UC Rusal pledges green future for aluminum

The Telegraph reported that just 5 of Rusal's aluminum smelters in East Siberia use 6% of all the energy generated in Russia. This fact underscores why the process is extremely expensive. But rising energy prices is only one of the challenges. An average aluminum smelter produces about 700,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases each year with the industry responsible for 1% of all environmentally damaging emissions.

So will the industry be able to cope with soaring energy costs and ever tightening environmental regulations? Alumina, the ore from which aluminum is extracted is not rare. In fact, it makes up about 6pc of the world's crust. This means that aluminum is different to other commodities. It is not about access to new deposits it is about access to cheap energy.

The process is energy intensive because the metal is produced by electrolysis. An electric current is run through treated alumina. Not only does the amount of energy required make the process expensive, but it is also environmentally dirty because of gases produced by the anode, one of the electrodes used in the process.

The anode is made from carbon and it degrades, giving off carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide as by products. About 40m tonnes of the two environmentally damaging gases are produced each year from the aluminum smelting industry. With the price of carbon becoming more expensive the dirty nature of the process needs to be changed but a solution could be forthcoming.

Industry players around the world are working on new technologies that could see the carbon anode replaced with ceramic or other neutral materials. This would not only eliminate the emission of greenhouse gases, but it would mean the process will actually produce oxygen.

Mr Oleg Deripaska's Rusal which produces 10% of the world's aluminum said that its inert anode project will be up and running by 2015 and it will produce so much oxygen that one electrolysis cell would produce the same amount as 70 hectares of forest. This is a bold statement from a company that has only made the process work in a lab but if successful it would be a 'game changer' and revolutionize the industry.

However, the history of science is littered with experiments that worked in a laboratory but could not be scaled up. Nevertheless, Rusal is right to be investing substantial amounts of money into the project before the carbon cost of producing aluminum becomes prohibitive.

Last week, aluminum prices climbed to levels not seen since before the financial crisis. The spike came after China, the world's largest producer of the metal said it would issue an emergency notice to curb aluminum projects. It said local governments had to immediately suspend electrolytic aluminum and not expand. It also ordered local governments to cancel policies preferential to aluminum producers with regard to taxes land usage and electricity supply.