How carbon neutrality imperatives are changing the aluminum industry?

Abstract

The Aluminum Industry is facing high pressure from society and governments in order toachieve carbon neutrality by 2050, since it is a high CO2 emission industry. This study aims to determine how the imperatives of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 will affect the aluminum industry. I will examine how theories and other studies regarding decarbonisation of the industry frame themselves in reality. Are companies really trying to make efforts to decarbonize the industry or it is all for the show, what are going to be the biggest changes in the industry, and what strategies companies can adopt in order to achieve this goal. To explore how decarbonization imperatives will change the aluminum industry, various research efforts were undertaken. First, the literature review framed the problem and information helped better understand the problem that the industry is facing. Further, various interviews were conducted with experts. The results showed that companies, some more than others, are in fact putting in practice different strategies to achieve carbon neutrality, eventhough they are still in the early stages of the deployment. These results suggest that enterprises are in fact aware of the facts and are taking action. However, the industry is still very profit driven, even though the companies claim not to be as such as I will mention in the course of this paper.

Date of Award	1 Feb 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Peter V. Rajsingh (Supervisor)