Aluminium use in passenger cars poses systemic challenges for recycling and GHG emissions

Abstract

The demand for automotive aluminium is expected to boom in the coming decades given current trends in the passenger car market, such as electrification, light-weighting, customers’ preference for larger cars (SUVs) and growing global car ownership and population, resulting in a growing challenge for the aluminium sector to curb GHG emissions. We develop a new multilayer dynamic material flow analysis model to analyse the combined effects of those drivers on the automotive aluminium cycle and related GHG emissions. Our results show that (i) aluminium use in passenger cars is likely to quadruple towards 2050 (ii) emissions resulting from aluminium production will be a major part of the carbon footprint of cars (iii) electric vehicles require more wrought aluminium, leading to a surplus of mixed alloys and castings scrap which can only be mitigated through the introduction of alloy sorting technologies and/or an increase in vehicle lifetime (iv) given the expected fast growth in automotive aluminium demand, an overall emission reduction in the aluminium industry would require an even faster penetration of low-carbon technologies in the energy and aluminium production sectors, which may, in turn, increase aluminium demand even further.