GREENER ALUMINIUM 13
Aluminium decarbonisation – from pathways to action By Pernelle Nunez* In recent years climate change has risen steadily up the business agenda; once relegated to side sessions at industry conferences, it is now an integral part of most keynote panels with climate challenges and emissions reduction plans regularly debated by executives of multinational aluminium companies. It is readily acknowledged as a major risk for organisations across many industries and the aluminium industry is no different. Climate change is by no means the only sustainability issue facing the sector, but it is widely recognised as one of the most pressing. Within this context, the International Aluminium Institute (IAI), the association for the global aluminium industry, set out to develop greenhouse gas pathways (GHG) for the sector to 2050 to understand what alignment with climate goals means for the sector in practice. In line with its 50-year history as the go-to organisation for open-access industry data and analysis, the IAI adopted a data-driven approach,
bringing together its long-standing life cycle and material flow modelling work to develop the first comprehensive aluminium sector pathways for the industry and other stakeholders. Pathways for a hard-to-abate sector Aluminium is often grouped with other industrial sectors that are significant emitters of greenhouse gas emissions, such as steel and cement. These are labelled as ‘hard-to-abate’ sectors because they are energy intensive, use a combination of heat and electricity, and the cost of introducing less carbon-intensive technologies is high. In order to meet global climate goals, all industries are going to have to reduce emissions from current levels and the aluminium sector pathways demonstrate the deep reductions needed across the sector to meet the objectives of the Paris agreement. The IAI wanted to ensure its sector pathways analysis was rooted within an economy-wide context and a broader,
systems-wide decarbonisation trajectory. With this in mind, two decarbonisation scenarios were developed which broadly align with the International Energy Agency’s Beyond 2 Degrees Warming Scenario1 and 1.5 Degree Warming Scenario2 which consider pathways for the global energy sector. Establishing the sector baseline In developing the sector GHG pathways to 2050, establishing the baseline was an essential first step. In 2018, an ingot of primary aluminium had an average cradleto-gate (mine to casthouse) footprint of ~16 t CO2e/t Al based on the IAI’s life cycle work. Recycled aluminium was much less carbon intensive at 0.6 t CO2e/t Al. These figures give an emissions baseline for the sector for 2018 of 1.1 billion tonnes of CO2e – about 2% of total global annual GHG emissions3. Emissions associated with electricity constituted the largest share at approximately 700 million tonnes of CO2e, followed by process and thermal
1. https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-technology-perspectives-2017 2. https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050 3. https://international-aluminium.org/resource/aluminium-sector-greenhouse-gas-pathways-to-2050-2021/ 4. https://international-aluminium.org/resource/aluminium-beverage-can-study/
Fig 1. Aluminium sector emissions by type (2018)
Fig 2. Aluminium sector scenarios to 2050
Deputy Secretary General, Director – Sustainability, International Aluminium Institute Aluminium International Today
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July/August 2022
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