Rio Tinto puts five-year deadline on low carbon aluminium fix

afr.com:

Rio Tinto chief executive Jakob Stausholm says a low carbon solution for the company’s Australian aluminium assets must be found before 2030, and insisted while the fix is not within reach, he is committed to working with governments to find one.

Mr Stausholm’s declaration that Rio’s Australian aluminium assets “cannot continue like this” came after the division’s underlying earnings crashed 82 per cent over the past year, and as Mr Stausholm said he hoped to convince China’s biggest steelmaker to make green steel products in Australia.

Rio Tinto CEO Jakob Stausholm with Chanticleer columnist James Thomson. LUIS ENRIQUE ASCUI

Mr Stausholm will notch three years as Rio chief in December and has built Rio’s modern corporate strategy around decarbonisation, both by pushing the miner into battery minerals like lithium and graphite but also by vowing to halve the company’s emissions by 2030.

Almost half of Rio’s emissions are generated by the Pacific Aluminium division, which includes fossil fuel-powered aluminium smelters in NSW and Queensland, as well as two fossil fuel-powered alumina refineries near Gladstone.

Mr Stausholm has eschewed his predecessor’s warning that the assets were “on thin ice”, but said on Tuesday that there was a limit to his patience.

“The deadline is very simple, our power contracts run out in 2028 and 2029,” he said, in reference to the contracts that serve the Tomago and Boyne smelters in NSW and Queensland respectively.

“I think it’s 48 per cent of our Scope 1 and Scope 2 [greenhouse gas emissions] stem from these relatively few assets in our portfolio and that is also why we are saying we cannot continue like this, it has to change.”

Rio’s most lucrative aluminium smelters are in Canada where the