European Aluminium Under CBAM: Power, Carbon and Import Dependence

The evidence supports a sharper conclusion than a single dependence score: Europe faces different constraints at each stage of the aluminium chain, and current CBAM accounting captures only one part of the physical carbon exposure.

1. 01

   Registry estimates are not installation intensity

   Aluminium was source-rounded to 5% of non-electricity import mass but 24% of default-based estimated emissions across Q4 2023–Q2 2025. The source prints 81 MtCO₂e against 343 MtCO₂e overall; 81/343 is 23.615%, rounded to 24%. The separate 38.4 MtCO₂e value is calendar 2024 and is not merged here.S-013

2. 02

   Product output is not route output

   PRODCOM provides exact 2025 product categories, but non-alloy/alloy cannot be renamed primary/secondary and the categories cannot be totalled across stages.S-007

3. 03

   Power matters without yielding a plant bill

   Historical smelting ranges and 2025 large-industrial electricity-price context have different periods and populations; multiplying them would manufacture a plant cost.S-028S-029

4. 04

   Trade direction changes by stage

   Ore and unwrought metal show net imports while aluminium oxide and scrap show net exports in the bounded 2025 slices. None is a dependence ratio.S-006

5. 05

   Maturity, project status and policy delivery are separate

   A TRL, commissioned test facility, announced pilot, adopted methodology, auction award or legislative proposal each answers a different question.S-002S-030S-034

For the current legal inventory and high-level goods scope, use the aluminium sector page. For supplier records, threshold and cost preparation, use the aluminium importer guide. This report integrates sector evidence and its limits without reproducing either owner.

Ore, aluminium oxide, unwrought metal, semi-finished products and scrap are related physical stages, but their reported tonnes are not additive. Trade statistics, PRODCOM product output, plant capacity, realised output, energy use and embedded emissions also answer different questions. V-01 gives each stage equal width deliberately.

PRODCOM reports 618,341.697 t of unwrought non-alloy aluminium and 6,642,252.281 t of unwrought aluminium alloys for EU27_2020 in 2025. Those labels do not identify primary or secondary metal. The deeper packet contains 15 product categories; no total is shown because output can feed later categories and summing would double count.S-007

Held — not claimed Current EU27 primary output, current secondary-metal output and a defensible route time series remain held. PRODCOM product categories cannot close those gaps. National rows also need not reconcile to EU aggregates where confidential values, estimates and controlled rounding apply; the residual cannot be allocated to countries.

Current Article 7 says only direct emissions are calculated and taken into account for Annex II goods, and the listed aluminium goods sit in Annex II. That legal accounting boundary does not erase smelting electricity, alumina heat or wider lifecycle emissions—it keeps them outside the current aluminium calculation field.S-008S-010

The power ranges are historical technology references using 2008 input in a 2017 BAT synthesis. The price rows are consumption-weighted EU aggregates for all final non-household consumers using at least 150,000 MWh/year, excluding taxes and levies. They are not aluminium tariffs, PPAs, wholesale prices or viability thresholds. They must not be multiplied into a plant-cost estimate.S-028S-029

Held — not claimed No 65/15/11/9 emissions chart and no Europe/global intensity ranking. The retained candidates fail the licensing, population and method-comparability gates.S-017

These are four separate CN-code lenses. No cross-stage total, contained-aluminium conversion, material balance or dependence percentage is calculated. Import reliance would require stage-compatible production and apparent consumption, plus product-boundary and stock controls that this packet does not contain.S-004S-006

For the admitted CN 7601 slice, 2025 extra-EU imports total 6,334,671.095 t. The ten largest country-or-territory origins represent 81.2293% of mass. The chart retains an other-country row and the two not-specified classifications so every displayed value reconciles to the aggregate.

CN 7602 records 652,349.688 t of gross imports and 1,273,397.351 t of gross exports in 2025, yielding 621,047.663 t of net exports. That arithmetic does not establish a recoverable domestic pool, alloy suitability, secondary output or a shortage. Import rows mean country of origin; export rows mean last known destination. They are never connected as shipment paths.S-006

JRC technical synthesis says the secondary route uses about 5% of the energy required for primary aluminium. That route-level comparison does not mean every collected tonne is clean, substitutable or suitable. Wrought-alloy production can require segregated chemistry and primary metal for dilution; casting-alloy routes can tolerate different impurities.S-002S-004

Unlike costs, percentages, theoretical energy reductions and maturity labels stay in native units. The matrix therefore cannot be sorted into a common cost curve or a winning-technology league table.S-002

Slovalco’s 2026 agreement enables a restart of 75,000 t/year of curtailed capacity; it does not prove realised output. Rheinwerk’s smelting exit does not mean the whole site closed. San Ciprián’s completed restart does not disclose site utilisation. These are direct operator statements, not independent causal analysis.S-030S-032S-033

CISAF adoption, network-charge guidance, a hydrogen methodology, auction awards, a communication, a legislative proposal and an unresolved bounded search are not one implementation score. Instrument publication does not prove Member-State implementation; an award does not prove a signed grant or operation; absence of an admitted scrap follow-up does not prove non-delivery.S-012S-020S-021S-034

The research cutoff is 12 August 2026. The immutable corrected-v2 packet contains 171 research files and passed independent bounded review at SHA-256 7e3774dfa99cd5f73e121b839222fe2a14a7d1db7308c26638d0baac04908dfc. Live packet bytes matched the reviewed files before the cutoff was frozen.

1. Source-first: current law owns legal claims; Eurostat owns official product/trade/price observations; JRC owns attributed synthesis and scenarios; company pages own only their exact dated statements.
2. Atomise: every retained claim carries source IDs, locator, evidence class, limitation, prohibited inference and canonical owner.
3. Separate: stage, route, capacity, output, direct/power/lifecycle emissions, gross/net trade, proposal/law and announcement/operation never collapse into one field.
4. Fail closed: unsupported or commercially blocked values remain Held — not claimed; removed canonical duplication remains visible in the audit trail.
5. Reuse responsibly: CBAM Pulse transformed Eurostat data, identifies the changes and includes the Eurostat non-responsibility disclaimer. Third-party material and listed reporting-country exceptions remain excluded.