Investigating the GHG emissions, air pollution and public health impacts from China's aluminium industry: Historical variations and future mitigation potential.

Abstract

China's aluminium industry, contributing 50% of the global aluminium sector's GHG emissions, is undergoing technology upgrading and energy transition. Facing the dual challenges of carbon neutrality and air pollution control, it is necessary to investigate the GHG emissions and air quality related health risks from aluminium production. Here, we traced the spatiotemporal GHG and air pollutant emissions from China's aluminium industry since 2010. We found that the annual GHG emissions increased from 313 Mt CO₂ to 621 Mt CO₂ over a decade, while air pollutant emissions decreased by 42.9%-68.6%. Through regional chemical transport model and the exposure-response model, we quantified the regional health risks, finding that the mortalities fell from 52,900 to 36,500 with complex spatial heterogeneity. Through emission driving force analysis and aluminium related policy review, we demonstrated that China's air pollution control policy, aluminium capacity migration plan and energy transition plan have a mitigation effect on the emissions and health risks. Moreover, we proposed six mitigation measures and investigated the future mitigation potential through scenario analysis. We found that the critical criteria for carbon neutrality should be natural gas and hydrogen dominated alumina refining, 100% electrolysis decarbonisation, 65% recycled aluminium ratio, 80% penetration rate of inert anodes and 50 Mt CO₂ capture. As a co-benefit, the emissions of SO₂, NO_x, PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ can be reduced by up to 97.1%, 97.0%, 89.6%, and 90.5%. These findings provide new insights into carbon neutrality and air pollution mitigation for the aluminium industry.