Procter & Gamble biomass plant a team effort

ALBANY — Community and business leaders gathered Wednesday to celebrate the development of a new biomass plant at Albany’s Procter and Gamble that will provide much needed renewal energy for the plant as it strives to make its operations more environmentally friendly.

The addition of the $200 million energy co-generation plant will allow Procter and Gamble (P&G) to move toward it’s goal of becoming more energy efficient and reduce it’s environmental footprint.

According to P&G Group President of Global Family Care Mary Lynn Ferguson-

McHugh, P&G has a long term goal of using renewable energy.

“We want to be a big part of reducing our environmental footprint as a company because that’s what we need to do as good citizens,” said Ferguson-McHugh. “We have made a commitment in the future to have 100 percent of our energy come from renewal resources, but a very specific commitment to have 30 percent of our energy come from renewable resources by 2020. This project alone gets us halfway to our goal.”

Part of making that goal a reality was working with community leaders and business partners to make the plant a reality. The plant itself will be owned by and operated by Constellation, a subsidiary of energy leader Exelon Corporation.

Constellation Senior Vice President of Distributed Energy Gary Fromer said the plant will operate by taking waste products, such as timber remnants and peanut shells that would otherwise be left on the forest floor or taken to a land fill, and turning those into energy and heat.

“We’re able to bring wood in here to make product for Procter and Gamble,” said Fromer. “That wood leaves waste product on the forest floor. We want to replant those forests. We’re bringing that waste wood here (to the biomass plant) instead of having it decay or having people burn it, and we’re using that to power the facility.”

Pressurized steam created burning the boiling process will be used by P&G in the company’s production of paper products, such as Bounty paper towels and Charmin tissue paper, both of which are made in Albany. More specifically the steam will be used to dry the paper products during the manufacturing process.

In addition to P&G’s steam usage the plant will also provide energy to Georgia Power.

During the construction phase, which is expected to take roughly two years, there will be creation of up to 500 new jobs. After construction the plant is expected to create 50 to 70 permanent jobs.

Construction has not yet begun on the new facility but it is expected to be completed within the next two years.