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Speaking in an exclusive interview with Fastmarkets at Aluminium Düsseldorf, Voss touched on the challenges facing the European aluminium industry as it fights to remain competitive, warning of rising costs under the Emissions Trading System (ETS), the potential inclusion of indirect (Scope 2) emissions under the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and the carbon accounting of scrap, while highlighting limited willingness to pay for "green" material.
Reflecting on his time as director general of European Aluminium, Voss described how a period of post-Covid optimism gave way to a series of “rolling crises” for the European aluminium industry, including Russia’s war with Ukraine, soaring energy prices, mounting trade pressures and rising carbon costs.
Despite this, he said European aluminium companies remained resilient, continuing to invest and develop decarbonization technologies.
“I still feel a real appetite in this industry to fight, to remain here in Europe and to thrive here in Europe in the coming years,” he said.
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CBAM raises competitiveness concerns
CBAM, introduced on January 1, 2026, has become a key policy issue for the European aluminium industry, with significant uncertainty remaining over its development.
While significant volatility in aluminium premiums has dominated much of the market focus this year, CBAM remains a prominent issue heading into 2027, with the potential costs becoming an increasingly significant part of market discussions at the Düsseldorf aluminium conference.
One of European Aluminium’s biggest concerns is the potential future inclusion of indirect, or Scope 2, emissions.
Voss said European aluminium producers already face carbon costs through European electricity pricing, regardless of whether individual smelters were using carbon-intensive power.
At the same time, existing carbon leakage protections, including free allocation and indirect cost compensation, face changes as CBAM develops.
The resulting risk, according to Voss, is that European producers could bear an indirect carbon cost through electricity while overseas competitors might be able to structure their power arrangements differently.
“That creates a major competitiveness problem,” he said, adding that bringing indirect emissions into CBAM in the short term could be “fairly catastrophic” for European producers.
Scrap accounting emerges as key CBAM issue
Beyond the debate over direct (Scope 1) and Scope 2 emissions, when asked which element of CBAM he would most like to change, Voss pointed to scrap.
“The biggest thing for us right now is this question of the carbon accounting of scrap and how you treat post-consumer scrap versus pre-consumer scrap and how you treat scrap generally,” Voss said.
European Aluminium has called for a single default value for unwrought aluminium, regardless of whether it contains pre- or post-consumer scrap, arguing that differentiating between the two could create competitive distortions between European producers and importers.
The concerns around scrap form part of a broader competitiveness challenge for European aluminium producers, with Voss also pointing to the growing cost burden from the EU ETS.
Rising ETS costs are becoming another key concern as policymakers consider the future of carbon leakage protections for European industry. Voss described the issue as fundamentally one of competitiveness.
Voss pushed back against proposals to make ETS financial support conditional on companies making additional green investments, arguing that this could undermine industrial competitiveness.
Rather than providing additional capital for decarbonization, the support was needed to offset costs that competing producers elsewhere did not face, he said.
“It’s sort of survival support,” Voss said. “It’s to keep the lights on, to try and survive in a world where our competitors simply don’t face these challenges.”
Voss said the political debate in Europe had nevertheless shifted considerably since 2022, with industrial competitiveness increasingly being considered alongside climate policy.
The challenge now was translating that shift in political rhetoric into policy that allowed European industry to remain competitive while decarbonizing.
“There’s an interest in having green material, but very little interest in paying for it,” he said.
Low-carbon aluminium premiums remain stable
Low-carbon premiums have remained relatively stable year on year, although uncertainty surrounding US tariffs on Canadian aluminium has had some impact on low-carbon P1020 premiums, given the significant volumes of low-carbon aluminium produced in Canada.
Fastmarkets assessed the aluminium low-carbon differential P1020A, Europe at $15-30 per tonne on Friday October 2, up from $10-25 per tonne on Friday August 7.
Looking ahead, uncertainty also remains over the availability of low-carbon units in the duty-unpaid market, with the expected influx of Indonesian material not considered low-carbon.