlta is a leader in pollution control. According to information on the company’s Web site, TransAlta has an aggressive plan called “Beyond Kyoto” to reduce Canadian carbon dioxide from existing operations to zero by 2024.
The Kyoto Protocols, in which Canada participates, is aimed at reducing “greenhouse gases” as well as sulfur. For example, the company states it has reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent per megawatt hour since 1990 and, even though its production of electricity in Canada is up 13 percent, its net emissions of greenhouse gases were down by 18 percent.
By late summer 2002, TransAlta finished the $180 million refurbishment of the old Centralia Power Plant and the generation capacity increased to 1,404 megawatts. However, these changes seemed minor in comparison to the improvements in the power plant’s environmental controls.
TransAlta installed two flu gas desulphurization (FGD) units that filter out more than 94 percent of the sulfur dioxide — a contributor to acid rain. This equates to about 110,000 tons per year.
The FGD units mix flu gas with a watery slurry of limestone. The mixture absorbs the sulfur and other trace amounts of impurities like mercury. The emmissions coming out of the chamber is virtually sulfur-free and the FGD units along with other improvements make the Centralia Power Plant one of the cleanest coal power plants in the world.
Scrubbers Produce GP’s Synthetic Gypsum
As an additional bonus, the scrubbing process resulted in tons of excess commercial grade synthetic gypsum, which is highly coveted by wallboard (drywall) manufacturers. Already well used on the East Coast and in Europe as an alternative to mined gypsum, it is a highly desirable raw material for wallboard manufacturers. It is cheaper and easier to process.
Normally, manufacturers have to sort, test and then crush the gypsum to a uniformed sand size. However, with synthetic gypsum, the power plant does all of this for them producing a consistently high quality substance. The by-product is so highly coveted that eight regional wallboard manufacturers competed for the TransAlta contract.
In 1999, GP Gypsum of Tacoma was awarded a 20-year contract. The news for the plant’s 104 employees was timely. “Our primary source for natural gypsum in Baja, Mexico was starting to run out of the quality gypsum,” said Steve Ruff, plant manager for GP Gypsum. “We needed a more reliable source.”
GP immediately invested $7.5 million to handle the synthetic gypsum. Now the plant uses 35 truckloads of the synthetic product a day.
With the retrofit, GP Gypsum became the only wallboard manufacturer west of the Mississippi to make wallboard completely from recycled materials, earning it the title of “green” wallboard. This product is of the same or higher quality as GP Gypsum’s ToughRock which is made from natural gypsum, and since many contractors are now specifying “green” materials, the Tacoma plant has a bright future.
Last year AWB awarded TransAlta and GP Gypsum our Environmental Excellence Award for their combined projects.
“This is an example of companies in Washington staying competitive while continuing to improve our environmental quality,” AWB President Don Brunell said. “What TransAlta and GP Gypsum are doing is exactly what we are encouraging our members to do. It shows what can happen when the free enterprise system is allowed to be innovative.”
For information on the 2004 Environmental Excellence awards, contact Jennifer Davis at (800) 521-9325 or JenniferD@awb.org.
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