One reader last week challenged my citation of Wikipedia stating the consumption of kerosene for illumination, even today, equals that of the consumption of jet fuel (essentially kerosene) in the United States. If anyone has a solid, better source of data, please share it and I will be happy to pass it on here in one of the remaining columns this month.
In The Economist issue of 1st - 7th of December 2018, right on schedule, their Technology Quarterly special section was titled "Towards Zero Carbon--Conquering CO2." The good news, and I believed I read this portion of the magazine fairly carefully, was that the pulp and paper industry was barely cited--steel and cement manufacturing were the bad boys of the industrial sector. We came in at 0.2 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions, the smallest industry singled out (their data was from 2014). Steel and Cement manufacturing were each over 11 times higher.
One matter that is necessary to our function, however, but was not coupled to industries served, was transportation, particularly truck transportation. The challenge is to convert over-the-road trucks to non-petroleum fuels, if one's objective is to reduce CO2 emissions. Energy to be used on the move, so to speak, remains elusive if one wants to eliminate the exhaust pipe. Simply, electrical or hydrogen storage systems have not reached the density efficiency represented by gasoline or diesel when it comes to transportation.
These economies can be reached with electrified trains, but electrified trains have their own drawbacks--for quick delivery often required between mill and converter or between converter and the ultimate end use customer--nothing beats the versatility of the truck. In my career, I have seen a movement from the requirement that paper mills be on railroad sidings, not far from the mainline, to a condition where mills are built far from rail, and no one seems to care. If they do, it is for the delivery of bulk consumables such as starch, clay or pigments, not for the delivery of finished product.
