Evaluating net-zero for India’s aluminium industry

In terms of overall metal consumption, aluminium ranks second, next only to steel (NITI 2017). However, India’s per capita aluminium consumption is low, at 2.5 kg, compared to the world average of 11 kg (NITI 2017), and has potential for growth. The installed capacity and production of aluminium for the year 2019–20 were 4.1 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) and 3.6 MTPA, respectively (IBM 2022). Given the highly energy-intensive production process and the expected growth in demand, decarbonising the energy supply, particularly in the smelting process, will have a substantial impact on India’s cumulative industrial emissions. Our study aims to provide various decarbonising options to the aluminium industry that can help it strategically achieve net-zero targets.

As per our estimates, the total baseline emissions in the production of aluminium in India is 20.88 tonnes of CO2 (tCO2 ) per tonne of aluminium. This includes the emissions due to direct fuel use, emissions associated with the electricity consumed in the process, and the emissions generated due to the nature of the process itself, also termed ‘process emissions’. The industry emitted nearly 77 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) in the year 2019–20, and electricity consumption accounted for 80% of the total, while process emissions and fuel consumption accounted for the rest. Our study considers only scope 1 and 2 emissions, and all interventions analysed are limited to the plant boundary.

Our study shows that the use of power sourced from renewable energy (RE) abates 49% of emissions, corresponding to 38 MtCO2 of total emissions from the industry. Since aluminium production requires large amounts of reliable supply of electricity, it is unlikely that the entire electricity demand can be met through RE, and we, therefore, consider that 30% of the demand would still be supplied by the captive power plant (CPP). Consequently, the emissions due to coal combustion need to be mitigated through carbon management, which would contribute to 21% of the total emissions abatement. In addition, a large number of alumina refineries lie in close proximity to natural gas (NG) pipelines, and therefore, a large proportion of their thermal energy needs are met by NG. The emissions from NG combustion are also abated through carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS).

The paper can be accessed by clicking here.

This article is authored by Pratheek Sripathy, Kartheek Nitturu, Deepak Yadav, and Hemant Mallya, CEEW.