Metals Archives - Industry4Climate Case Studies

Commitment

Our ambition is to reach net-zero carbon emissions across our operations by 2050. We will bring forward our 2030 target of reducing our scope 1 and 2 emissions by 15% to 2025. We are also more than tripling our 2030 target, increasing it to a 50% reduction in our scope 1 and 2 emissions. We are committing direct investments of $7.5 billion in decarbonisation from 2022 to 2030. And we will prioritise growth capital in commodities that are essential for the drive to net-zero.

Having divested the last of our coal businesses in 2018, we remain the only major diversified company in the industry not extracting fossil fuels. We will continue to execute our climate strategy.

Lighthouse initiative

Rio Tinto and Alcoa, with the support of Apple and the governments of Canada and Quebec, have joined forces on the most significant innovation in the aluminium industry in more than a century: aluminium smelting free from direct carbon emissions.

The ELYSIS joint venture is progressing the larger scale development and commercialisation of breakthrough technology that has the potential to reduce the environmental footprint of the aluminium industry on a global scale. In Canada alone, the ELYSIS™ technology has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7 million tonnes, the equivalent of removing 1.8 million cars from the roads.

The ELYSIS™ technology achieved production of commercial grade aluminium with the electrode materials performing as expected. The technology is being ramped up towards industrial scale and is expected to reach commercial maturity in 2024.

Hilde Merete Aasheim

Norsk Hydro

We, the industry, are experts at competing on costs. We should transfer that expertise to climate emissions, fiercely competing for the lowest level. As a global energy and aluminium company, we are committed to leading the way. Embracing renewable energy through investments and production, shaping responsible supply chains, ensuring that products and materials are recycled and reused while creating more for less.

Commitment

Hydro has the ambition of reducing GHG emissions by 30% compared to 2020 and a vision of carbon-free production by 2050. Our low-carbon and circular products help our customers to reduce their emissions.

Climate action has been a priority for Hydro for decades. We have built a pilot plant in Karmøy, Norway, with the world’s most energy- and climate- efficient aluminium smelter technology. Over the last years, we have increased production in areas with renewable power sources and have entered several long-term wind power contracts. Today, 75% of our metal production is based on renewable energy, a main contributor in reducing emissions.

Hydro is also an active member of the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative (ASI), a global, non-profit standards setting organization, working toward responsible production, sourcing and stewardship of aluminium. Hydro is ASI certified throughout the entire value chain.

Lighthouse initiative

HalZero – zero-emission electrolysis from Hydro

Aluminium is a key enabler in the green transition, but production must become emission free across the entire value chain. Since 2016, Hydro’s technologists have worked to develop a breakthrough technology for primary aluminium production. The proprietary HalZero* technology is based on converting alumina to aluminium chloride prior to electrolysis in a process where chlorine and carbon are kept in a closed loop. Carbon and chlorine are recycled and reused again and again, thus eliminating emissions of CO2 and emitting oxygen instead.

The Hydro HalZero technology will fully decarbonize the smelting of aluminium, eliminating emissions from both electrolysis and anode baking, resulting in emission-free aluminium. The results of the initial test phase are very promising, and we are now ready to start piloting the technology in lab scale. If successful, the ambition is to produce first pilot volumes by 2025 and to have an industrial-scale pilot up and running by 2030.

Hydro has been working to decarbonize its operations since the 1990s. Today, we are committed to being able to produce aluminium while emitting nothing. HalZero is a quantum leap on the path to zero where we aim to demonstrate that nothing is possible.

Commitment

ArcelorMittal has a group target, announced in September 2020, to be carbon neutral by 2050.

ArcelorMittal Europe has a target of reducing CO2 emissions by 35% by 2030 and an ambition to be carbon neutral by 2050. This commitment was announced in December 2019.

Lighthouse initiative

ArcelorMittal is building Steelanol, an industrial-scale demonstration plant in Gent, Belgium, to capture waste gases from the blast furnace and biologically convert them into recycled-carbon ethanol, which can be blended to make a liquid fuel. Once complete – the project is due to be completed in 2022 – the plant is expected to produce up to 80 million litres of recycled-carbon ethanol a year.

The Steelanol technology was developed by LanzaTech, with whom ArcelorMittal has entered a long-term partnership, together with Primetals and E4tech.

Alongside this project, the company is building Torero, a large-scale demonstration plant to convert waste wood into bio-coal, partially replacing the coal currently injected into the blast furnace.

Together, these projects will save 350,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions in the first phase.