Understanding the environmental impact

Aluminium production sits at the heart of industrial civilization and, simultaneously, at the center of the global carbon challenge. Despite its reputation as a ‘green metal,’ aluminium production remains energy intensive, responsible for roughly 2-3% of global CO₂ emissions. As governments and manufacturers worldwide set aggressive decarbonization targets, the aluminium industry faces the dual imperative of maintaining competitiveness while cutting emissions. aluminium industry faces the dual imperative of maintaining competitiveness while cutting emissions. 

For the entire metals industry, what was once a traditional, conservative sector is now evolving rapidly. The drive for lower-carbon materials, transparency in supply chains and circular production models is reshaping expectations across the value chain. In this environment, ABB is taking a proactive role. Rather than waiting for regulation or customer demand to define new standards, ABB is advancing its own sustainability agenda, aligning with its Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi)-approved pathway and 2030 circularity goals to lead the metals industry toward verified, measurable metrics.

To meet these demands, progress increasingly depends on understanding a technology’s environmental impact across its entire existence, from manufacturing through decades of use and eventual recycling. ABB’s recent lifecycle assessment (LCA) for its electromagnetic stirrer for aluminum furnaces (AL-EMS) marks a major step in this direction. The initiative forms part of ABB’s broader effort to quantify and minimize the full environmental footprint of its products, using the LCA as a scientific measurement tool to understand its impact.

Following ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 methodology standards, this assessment provides a cradle-to-grave understanding of environmental impact, assessing three distinct lifecycle stages from raw material extraction through production, operational use and end-of-life treatment. The findings reaffirm a fundamental reality of industrial equipment: in long-lived technologies, the use phase dominates total environmental impact. The energy consumed over a 20-year operational life outweighs the embodied impacts of manufacturing or transport.

This insight strengthens the business case for technologies that improve process efficiency. Every percentage point of energy saved in aluminium production compounds over thousands of heats and melts, delivering environmental benefits that far exceed the footprint of producing the equipment itself.

Production at ABB’s Västerås facility in Sweden is powered entirely by renewable hydropower, while waste metals from manufacturing are recycled or responsibly disposed of. At end-of-life, the high steel and copper content in electromagnetic stirrers – 82% in the aluminium furnace stirrer – enables substantial material recovery.

Beyond demonstrating environmental performance, the LCA provides strategic direction for ongoing improvement. The lifecycle data clearly identifies where interventions deliver the greatest environmental benefit, guiding decisions on material selection, supplier engagement and product development priorities. This evidence-based approach ensures that development efforts target the stages of a product’s life where reductions in environmental impact will be most significant.

EMS through the lifecycle lens

As the inventor of AL-EMS, ABB has pioneered its use in metallurgical operations since the 1960s, yet its potential impact on energy efficiency has only recently gained renewed focus. The technology uses magnetic fields to induce controlled motion within molten metal, creating a stirring force without physical contact. This homogenizes temperature and chemical composition, eliminating cold or stagnant zones that would otherwise cause inefficiencies.

In aluminium manufacturing it plays an important role in melting, holding and refining furnaces. These operational benefits directly support the environmental performance trends identified through the LCA process: efficiency in the use phase is where the greatest gains are achieved.

Aluminium of Greece, for instance, increased the proportion of solid material in its melts, effectively enabling a higher share of recycled scrap, while simultaneously boosting furnace productivity using AL-EMS. Nordural in Iceland adopted the same technology to improve temperature uniformity in its holding furnaces, allowing the use of harder, more cost-effective alloys and enhancing overall operational flexibility, resulting in a 17% improvement in productivity at the site.

The process benefits are tangible: reduced thermal differences, efficient homogenization of alloying elements and lower specific energy consumption. These gains translate directly into lower emissions because they enable operators to use a higher proportion of recycled, secondary aluminium, which itself requires only around five percent of the energy needed for primary production. By stabilizing the melt and ensuring uniform alloy composition, AL-EMS makes it possible to incorporate more scrap material without compromising product quality, helping to unlock the full carbon advantage of secondary metal.