Systemic Approaches for Emission Reduction in Industrial Plants Based on Physical Accounting: Example for an Aluminum Smelter

Abstract

Greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting in industrial plants usually has multiple purposes, including mandatory reporting, shareholder and stakeholder communication, developing key performance indicators (KPIs), or informing cost-effective mitigation options. Current carbon accounting systems, such as the one required by the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS), ignore the system context in which emissions occur. This hampers the identification and evaluation of comprehensive mitigation strategies considering linkages between materials, energy, and emissions. Here, we propose a carbon accounting method based on multilevel material flow analysis (MFA), which aims at addressing this gap. Using a Norwegian primary aluminum production plant as an example, we analyzed the material stocks and flows within this plant for total mass flows of goods as well as substances such as aluminum and carbon. The results show that the MFA-based accounting (i) is more robust than conventional tools due to mass balance consistency and higher granularity, (ii) allows monitoring the performance of the company and defines meaningful KPIs, (iii) can be used as a basis for the EU ETS reporting and linked to internal reporting, (iv) enables the identification and evaluation of systemic solutions and resource efficiency strategies for reducing emissions, and (v) has the potential to save costs.

Mass-Balance-Consistent Geological Stock Accounting: A New Approach toward Sustainable Management of Mineral Resources

“…Altogether, MFA provides a robust and transparent reference framework to understand, visualize, and transform material and energy systems and their associated value, information, and emission layers toward sustainability. − Recent applications include a plant-level study for Europe’s biggest aluminum smelter outside of Russia, the International Aluminium Institute’s “Global Aluminium Cycle”, the European Union’s “Material System Analysis” studies, and U.S. Geological Survey publications on tantalum, niobium, and rare earth elements (REEs). − While there are many examples to demonstrate MFA’s utility, there has not been much discussion about MFA in mineral resource geology, mineral depletion studies, and sustainable mining (cf. Supporting Information, S1.3), partly because of data gaps and a lack of transparency in current industry minerals reporting.…”

An Overview of Low-Temperature Fischer–Tropsch Synthesis: Market Conditions, Raw Materials, Reactors, Scale-Up, Process Intensification, Mechanisms, and Outlook

“…Thus, coal has the disadvantage of generating more CO 2 in combustion than other fossil fuels. Therefore, the challenge is to decrease its use in sectors such as the steel and aluminum − or calcium carbide industry , that generate significant amounts of CO 2 .…”