The high price of oil and massive liquidity in the Gulf due to windfall profits has fuelled the appetite for carbon capture with the UAE leading the charge and Emirates Aluminum is the latest to join a growing green movement.

Mr Duncan Hedditch CEO of Emal said that it is undertaking a feasibility study, together with Masdar, to create a carbon capture and storage scheme. He added that "It is still in a very early investigations stage. We are looking at whether this is economically and technologically feasible and whether we would be able to do this."

Emal already has on board an engineering, procurement, construction and management contractor, a JV between Canada's SNC Lavalin and Australia's Worley Parsons. SNC Lavalin was tapped by Masdar in February 2008 to undertake the CCS study in Abu Dhabi, which is set to be the world's largest carbon capture and storage project. The study has identified 4 to 6 projects with an approximate cost of USD 500 million each that could be quickly executed.

Reductions in the UAE's carbon emissions would come to between 6 million and 8 million tonnes per year. That is from a total of around 76 million tonnes per year of present and planned emissions in the UAE. Carbon capture and storage is an approach to mitigate global warming by capturing CO2 from large point sources such as fossil fuel power plants and storing it instead of releasing it into the atmosphere.

Emal is set to produce 700,000 tonnes of aluminum per year in the first phase, which will increase to 1.4 million tonnes in the second phase.