SPD Minister Tiefensee visits Koehler Paper mill in Greiz as part of his summer tour

The theme of this year's summer tour is "Decarbonisation and Sustainability". As part of his summer tour, Wolfgang Tiefensee, the Thuringian Minister for Economy, Science and Digital Society, visited the Koehler Paper site in Greiz. Among other things, he informed himself about the progress of decarbonisation at the Koehler site in Thuringia. Already a few weeks ago, the Minister of Thuringia, Anja Siegesmund, personally got a picture of the situation at Koehler Paper's Greiz site.

Significant reduction of CO2 emissions
Before the end of this year, the Koehler Paper site in Greiz will convert its power plant from pulverised lignite to the fuel wood fines fraction. Since the paper processing and drying process requires large amounts of energy, the company commissioned its own combined heat and power plant at the site in 2010. This has a firing thermal capacity of 16.7 MW and generates up to 19 tonnes of steam as well as electricity to supply production, depending on demand. The switch to the use of fine wood fraction as a fuel is part of the Koehler Group's climate strategy. Koehler has set itself the goal of producing more energy with its own plants from renewable sources than is needed for paper production by 2030. By switching from lignite to fine wood fraction, more than 24,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions can be saved annually at the Greiz site. The entire conversion is costing the Koehler Group 6.5 million euros. "With the investment in the power plant conversion, the company once again underlines that its sustainable orientation does not end with sustainable products," says Udo Hollbach, Managing Director at the Koehler Paper site in Greiz.