China calls for stricter emission target for aluminum industry

Singapore — China -- the largest aluminum producer and consumer across the world -- should speed up the green and low-carbon development of the aluminum industry to reach the carbon dioxide emission peak by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060, Yu Dehui, the previous general manager of Aluminum Corp. of China said.

Speaking on the sidelines of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, or the Two Sessions, Yu suggested China should set up the total carbon emission target for aluminum industry and carry out quota management for carbon emission in view that aluminum consumption will keep rising during the 14th five-year plan period.

Meanwhile, the country should increase the ratio for clean energy consumption and release measures to support the development of secondary aluminum industry.

China is expected to reach the peak for aluminum consumption by 2035.

About 86% of Chinese primary aluminum smelters relied on thermal power production (70% of them have their owned coal-fired power plants) and only 14% of them adopted clean energy production in 2019. Smelters with their own coal-fired power plants will be the focus to realizing the net-zero carbon emission target.

About 11.2 mt of carbon dioxide will be emitted when producing 1 mt primary aluminum adopting thermal power production while nearly zero emission will be discharged through clean energy production, according to a report released by the state-owned China Nonferrous Metals News. China's primary aluminum smelters emitted 350 million mt of carbon dioxide with thermal power production in 2019, accounting for 3.6% of the national's total.

The energy consumption for secondary aluminum production took up only 5% of primary aluminum. China's primary aluminum output totaled 37.08 million mt in 2020, emitting about 424 million mt of carbon dioxide, according to a report released by China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association Recycling Metal Branch. At the same time, China discharged 4.14 million mt of carbon dioxide when producing a total of 7.4 million mt secondary aluminum, which means the carbon dioxide emission will be reduced by 78.74 million mt compared to the production of 7.4 million mt primary aluminum, the report showed.