Rio Tinto “farms out” smelter repowering as decarbonisation division gets the axe

Rio Tinto’s aluminium and lithium team will now be responsible for repowering the east coast assets, which include the energy-hungry Tomago smelter, after the miner decimated its decarbonisation division. 

The changes will remove “layers of complexity” built up over time, it says.

The aluminium team is led by Jérôme Pécresse from Canada.

It will now be tasked with handling everything from managing the $1 billion spend on efficiency and decarbonisation at the Tomago smelter, following a cheap power deal with the federal government, to deciding on the future of the Gladstone coal power station which it tentatively said might close in 2029.  

Rio Tinto has signed enough renewable energy power purchase agreements to power the Boyne smelter and consider shutting down the Gladstone power station in Queensland.

But it struggled to do the same for the Tomago smelter in New South Wales (NSW) where a contract with AGL’s Bayswater coal power station ends in 2028. That was resolved in December 2025 with a deal by the federal and NSW governments for subsidised electricity from Snowy Hydro, in exchange for investments in emissions reduction and other decarbonisation efforts at the smelter.

The changes will shift decision making to where work is happening, a spokesperson says.

“We are now changing the way we work to make things simpler, improve performance, increase accountability and give our frontline teams better support, as we announced last year,” a statement from the company says. 

“This means moving more decision-making to where the work happens, removing duplication and driving stronger operating and capital discipline.  

“Some roles will move closer to operations and report to different teams, while others will no longer be required.”

What this means is that work that was once managed from a central office will now be farmed out among the different divisions of the company. 

For example, responsibility for the the battery electric haul truck program in the Pilbara will move to the iron ore business. A two truck joint trial with BHP started in late 2025.

Rio Tinto had already dialled back plans for 1 gigawatt (GW) of new wind and solar in the Pilbara to around 600 to 700 MW, in 2024, because it pushed large-scale deployment of battery electric haulage solutions beyond 2030.

Outsourcing decarbonisation

Rio Tinto appointed a new CEO in Simon Trott in August last year. 

Just 102 days into his tenure, Trott unveiled cuts to a decarbonisation budget from $US7.5 billion ($A10.7 billion) between 2021 and 2030 to between $US1 billion and $US2 billion.

The company is still keeping its goal to halve emissions by 2030, but the December plan relies on partnering with contractors and renewable energy developers to deliver decarbonisation benefits.  

Rio Tinto has already dumped its $215 million BioIron program, which was a decade in the making, and replaced it in November with a $35 million investment into Calix.

Calix is building a green iron making pilot using electric heating and hydrogen reduction at Kwinana in Western Australia.  

In the same month, the mining giant signed a 15-year virtual power purchase agreement for 78.5 megawatts (MW) of wind energy to power its Kennecott mining operations in Texas.

At the time it was still aiming to power global operations with 90 per cent renewable energy by 2030.