Russian aluminium giant UC Rusal announced this week the passage of new climate goals for the coming years and decades through the middle of this century.
Rusal’s board of directors approved the new Climate Strategy at its latest meeting in Krasnoyarsk. The company’s new climate strategy is based on two scenarios, namely the basic scenario and the intensive scenario. Both scenarios share the same aim – to reduce Rusal’s overall carbon emissions through 2050.
Rusal’s baseline scenario is the more conservative of the two, with the company cutting both Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25 percent over the next decade. The scenario also has cuts to the same greenhouse gas emissions by at least 47 percent by 2050. The baseline for both goals is 2018’s emissions, with the effects of carbon emissions neutralization projects excluded.
The firm says it hopes to reach those goals via utilizing advanced electrolysis technologies, improving energy efficiency at all production stages, transferring its enterprises to carbon-free energy sources, and introducing the principles of a circular economy by expanding the use of aluminium scrap.
Evgenii Nikitin, General Director of Rusal, elaborated upon his firm’s goals in a related press release.
“It is important that all the targets announced in our Climate Strategy are related to technological decarbonization projects, including one of RUSAL’s key projects – the ecological modernization of the largest Siberian aluminium smelters, which is important not only for a fundamental improvement in quality life in the cities of the Company’s responsibility, but also as our contribution to the fight against global climate change.”