No green hydrogen required: a German aluminium plant cut its furnace emissions 25% with gas that already exists

Decarbonising heavy industry is often a story about waiting — for green hydrogen, for new grids, for someday. At Trimet's aluminium recycling plant in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, engineers stopped waiting. On 29 October the plant commissioned a new energy system that fires its melting furnaces with coke oven gas from a steelworks in nearby Bottrop — a gas that is more than 60% hydrogen and already exists today. The switch cuts the plant's direct carbon dioxide emissions by 25%, about 4,000 tonnes a year. No breakthrough fuel had to be invented; one industry's by-product became another's cleaner fire.

SDG 13 · Climate action — Mechanism: infrastructure build