Charles Martin Hall Niagara Falls Alcoa first reduction plant

Aluminum smelting is sited at electricity sources — Norway, James Bay, and originally Niagara Falls for Alcoa's first plant.

Well today we're trying to get rid of the CO2. As Professor Sadoway used to say, if making metals in billion-ton quantities is the problem of generating a lot of CO2 — maybe it's not as bad as the cows generating methane or the utilities generating electricity, but the metals business produces a lot of CO2 because we make things in very large quantities. Professor Sadoway said, well then we should be the ones to figure out how to clean it up, and get away from carbon-free metal reduction. So Professor Allanore and Professor Sadoway and a number of other people in the department have various schemes to generate metals without using carbon. In general they're going to do that by using electrons, and today where do most electrons come from? The utility, which burns coal — that's in the news this morning. However, you do have hydroelectric plants, you have nuclear power, you could maybe think of solar, but you'd have to have a very large solar grid to get to the thousands of megawatts of power you need. Aluminum plants are located at the source of the electricity — great big hydroelectric power plants in Norway, or James Bay in Canada, or originally Niagara Falls. Where did Charles Martin Hall, Alcoa, build their first reduction plant? Niagara Falls — because it was a source of relatively free electrons.