Dear HCN,
While the aluminum vs.
dams article (HCN, 2/7/94) was good it was short of basic
information: what the aluminum industry pays for power. People can
understand grazing fees – try to get a horse fed for $3 per month
or pay for patent land at $5 per acre – but we should know what
electricity is worth per unit. Most of us pay about 10 cents per
kilowatt-hour. What the article failed to say is what they
pay.
I have not seen their books, but my
chemistry book says: It takes about 35 kilowatt-hours to make a
pound of aluminum. So if they only get 50 cents per pound for their
product (you only get 20 cents/pound on recycle) that means they
probably pay about 1 cent per kilowatt-hour or only one-tenth what
we do for electricity. No subsidy can justify that much, and you
can bet a private power company wouldn’t give away power at that
rate. It might be amusing to calculate what it costs us to save one
of those aluminum industry
jobs.
Noel
Eberz
Flagstaff,
Arizona
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline We pay for cheap aluminum.
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