The “Hay Capital of the World” may soon also be the clean aluminum capital of America.
The state of Oklahoma and Emirates Global Aluminum, which produces aluminum with low associated climate pollution, announced plans to build a $4 billion aluminum smelter in Inola, Oklahoma, an agricultural community east of Tulsa heretofore best known for its Bluestem Prairie hay.
The facility would be one of the first, if not the first, primary aluminum plants built in the United States in nearly half a century and could help the American aluminum industry transition from some of the dirtiest to cleanest aluminum production in the world.
“This is a monumental day for Oklahoma,” Gov. Kevin Stitt said in a written statement announcing the plans on Friday. “We are proud to welcome Emirates Global Aluminum to our state and excited for the generational impact this investment will have on our future.”
From lightweight automobiles and airplanes to wind turbines, solar panels and their support structures, aluminum is a key material for the clean energy sector as well as other industries. However, the U.S. aluminum industry has plummeted in recent decades, dropping from nearly one third of global production to just 1 percent. Remaining smelters are old, inefficient, often powered by coal and emit high levels of perfluorocarbons, chemicals that are among the most potent and longest-lasting greenhouse gases on the planet.
The new plant would employ up to 1,000 people and produce 600,000 metric tons of aluminum per year, according to the memorandum of understanding signed by Stitt and Abdulnasser Bin Kalban, the CEO of EGA. The facility would nearly double U.S. primary aluminum production.
“This announcement catapults Oklahoma to the forefront of the critical minerals and aluminum industry in the United States,” said John Budd, CEO of the Oklahoma Department of Commerce.
However, a key question is where the plant’s electricity will come from. Aluminum smelters, which turn alumina ore into aluminum, are incredibly energy intensive. Greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of that electricity largely determine the metal’s carbon intensity.
Buy Clean Aluminum, a consortium of companies—including Ford Motor Co., PepsiCo and solar panel installer SunPower—and environmental groups, wrote to then-Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in 2023 urging the federal government to support new aluminum production facilities powered by wind and solar.
“While Emirates Global Aluminum’s announcement could be good news for U.S. industry, we’ll reserve judgment until we see whether this project commits to renewable power,” said Annie Sartor, aluminum campaign director for Industrious Labs, a climate advocacy organization focused on heavy industry and a member of the Buy Clean Aluminum consortium.
Simon Buerk, senior vice president for corporate affairs for Emirates Global Aluminum, said the company hopes to rely heavily on renewable energy for the proposed plant.
“An important factor in Oklahoma’s selection as the location for this project was renewable energy availability and the potential for its further development,” Buerk said in a written statement in response to questions from Inside Climate News. “Wind power accounts for more than 40 percent of electricity generation in Oklahoma already, making the state one of the wind leaders nationwide. Oklahoma also has significant solar potential. Natural gas is used for around half of Oklahoma’s electricity generation.”
Oklahoma’s high level of wind energy production and low reliance on coal makes its electric grid relatively clean. Buerk said electricity for the smelter would be sourced from the grid. However, the memorandum of understanding between the company and the state calls for a “renewable hedge on fuel,” suggesting a potential long-term agreement for power that includes a certain mix of clean energy.
“The hedge, which we are still negotiating and considering, would fix a portion of our electricity price for 10 years and provide access to up to 40 per cent renewables,” Buerk said. “It is not intended to fix or restrict the proportion of renewables in the energy mix.”
Matt Rahn, a spokesman for the Public Service Company of Oklahoma, the electric utility company that would provide power to the plant, said PSO was focused on providing cost-effective, reliable energy to all of its customers.
“Wind power accounts for more than 40 percent of electricity generation in Oklahoma already, making the state one of the wind leaders nationwide.”
— Simon Buerk, Emirates Global Aluminum
Rahn added that PSO recently filed a request to purchase the Green Country Power Plant, a gas-fired power plant in Jenks, Oklahoma, just south of Tulsa.
“PSO is routinely evaluating opportunities to add new generation based on the demands of our system,” Rahn said.
In 2021, EGA was the first company globally to power a portion of its smelters entirely by solar power, according to the company’s most recent sustainability report.
The company’s greenhouse gas emissions intensity in 2023 was approximately 35 percent lower than the global industry average, with most power production coming from natural gas, Buerk said. EGA’s emissions intensity of perfluorocarbons, climate super pollutants thousands of times more effective at warming the planet than carbon dioxide, are 95 percent lower than the global industry average, according to the company’s sustainability report.
The memorandum of understanding between the company and the state, officially signed on April 21, was months in the making, according to Rahn. EGA hopes to begin producing aluminum in Oklahoma by the end of the decade.
The White House highlighted the agreement between EGA and Oklahoma as part of $200 billion in new deals between the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates and an acceleration of $1.4 trillion in previously committed UAE investments in the U.S. during President Donald Trump’s trip to the Middle East last week.
The Trump administration placed a 25 percent tariff on aluminum imports to the United States in February that took effect in March.
Century Aluminum, one of two remaining aluminum producers in the U.S., was awarded up to $500 million from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2024 for a similarly sized “Green Aluminum Smelter” project through a federal program designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from heavy industry. The company received an initial $10 million in grant funding in January.
It remains unclear if future federal money for the project will be forthcoming. Trump administration funding cuts and freezes have particularly targeted climate efforts. Century did not respond to a request for additional information but in a recent earnings call, company executives said their “near term milestones” for the project included site selection and energy sourcing.
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Phil McKenna is a Boston-based reporter for Inside Climate News. Before joining ICN in 2016, he was a freelance writer covering energy and the environment for publications including The New York Times, Smithsonian, Audubon and WIRED. Uprising, a story he wrote about gas leaks under U.S. cities, won the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award and the 2014 NASW Science in Society Award. Phil has a master’s degree in science writing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was an Environmental Journalism Fellow at Middlebury College.
