abstract
The purpose of this study was to assess the environmental impacts of the Norwegian pulp and paper
industry, considering the production of pulp fibres and printing paper. The pulp fibres included in this
study are thermo-mechanical pulp and kraft pulp fibres, which differ with respect to the energy consumption
and chemicals used during production. The assessed paper grades were super-calendered
paper and newsprint. The study was a cradle to gate approach, and corresponds to an attributional
life cycle assessment (LCA). The LCA was based on data collected from main pulp and paper producers in
Norway. Importantly, aspects related to the increasing use of mineral fillers in the production of
newsprints were assessed. The results showed that a reduction of more than 18% climate change impact
(kg CO2 eq.) was achieved by increasing the fraction of fillers, in the newsprint furnish. Furthermore, the
total climate change impact reduction depended on the applied energy mix. Assuming that the production
of printing paper was based only on Norwegian energy mix, yielded a reduction of the climate
change impact by more than 44% in 2011, compared to the production based on Scandinavian and European
energy mix. Additionally, the input and output transport contributed to more than 20% impact in
several cases. We thus concluded that the estimated environmental impacts were affected by; i) the
furnish composition of a given paper quality, ii) the input and output transport and iii) the use of
different primary grid energy sources.