Aluminium plant? They cannot be serious!

When I read ‘Cyprus may host Indian aluminium plant’ (Sunday Mail, June 7), I thought the paper had printed an April Fool joke by mistake.

Converting bauxite (aluminium ore) into aluminium metal is probably the most energy-intensive industrial process in the world. On average it takes between 15.2-15.7 MWh to produce 1 ton of aluminium. To put that figure into perspective, it’s about the same amount of energy that an average family consumes in 20 years.

Aluminium smelting produces poisonous and polluting gasses including hydrogen fluoride, alumina, carbon monoxide, volatile organics and sulphur dioxide and solid wastes such as smelting pot linings contaminated with various fluorides and cyanide. And workers at aluminium smelters are subject to the effects of fluoride poisoning and other ailments.

An aluminium plant would have disastrous environmental consequences for the island and the tourism sector.

Considering that we are now paying a three cent surcharge on our electricity bills because the Government has allowed EU limits on CO2 emissions to be exceeded, how much more will we have to pay if their latest electricity-guzzling, money-making idea gets off the ground!
 
Nigel Howarth,
Erimi, Limassol

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.