| Aluminum is critical for building the nation’s clean energy infrastructure. But production of the material — a key ingredient in everything from solar panels and cars to airplanes and power lines — requires near-constant electricity at high volumes, often racking up quite a carbon footprint. It’s also expensive, which is one reason the nation’s aluminum plants are dropping like flies. The recent shuttering of a plant in Missouri marks the third closure of a U.S. aluminum factory in under two years, writes Jason Plautz. The Magnitude 7 Metals smelter had the capacity to produce as much as 30 percent of the nation’s aluminum supply. It was also the state’s single-largest consumer of energy and relied heavily on coal-fired power, underlining a paradox: Clean energy requires a lot of aluminum, which needs a lot of clean energy to be produced without planet-warming emissions. But only four plants remain in the country, and just two are running at full capacity. Most of America’s aluminum is imported. “If we want electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels [and] wind turbines, we could find ourselves in a position where we have to rely on adversaries that have the materials and processes necessary to make the energy transition,” Joe Quinn with SAFE, a group that promotes domestic energy, told Jason. The Biden administration has poured billions of dollars into building out a domestic supply chain for the materials, including aluminum, needed to transition the nation’s energy system away from fossil fuels. But experts say the deployment of those policies is not happening fast enough to change the economics of the aluminum industry. Production of aluminum in the United States, once a top producer, peaked in 1980. By 2021, the country consumed 4.3 million metric tons but produced only 880,000. The decline is in large part due to the high cost of power. In June 2022, an aluminum smelter in Kentucky closed after its power costs tripled, making operations untenable. Without cheap, clean energy, producing aluminum in the United States will be difficult. “This industry needs energy at the right price to stop the bleeding,” Annie Sartor with Industrious Labs told Jason.
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