Industry news in the last few days has been full of stories of temporary US smelter closures directly linked to soaring electricity prices. US primary aluminium producer Century Aluminum (NASDAQ: CENX) plans to idle its biggest US smelter in Kentucky for up to a year while Alcoa (technically the largest US producer but producing more outside the US than at home) is not making headway with plans to reopen the idled Intalco smelter. Of all the base metals, aluminium requires the most electricity to make, the cost of the energy makes up between 30% and 44% of the total cost of the final aluminium ingot. With electricity ... (full story)