Summary:Aluminum Producers Emit Some of the World's Most Damaging Greenhouse Gases
This is a summary of an article from Inside Climate News, originally titled "Why Chinese Aluminum Producers Emit So Much of Some of the World’s Most Damaging Greenhouse Gases".
Problem
PFCs
Some aluminum factories emit unreasonably large amounts of PFCs - especially in China where there are weak regulations.
More than half of the aluminum in the world is produced in China, but it is responsible for 81 percent of the industry’s emissions of PFCs. Simple automation could go a long way toward cutting them.
The following chart shows the PFC emissions, expressed in tonnes of CO2-equivalent (CO2e) per tonne of aluminum produced. This varies widely by factory.
Just for perspective
Other greenhouse gas emissions:
Aluminum production requires a lot of electricity - which adds 5 to 16 tons of CO2 per ton of aluminum, if the electricity is generated from fossil fuels (like most of the world's electricity, currently).
Natural gas power plants (best case, high efficiency, no fugitive emissions):
[www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/aluminum-production Aluminum Production - an overview - ScienceDirect Topics]
https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/co2_vol_mass.php
Simpler/older natural gas plants (no combined cycle) have only an efficiency of 33%, same as [coal_power_plant.efficiency].
Read more: https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Natural_gas_power_plant
Coal power plants: (calculation loading)
https://www.energy.gov/fecm/transformative-power-systems
(calculation loading)
Solution
The article describes in detail how factories can avoid almost all PFC emissions.[ELABORATION needed]