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The paper industry faces increasing pressure to reduce energy consumption and CO₂ emissions. Despite past efficiency gains, recent progress has stalled, and the industry is further challenged by energy price volatility and workforce retirements. In daily operations operators and process engineers prioritize process stability and product quality. Optimization of energy demand and CO₂ emissions as secondary targets is a major challenge due to process complexity and intricated process dependencies. Digital twins are a promising solution to further reduce energy demand and CO₂ emissions. Within the FOREST research project, a Framework for digital twins is being developed, offering a variety of functions: Continuous reel-specific accounting of CO₂ emissions, offline simulations for evaluation of new recipes and process technologies, as well as online simulation for prediction of future process states and for optimization of process setpoints and planning of energy provision.

This work is partially supported by German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action of Germany (BMWK) in the scope of the FOREST project (03EN2095 A-G).