Veolia North America today announced it has completed its partnership with DuPont to convert the utility infrastructure at the DuPont Spruance manufacturing facility in Richmond, Virginia from coal to natural gas to produce steam and electricity more efficiently. The new cogeneration facility will help optimize energy yields to ensure global environmental performance while achieving at least 50% reductions in greenhouse gas emissions compared with the use of coal, equating to the removal of 44,000 cars off the roads.

“This project serves as a great example of how converting from coal to gas can significantly reduce the carbon footprint of industrial activity and accelerate ecological transformation while supporting climate goals in the U.S. At Veolia, we are proud to leverage our expertise in energy management solutions, to allow our industrial partners like DuPont to move further towards achieving their sustainability goals while maintaining reliability and competitiveness of their energy use-related processes,” said Frederic Van Heems, Veolia North America President and CEO.

“We were thrilled to work with Veolia on such a significant project that is enabling us to operate the facility more efficiently and helping to achieve the company’s 2030 climate goals,” said Dan Mattson, DuPont Spruance Site Services Leader.

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The conversion at the Spruance site power generation system is expected to result in reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions annually of more than 220,000 tons.

The Spruance utility infrastructure provides heating, cooling and electricity for the site’s operations and technical resources. DuPont and Veolia North America signed a long-term agreement for Veolia to acquire, upgrade, operate and maintain the site’s utility infrastructure, apply best practices, improve efficiencies and reliability. The project agreement included repurposing a 200 megawatt cogeneration facility from power production to the efficient production of 500,000 pounds per hour of steam, converting from coal to natural gas and upgrading chilled water capacity, water networks, industrial wastewater treatment and new compressors.

Source: Veolia North America