Lets be clear,in terms of the aluminium industry its subsidised up the wazoo.
Aluminium smelting: the best bang for your fossil-fuel subsidy buck
The smelters together employ about 5,000 workers out of an entire industry of 17,000 across mining, refining and smelting. That means the aluminium smelting industry receives a subsidy from state governments of around $74,000 dollars a worker – higher even than that received by the car industry.
Aluminium smelting requires vast quantities of electricity. There are six aluminium smelters in Australia, in Queensland, NSW and Victoria, and Bell Bay in Tasmania. All are run by foreign multinational companies – Alcoa, Rio Tinto and Norsk Hydro. All, except Bell Bay, which is mostly run on hydro-electric power, rely on cheap coal-fired power. Together they consume about 15% of all electricity produced in Australia. Using International Aluminium Institute figures, the Grattan Institute found that all the smelters except Bell Bay emitted two-three times as much greenhouse gas per tonne of aluminium as the global average. In total, the smelting industry adds up to 6-7% of our total CO2-equivalent emissions.
