We all know about the efforts being made to drive down emissions with the emergence of hybrid and electric cars – but what about the manufacturing of the vehicles themselves? What materials can be used to stop vehicles being piled on to landfill sites and polluting the atmosphere?

The answer, according to a speaker at the Automotive News Green Car Conference, could be aluminium.

Dr Rick Winter, who is the director of development at Alcoa Technology Centre, stated that he believes automotive aluminium content has more than tripled in the last decade because of its environmental, safety and driving performance enhancements.

According to Dr Winter, aluminium use in the world’s vehicles has avoided the burning of 84 billion litres of gasoline and more than one billion metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. He also states that the growing use of aluminium in vehicle transportation will help to make the industry greenhouse gas neutral by 2025.

High praise indeed – and with some foundation as recycling scrap aluminium requires just five per cent of the energy needed to make new aluminium from fresh materials. With its significantly lighter weight, it can save a net 20lbs of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over a vehicle’s lifetime.

Alcoa itself has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 33 per cent since 1990 and is a founding member of the United States Climate Action Partnership and the Global Roundtable on Climate Change.