About aluminum production.

[rcjordan]

The main input cost is electricity.

The US aluminum industry is not great. Or even good. But we don't invest in things like that, do we?

Meanwhile, in China.

Clean electricity is cheaper. If it is your main input cost, you will go clean to make more green

Paywalled FT.com: China's aluminium smelters embark on green long march. One of country's most polluting industries is relocating from northern rust belt to renewables-rich south-west.

--sourced by bsky

[ergophobe]

> not great

"As recently as 1981, the US produced 30% of the world's primary aluminum, and for many years up through 2000, the US was the world's largest producer of primary aluminum. In 2014, by contrast, the US ranked sixth in primary aluminum production, and provided only 3.5% of world production."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminum_industry_in_the_United_States#History_of_US_aluminum_production

Related

Coal power drops in China and India for first time in 52 years after clean-energy records
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-china-and-india-for-first-time-in-52-years-after-clean-energy-records/

Semi-related
https://www.nps.gov/articles/washington-grand-coulee-dam.htm

The Grand Coulee dam was thought of as the dam that defeated fascism. It has today the largest "nameplate" capacity of any power plant in the US (counting the 1974 extension) and it provided the power that smelted the aluminum that built the planes that beat the Axis, not to mention fueling the massively energy-intense process of refining plutonium at the Hanford plant, which played a significant role in developing the atomic bomb.

We always hear about the Oak Ridge facility producing plutonium for the bomb, but it actually only could turn out enough for the scientists at Los Alamos to experiment with. It was when the Grand Coulee dam fired up that the Hanford facility in Washington could produce enough fissionable plutonium to produce a bomb.
https://www.nps.gov/mapr/learn/plutonium.htm

Conclusion: energy matters, but *cheap* energy matters more.