China Is Making More Aluminum. Its Emissions May Still Be Peaking.

China is making more aluminum, not less. The country produced 45.02 million tonnes of primary aluminum in 2025, up 2.4% from the year before, and another 23.19 million tonnes in the first half of 2026, up 3.8% year over year. That undercuts an earlier idea that China's aluminum industry had already hit a hard production ceiling and that its carbon emissions from making aluminum had peaked around 2024.

Aluminum smelting uses enormous amounts of electricity, so the real question is whether China can keep making more metal while cutting the emissions tied to each tonne. There are signs that might be happening. Clean energy supplied about a quarter of the power used by aluminum smelters in 2024, and China's 2025-2027 plan aims to push that above 30%, along with retiring less efficient plants. Recycled aluminum production, which uses far less energy than making new metal, was roughly 10.5 million tonnes in 2024, with a target of over 15 million tonnes by 2027. China also added aluminum to its national carbon trading market in 2025, though that system doesn't yet cover emissions from the electricity smelters buy, which is the biggest piece of the puzzle.

None of this changes anything homeowners need to do. But aluminum is a common material in windows, siding, and other home products, and how it's made matters for the embodied carbon in whatever new materials eventually reach the US market.