Ford Joins 50 First Mover Coalition Companies

Ford Motor said today that it will put its purchasing power behind emerging clean technologies as part of the First Movers Coalition’s new aluminum sector. Ford is committing that at least 10% of its primary aluminum* purchases will have near-zero carbon emissions by 2030, a small step in the right direction of addressing planet-killing and people-killing global warming.

Led by the World Economic Forum and the US Government, the First Movers Coalition targets sectors including aluminum, aviation, chemicals, concrete, shipping, steel, and trucking, which are responsible for 30% of global emissions – a proportion expected to rise to over 50% by mid-century without urgent progress on clean technology innovation. According to the World Economic Forum, aluminum represents 2% of global emissions.

Ford is the first automaker to join the Department of Energy’s Better Climate Challenge. Ford is working to reach carbon neutrality globally no later than 2050, but like many other companies it is a long, long way from achieving that desire. Global technology giants Alphabet and Microsoft, along with AES, Aveva, Ball Corporation, BHP, Consolidated Contractors Company, Ecolab, Enel, EY, FedEx, Ford, HeidelbergCement, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, National Grid, Novelis, PWC, Schneider Electric, Swiss Re and Vestas are new members.

“The purchasing commitments made by the First Movers Coalition represent the highest-leverage climate action that companies can take because creating the early markets to scale advanced technologies materially reduces the whole world’s emissions – not just any company’s own footprint. With today’s expansion, the coalition has achieved scale across the world’s leading companies and support from committed governments around the world to tackle the hardest challenge of the climate crisis: reducing the emissions from the sectors where we don’t yet have the toolkit to replace unabated fossil fuels and swiftly reach net-zero emissions,” said John Kerry, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. Kerry is at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2022 this week to promote this initiative.

More than 50 companies have now joined the First Movers Coalition, launched by US President Biden and the World Economic Forum at COP26 to de-carbonize the heavy industry and long-distance transport sectors responsible for 30% of global emissions. For these sectors to de-carbonize at the speed needed to keep the planet on a 1.5°C-degree pathway**, they need low-carbon technologies that are not yet competitive with current carbon-intensive solutions but must reach commercial scale by 2030 to achieve net-zero emissions globally by 2050.

Denmark, India, Italy, Japan, Norway, Singapore, Sweden and the United Kingdom have joined the US as government partners to create early markets for clean technologies through policy measures and private sector engagement.

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*Ford plans to invest more than $50 billion globally from 2022 through 2026 to develop electric vehicles and the batteries that power them. Ford recycles up to 20 million pounds of aluminum each month at its Dearborn Stamping, Kentucky Truck and Buffalo Stamping facilities. Making recycled aluminum only takes around 5% of the energy needed to make new aluminum, according to the Aluminum Association.

**Global Warming of 1.5° C comes from an IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5° C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, with the idea of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty.

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