According to a report on September 16th, the European Aluminium Association and the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) issued a joint statement, calling on the European Parliament and the European Council to grant low-carbon aluminium the same qualifications as steel within the proposed "material credits" mechanism for vehicle carbon emissions standards.
Core demand: A single, technology-neutral mechanism
This joint statement focuses on the revision of (EU) 2019/631 - which is advancing based on proposal 2025/0420 (COD). The two industry organizations hope that steel and aluminium can be included in the same "single, technology-neutral" framework, and adopt a unified carbon intensity threshold and verification rules, rather than setting separate standards for different materials.
In other words, what the industry wants is not "aluminium privilege", but "unified rules": As long as the carbon intensity is met, the type of material should not be a variable determining whether one can obtain credits.
Policy logic: To "infuse life" into the demand side decarbonization
The two organizations emphasized in the statement that including aluminium in the mechanism is in line with the broader goals of the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA). This act has regarded steel and aluminium as strategic components of the European industrial base and supports stronger demand-side decarbonization measures for these two types of materials.
Behind this demand is the reality faced by the European aluminium industry in recent years: high energy costs, increasingly strict carbon constraints, and the production cost of low-carbon aluminium is significantly higher than that of conventional aluminium, yet it is difficult to obtain the corresponding premium return in the market. If the vehicle carbon credit mechanism can recognize low-carbon aluminium, it is equivalent to creating a certain market for green aluminium materials driven directly by downstream demand.
Why the automotive industry?
The automotive industry is one of the most important end markets for aluminium in Europe. The amount of aluminium used per vehicle continues to increase with the trends of lightweighting and electrification. For automakers, the implicit carbon emissions from materials are gradually entering their carbon footprint accounting scope; for aluminium producers, the purchasing choices of automakers directly determine whether the low-carbon production capacity can be absorbed. The interests of both parties are highly consistent on this issue, thus leading to this rare cross-industry joint statement.
Incorporating low-carbon aluminium into the credit mechanism is actually expanding the responsibility for emission reduction from "single points" to "chains" - automakers can use low-carbon materials to offset some compliance pressure, while aluminium producers receive clear signals of investment returns for emission reduction.
Question: Legislative negotiations are still ongoing
Currently, this revision proposal is still in the EU legislative process, and the specific positions of the European Parliament and the European Council remain to be clarified. Whether the industry can obtain "material parity" depends on how the unified carbon intensity threshold is set, the cost of implementing verification rules, and whether this mechanism will be questioned as a "backdoor" to relax vehicle emission standards itself.
It is certain that the core of this debate has already gone beyond aluminium itself: On the chessboard of European industrial decarbonization, who will pay for the "green premium" is becoming the most difficult question to solve.
