Rio Tinto unveils $375M more for world’s first carbon-free aluminum in Quebec

Rio Tinto (NYSE: RIO; LSE: RIO; ASX: RIO) is investing $375 million more into the world’s first carbon-free aluminum smelting headed for initial commercial production by December in Quebec.

This brings to $650 million Rio Tinto and its joint venture partner Alcoa (NYSE: AA) have sunk into the Elysis technology to achieve the commercial phase in the province.

The Australian diversified major and the Government of Québec, through Investissement Québec, on Friday respectively pledged $235 million and $140 million investments to build a new 2,500 tonne-per-year demonstration plant operating at 100 kiloamperes. It will be located at the Elysis industrial research and development centre in Saguenay—Lac-St-Jean, some 200 km north of Quebec City.

The projects are expected to give Canada a leg-up in what the aluminum industry calls a decarbonization “race to the moon.”

“Developing such a revolutionary technology for the aluminum industry is quite a journey,” Elysis CEO Vincent Christ said in a release. “Achieving this milestone marks a critical turning point, moving from what was once a dream to a transformative force for the industry.”

The electrically-powered Elysis technology, which produces oxygen instead of carbon dioxide during the smelting process, signals a technological breakthrough in decarbonizing the aluminum industry. In Canada alone, Elysis has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7 million tonnes per year, the equivalent of removing 1.8 million cars from the road.

Building the industrial prototype was first announced in April 2021, a $40 million initial project for a series of 450 kiloampere prototype cells at the end of an existing potline at Rio Tinto’s Alma smelter, about 260 km north from Quebec City. Elysis has begun commissioning these cells, with the start-up sequence underway, it said on Friday.

Plans for the new Elysis plant next to the Arvida smelter, 210 km from Quebec City, targets first production by 2027. Sited next to the existing Arvida smelter, the plant will use the existing alumina supply and casting facilities.

The new plant will be jointly owned by Rio Tinto and the Quebec government.

On June 18 Rio Tinto said it would invest $226 million in its Grande-Baie smelter, also in Quebec, to refurbish two anode baking furnaces that have reached the end of their useful life. The company will also carry out feasibility studies for the eventual replacement of the scrubbers and overhead bridge cranes at the anode production centre.

To the moon

The Saguenay—Lac-St-Jean investment will solidify Rio Tinto’s role in North America’s low-carbon aluminum production chain using its hydro-powered smelters and well-developed recycling capabilities, Rio Tinto Aluminum chief executive Jérôme Pécresse said Friday.

“Becoming the first to deploy the Elysis carbon-free smelting technology is the next step in our strategy to decarbonize and grow our Canadian aluminum operations,” he said in a statement. The Elysis team is working at researching ways to scale the technology commercially, he said.

The project has garnered strong support from government levels and the industry. “Elysis is a truly disruptive technology, and it’s thanks to Quebec expertise that we are the first in the world to produce greenhouse gas-free aluminum,” Quebec’s Economy, Innovation, and Energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon said in a statement.

Jean Simard, the CEO of the Aluminum Association of Canada—a body representing Alcoa, Alouette, and Rio Tinto, which collectively employs 9,000 workers—likened the development of Elysis to the Apollo space program.

“We’re competing with Russia and China, and we’re ahead of the game,” he said in a statement Friday. “Today’s announcement accelerates the production of aluminum with a very low carbon footprint, showing the scale of the technological breakthroughs required to achieve carbon neutrality.”