The clean energy transition relies on metals. Aluminium, nickel, copper, lithium. They are not just building blocks of today’s technological infrastructure, but of ambition. Yet behind the headlines on electric vehicles, wind farms, and solar panels lies a more complicated reality: how do we ensure these critical materials are not just abundant, but clean? And who is going to pay the premium?
In recent years, the groundwork to answer that question has begun to take shape. The standardisation of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) disclosures – through globally recognised frameworks and the development of metal-specific emissions methodologies – has given producers, investors and customers a clearer lens into what “sustainable” really means. Sustainability, once a marketing slogan, is becoming measurable, auditable, and crucially, priceable.
Take the LMEpassport*, the London Metal Exchange’s digital credentialing system. By creating a common framework to disclose ESG metrics across metals and mining, it has laid the foundations for what could become the most important shift in the industry: the ability to price sustainability. The implications are potentially huge. With standardisation comes comparability; and with comparability comes confidence. Confidence reduces uncertainty – the biggest bugbear of the financial world – and unlocks capital. Buyers who are willing to pay more for cleaner, lower carbon metals can now do so with greater accuracy and consistency – and there are already signs this is happening.
Take aluminium, for example. Long-term contracts like BMW’s agreement with EGA’s Celestial product – a low-carbon aluminium – prove that the sustainability premium is real. Certain buyers are already choosing to pay more for metals that reflect their values and reduce their Scope 3 emissions. But while the demand is there, the market structure is, unfortunately, lagging.
Today, most of these sustainability premiums are hammered out behind closed doors, negotiated bilaterally, contract by contract. This creates two problems. First, it keeps the premium invisible to the broader market, weakening its ability to send signals that can influence new and more positive behaviours. Second, it slows downscale. Without transparent pricing, the market for cleaner metals remains fragmented and inefficient – limiting the pace at which sustainable supply can grow.
The good news? We’re almost there. The data infrastructure exists, the standards are aligning, and buyers are ready. All that’s missing is formalisation – a credible, independent mechanism that consistently prices the sustainability attributes of metals. This would not only support better commercial positioning for sustainability-minded producers but also create a self-reinforcing loop: clearer prices drive more investment, which enables better performance, which in turn justifies the premium.
If that premium remains murky, so too does the incentive to improve. Progress slows. Producers sit on the sidelines. And the risk is that cleaner production remains niche – admirable, but commercially unrewarded.
It does not have to be this way. The metals markets now have all the ingredients to price sustainability, fairly, transparently and at scale. We just need to take the final step and make it visible.
Sustainability is not just a value. It is a value that deserves a price – and a transparent one at that.
*LMEpassport is a digital system that helps the metals industry credibly track and communicate sustainability attributes, paving the way for a sustainability premium in pricing.
