Kentucky is poised to win big from the clean energy transition. A combination of clean manufacturing projects and renewable energy could bring more than 5,000 green jobs to the Bluegrass State, allowing Kentuckians to rebuild their economy and end the state’s toxic reliance on a dying coal industry. While the American aluminum industry has been struggling, in part due to the cost of dirty electricity, Century Aluminum’s new green smelter project could help lock in a cycle of growth based on modern manufacturing processes and clean energy across the industrial Midwest. Accompanying several new factories that will make electric vehicles and their batteries are new renewable energy projects. A huge solar facility on a former coal mine is among them and will help Kentucky find cleaner, more economic ways to "keep the lights on.”
Century’s State-of-the-Art Aluminum Smelter
Last month, when the US Department of Energy announced that a brand new, state-of-the-art aluminum smelter would be one of 33 projects receiving a grant to pave the way for clean American manufacturing. Sierra Club celebrates this enormous investment in good green jobs, healthy communities, which further cements the U.S. as an innovator and climate leader. The company, Century Aluminum, has indicated that it hopes the new smelter will be located in Kentucky. This project alone is slated to add 1,000 permanent, family-sustaining union jobs, as well as hundreds of construction jobs. It will be the first new aluminum smelter in the country in more than four decades and will double our capacity to produce primary aluminum, a critical material for the clean energy transition used in electric cars and trucks, solar panels, and more. The new smelter will be super efficient and, eventually, fully powered by clean energy. Century is receiving $500 million from the Department of Energy (DOE), plus additional private funding to make this facility a reality.
Making the goods we need to survive – and thrive – with fossil fuels isn’t compatible with a vision for a just transition. This is why Century’s new aluminum smelter in Kentucky is a beacon of hope. The facility will aim to be powered exclusively by clean electricity, which can be a gamechanger for showing that even energy-intensive sectors can be sustained by renewable energy generation. This new facility could require as much as 1 gigawatt of electricity–about as much electricity as the entire city of Louisville uses in a day.
Right now, Kentucky has one of the dirtiest grids in the country, meaning this new smelter can’t simply plug into the existing power system. But the Century project can help prompt new renewable energy projects to come online and help diversify Kentucky’s economy.
State-of-the-art manufacturing and abundant clean energy aside, this green aluminum smelter is also an opportunity for the local community to capitalize on these huge federal and private investments. Century will have to develop community benefits commitments through a negotiation process with local representatives, in order to receive the full $500 million from DOE. Kentuckians living near the green smelter will be able to tell the company what they need, including potentially local hire requirements, new playgrounds and parks, a public health clinic, or pollution monitoring and abatement. The promise of this grant program is that Century will have to work in partnership with community members to make their vision for a clean energy future come to life.
We need to reimagine Kentucky as an energy state, plain and simple, instead of a coal state. Kentuckians are ready to move ahead with new technology and family-sustaining jobs, industries are connecting with workforce training programs at local colleges and universities. Green jobs are real family-sustaining jobs – not just promises of jobs in tech that don’t make up losses in coal facilities and mining.
Funding for these projects was made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest ever investment in climate solutions and clean energy jobs. But this effort is under threat from big polluters and the politicians in their pockets. Republicans are trying to DEFUND these critical investments just when they're getting started. Tell Congress to protect this funding.
For more information, visit DOE’s Industrial Demonstrations Program page. Details on the Green Aluminum Smelter from Century can be found here and slides from the regional community briefing from DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations can be found here.