The Company sets out its commitments to lead the industry into the low-carbon economy by developing a new asset class of ‘Green Aluminium’.
En+ Group today published its ‘Green Aluminium Vision’, setting out out nine principles that should shape the future of green aluminium:
- Determination to reduce emissions across the production process: including a 15% cut by 2025 in direct greenhouse gas emissions from electrolysis compared to 2014, 7% reduction in energy consumption, as well as close to 100% hydropower to be used for smelting operations. RUSAL has also started testing the breakthrough technology of inert anode that will sharply reduce energy consumption and eliminate carbon emissions in the smelting process.
- Low-carbon aluminium branding: En+ Group/RUSAL’s ‘ALLOW’ brand provides low-carbon aluminium with an independently verified carbon footprint. It is produced at smelters with less than 4 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per tonne of aluminium (smelter emissions, IAI level 1), helping customers achieve their emissions reduction targets.
- Carbon footprint transparency: En+ Group has consistently called on the London Metal Exchange (LME) to introduce emissions disclosure rules to promote more transparent and sustainability-based trading and welcomes their plans to launch a platform to trade low-carbon aluminium.
- Circularity: Recycling can boost resource efficiency and emissions reductions and should go hand in hand with low-carbon primary aluminium. The industry should focus on reducing the amount of waste, ensuring growth is decoupled from expanded resource use.
- Sustainability labelling: En+ Group/RUSAL will advocate for a “Green Aluminium Label” that would enable customers to buy low-carbon primary aluminium manufactured with an independently verified carbon footprint.
- Liberalisation of trade for low-carbon primary aluminium: En+ Group/RUSAL calls for the creation of separate customs codes for low-carbon primary aluminium which would foster greater competitiveness and sustainability of the whole industry.
- Elimination of excess capacities to ensure fair and green trade: En+ Group calls for the creation of a Global Forum on Sustainable Industrial Development focused on improving global governance, strengthening free and fair trade, and shielding green products and services from distortive practices.
- Facilitation of research and development: Industry-wide incentives for collaboration in research and development could accelerate the progress of emission reducing technologies such as inert anode or innovations that could improve the recovery of useful scrap.
- Support to a renewed multilateralism: En+ Group/RUSAL supports a rules-based world, the reform of the WTO, and a new multilateralism characterised by deeper cooperation between and among states and non-state actors. The Group delivers on 8 of the Sustainable Development Goals with a strong focus on goal 17 on global partnerships. It also participates in the UNFCCC Conferences of Parties (UN Climate Conferences).
The ‘Green Aluminium Vision’ is a positive and practical low carbon action plan for our industry. It puts transparency at the heart of the debate. Without it we risk a stimulus package that is unfocused and unproductive for the climate. From using hydropower to produce aluminium, to investing in cutting edge technology to transform an energy intensive process into a carbon-free one, En+ Group has the credibility to lead the way.
En+ Group Executive Chairman
