Abstract As the world's largest producer and consumer of ten kinds of non-ferrous metals, China's non-ferrous metals industry accounts for 4.39% of total national energy consumption. It is an energy-intensive industry that faces great challenges related to energy consumption and global climate change. Applying energy-efficient technologies may be a useful strategy for the development of this industry. This paper establishes a technology system within the LEAP model to estimate energy conservation and CO 2 emissions abatement potentials for China's non-ferrous metals industry in 2010–2020. Five smelting processes are considered for aluminum, copper, lead, zinc and magnesium. Three scenarios (BAU, LT and HT) are set to simulate different technological policies and calculate abatement potentials. The results indicate that energy consumption and CO 2 emissions will continue to grow rapidly as the sector develops. Energy consumption under the BAU scenario will reach 88.15 million tce in 2020, 61% higher than in 2010. A maximum of 7.73 million tce of energy can be saved and 36.86 million tons of CO 2 can be reduced under the strongest technology policy scenario (HT) compared to BAU. Energy conservation in aluminum, magnesium, zinc, copper and lead smelting processes account for 72.9%, 13.2%, 10.2%, 2.6% and 1.1% respectively of the total energy savings potential, while the CO 2 abatement potential mostly comes from aluminum, which accounts for 86% of the total. Targeted technology policies should be made for different metals: in the aluminum sector for instance, large scale aluminum electrolytic cells above 300 kA, new cathode structures and intelligent optimization control technologies could be employed; in the zinc industry, direct leaching and long period electric-deposition could be utilized; in the magnesium industry, new types of kilns could be introduced.