Finding better ways to provide the materials the world needs
Purpose & Values
The drive for innovation and continuous improvement is at the heart of our purpose
Business Strategy
Climate change is at the heart of our business strategy
We are 150
150 years of finding better ways
Iron Ore
Iron ore is the primary raw material used to make steel
7 things the world will need for a low-carbon future
Wind, sun and water – what else do you need to make renewable energy work?
Sustainability – the expectation, not the exception
Shaping our aluminium product offering to meet demand for greener metals
We work across six continents in around 35 countries
Look inside a mine of the future
Our most intelligent mine yet is pioneering new mining technologies
Rincon Project
A long-life, low-cost and low-carbon lithium source
Simandou Project
The world’s largest untapped high-grade iron ore deposit
Providing materials the world needs in a responsible way
Sustainability Reporting 2022
We have a responsibility to extract the full value from the minerals and materials we produce in the safest and most sustainable way possible
Climate Change
We’re targeting net zero emissions by 2050
Water
Sharing our water usage
We aim to deliver superior returns to our shareholders while safeguarding the environment and meeting our obligations to wider society
Rio Tinto Limited 2023 AGM
Perth: 4 May 2023
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If you want to drive real change, we have just the place to do it
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Our approach to climate change
We will only invest in quality assets which will give robust returns under a range of economic, geopolitical and carbon scenarios, creating a resilient portfolio with significant upside to the energy transition. We are applying similar thinking to our approach to decarbonisation."
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Over a year ago, we put the low-carbon transition at the heart of our new strategy, setting a clear pathway to deliver long-term value as well as ambitious targets to decarbonise our business.
Our purpose is to find better ways to provide the materials the world needs. Meeting the incremental demand of the energy transition, and ensuring local supplies of critical minerals globally, deepens our relevance to the world and ensures our long-term profitability. We are creating real momentum, and seeing early results gives me conviction that we have the right objectives, the right team, and the right strategy.
Our Scope 1 and 2 emissions targets of 15% reductions by 2025 and 50% by 2030 are aligned with 1.5°C – the stretch goal of the Paris Agreement – and are really challenging. In contrast to many of our peers, about 80% of our emissions are driven by processing and producing metals and minerals, which are high temperature, hard-to-abate activities. The remaining 20% are from our mining operations. The low-carbon transition is complex: developing new technologies and implementing major projects to decarbonise our business will take time.
We estimate that we will invest $7.5 billion in capital between 2022 and 2030 to deliver our decarbonisation strategy. So we need to be disciplined about our capital investment and make a commercial case for each mitigation project. Our experience shows that we cannot solve this simply by allocating capital. We also need to attract the right talent, deploy new technology at scale, secure approvals from regulators and partner respectfully with local communities and Indigenous peoples. In addition, higher carbon prices and other government incentives are needed to drive the production and consumption of low-carbon metals and minerals.
In 2022, our Scope 1 and 2 emissions were 30.3Mt CO2e (31.0Mt in 2021), a reduction of 7% below our 2018 baseline. This is primarily the result of switching to renewable power at Kennecott and Escondida in prior years, as well as lower than planned production from the Kitimat and Boyne aluminium smelters in 2022. We did not advance the actual implementation of our abatement projects as fast as we would have liked last year, so our capital expenditure on decarbonisation projects was $94 million, lower than we anticipated when we set our targets. Challenges have included late delivery of equipment, resourcing constraints impacting study progress, construction and commissioning delays, and project readiness.
In response, we established six abatement programmes, with dedicated people, to focus on the decarbonisation challenges that cut across our product groups: repowering our Pacific Aluminium Operations, renewables, ELYSISTM, alumina process heat, minerals processing and diesel transition. We are building capability and gaining a deeper understanding of our decarbonisation challenge (both constraints and opportunities), and our related operational expenditure increased to approximately $140 million in 2022. As a result, we are better placed to deliver the complex and large-scale structural changes to our energy system needed to achieve our 2030 target.
Given the long lead times for some of these projects, we established one additional programme to increase our investments in nature-based solutions projects and now expect these to make a more significant contribution to our targets. If done well, these projects can play a substantial role in addressing carbon emissions and biodiversity loss, while also providing benefits to local communities. Our people working on these “6+1” abatement programmes, and our substantial investments in technology, will drive the innovation and transformation needed to accelerate our low carbon transition and ensure the long-term resilience of our business.
Our Scope 3 emissions were 584Mt CO2e in 2022 – over 1% of the global total. These are primarily from our customers in Asia, processing our iron ore into steel and bauxite into aluminium, so our level of control is limited. The best way to tackle these emissions is to work in partnerships to develop the technologies needed to produce low-carbon metals and minerals. Last year we increased our engagement with our customers, governments, universities and others. It is encouraging that the initial testing phase of our BioIronTM process showed great promise and demonstrated that using microwave energy and sustainable biomass as a reductant is well suited to Pilbara ores. And we are continuing to scale up the ELYSISTM technology – the world’s first carbon-free aluminium smelting process – towards the demonstration of even larger commercial-size cells.
In the past year, I have spent time engaging with a diverse range of stakeholders on the need to work together and address climate change with urgency. Given the structural changes we must make to our energy system, 2030 is just around the corner. Our success relies on our ability to strengthen our resilience to the physical, societal and economic effects of climate change and the energy transition, while building partnerships and capabilities that enable us to secure new opportunities.
We’re working towards net zero emissions by 2050
Our position on climate change
In 2022, our shareholders supported our Climate Action Plan (CAP) in a non-binding advisory vote on the company’s ambitions, emissions targets and actions to achieve them. We will continue to publish our progress on climate change annually in line with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). The Board is fully aligned with this action plan and believes it will deliver value for our shareholders, our customers and wider society. The table below summarises progress in 2022 and our action plan in 2023.
We have committed to reach net zero by 2050 and have set ambitious interim targets relative to our 2018 equity emissions baseline: to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 15% by 2025 and to reduce GHG emissions by 50% by 2030.1
1. Our net zero commitment applies to our Scope 1 and 2 emissions only. For planning purposes, we define short-term as up to two years, medium-term as 2-10 years and long-term as beyond 10 years. For our analysis of physical climate risks, we define short-term as 2030, medium-term as 2050 and long-term as 2100.
Our approach to addressing Scope 3 emissions is to engage with our customers on climate change and work with them to develop and scale up technologies to decarbonise steel and aluminium production.
We estimated that we will invest $7.5 billion in capital between 2022 and 2030 to deliver our decarbonisation strategy (approximately $1.5 billion over the period 2022 to 2024).
We also expected our incremental operating expenditure to support the CAP to be in the order of $200 million per year, including research and development initiatives. For example, we planned to spend about $50 million on our iron and steel decarbonisation initiatives in 2022.
We continue to encourage our industry associations to align their advocacy with the goals of the Paris Agreement. We review the climate advocacy of our industry associations each year, and we publish our review on our website and consider it when we decide whether to renew our memberships.
In the short-term incentive plan (STIP), safety, environment, social and governance matters, including climate change, are now assigned an explicit performance weighting of 35%, of which 20% relates to safety and 15% to ESG. The “E” component is 5% of the STIP and relates entirely to climate change performance objectives.
We are committed to supporting a just transition to a low-carbon economy that is socially inclusive and provides decent work and livelihoods.
We support the TCFD recommendations and are committed to aligning our disclosures with the Climate Action 100+ (CA100+) Net Zero Company Benchmark in 2023 reporting.
Our reporting reflects our commitment to sustainability and transparency
Our drive for innovation and continuous improvement is at the core of our purpose
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With the exception of the use of cookies, Rio Tinto generally does not seek to collect personal data through this website. However if you choose to provide personal data to Rio Tinto through this website (for example, by sending us an email), we will process that personal data to answer your query and if relevant, to manage our business relationship with you or your company. We won't process that personal data for other purposes except where required to meet our legal obligations or otherwise as authorised by law and notified to you.
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With the exception of the use of cookies (explained below), Rio Tinto generally does not seek to collect personal data through this website. However if you choose to provide personal data to Rio Tinto through this website (for example, by sending us an email), we will process that personal data to answer your query and if relevant, to manage our business relationship with you or your company. We won't process that personal data for other purposes except where required to meet our legal obligations or otherwise as authorised by law and notified to you.
Part 1 of this Privacy Policy contains the Rio Tinto Data Privacy Standard, which provides an overview of Rio Tinto’s approach to personal data processing. There is additional information in the appendices to the Data Privacy Standard, including information about disclosures, trans-border data transfers, the exercise of data subject rights and how to make complaints or obtain further information relating to Rio Tinto’s processing of your personal data.
If you choose to subscribe to our media releases or other communications, you can unsubscribe at any time (by following the instructions in the email or by contacting us at digital.comms@riotinto.com).
With your consent, our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site.
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As some data privacy laws regulate IP addresses and other information collected through the use of cookies as personal data, Rio Tinto’s processing of such personal data needs to comply with its Data Privacy Standard (see Part 1 of this Privacy Policy), and also applicable data privacy laws.
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