Aggregate Industries – UK subsidiary of cement giant LafargeHolcim – submitted its first application to quarry Straitgate Farm back in 2015. The application was subsequently pulled, and in 2017 – despite the climate crisis – Aggregate Industries re-submitted plans, which this time involved an outlandish 2.5 million mile haulage scheme.
Aggregate Industries started pushing the phrase "Sustainability is at the heart of our business" in 2016. It still claims that today. They're splendid words, but utterly meaningless if the company's idea of sustainability, the company's idea of action on climate change, is hauling as-dug sand and gravel from Straitgate 23 miles away to Uffculme for processing. No wonder Aggregate Industries' countless pledges to reduce CO2 have come to naught.
But, as we posted, major investors are now starting to demand climate action from big polluters. Here, two cement CEOs discuss CO2 reduction with a senior portfolio manager from Norges Bank:
Two cement CEOs discuss CO2 reduction https://t.co/3zRrVoH3st
— ICR Magazine (@CementReview) October 9, 2020
According to the portfolio manager:
Investors are no longer just focussed on words but are also looking at hard numbers and climate-based metrics.
That must be alarming for companies like LafargeHolcim and Aggregate Industries; alarming for companies that have so far thought that words – not actual reductions – might be enough.
One of the cement CEOs involved in the discussion was LafargeHolcim’s Jan Jenisch. He admits that until three years ago, the company hadn’t done enough on sustainability. This was obvious even in East Devon, if Aggregate Industries’ planning application for Straitgate at the time was anything to go by.
Will anything now change? Time will tell:
Jan Jenisch admitted that it was a challenge for himself and LafargeHolcim to get the focus right initially, in terms of agreeing a new way forward on carbon reduction. He explained that, until three years ago, the company hadn’t done enough on sustainability. However the context changed due to the CO2 movement and new scientific evidence, and it became obvious that new priorities had to be set and the agenda had to be accelerated. "It was important to make things happen and I put sustainability at the top of my agenda," said Mr Jenisch.
LafargeHolcim needed to educate itself on the facts, agree a way forward and energise the company to get on board with the new targets. "Communication was missing, and acceleration, which is needed in this situation," he added.
It was important for LafargeHolcim to make people part of the programme. The group's decision to target zero emissions was not an idea generated in the CEO's office. "It was the result of many people around the globe wanting to go on this journey," said Mr Jenisch.
And, if true, thank goodness they have pushed the CEO to take action.
But why hadn’t LafargeHolcim done enough on sustainability? Why hadn’t it taken climate change seriously enough? This serial polluter – that can trace its roots back to economic collaboration with the Nazis and beyond – will have long been been aware of the harm it was causing to society, year in, year out. Was that not enough to spur action? Did it really need to wait for the money men to raise concerns?
Jan Jenisch points to new scientific evidence, to a conversion 3 years ago, as though anthropogenic climate change is a recent discovery. It might be new to Jan Jenisch, but 1856 was when Eunice Newton Foote showed that the heating effect of sunlight was affected by CO2; 1896 was when Svante Arrhenius calculated the effect of doubling atmospheric CO2 to be an increase in surface temperatures of 5-6°C; 1958 was when measurements confirmed the steady increase of CO2 in the atmosphere; the 1980s was when global temperatures began to rise sharply; 1988 was when the UN established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and 2006 was when even Aggregate Industries recognised that climate change "[is] happening and we have to take action now."
Since then Aggregate Industries' emissions have gone up, and in 2019 – despite new priorities, despite it apparently being "important to make things happen" – LafargeHolcim emitted 148,000,000 tonnes of CO2; more than many countries and still 2% higher than 2017.
