un climate change conference - cop28

Holcim has become a founding member of the Sustainable Markets Initiative’s (SMI) Circularity Task Force, launched at COP28 in Dubai, to accelerate our world’s shift to a circular economy. This task force aims to close essential material loops to advance climate action, while preserving nature’s resources and planetary boundaries. The Circularity Task Force is aligned with the Terra Carta charter putting nature, people and planet at the heart of global value creation through real economy action. 

By building cross-sector collaboration, Holcim together with the other founding members of the Circularity Task Force - Gemini Corp, Dubai Airports, Investcorp, and LGT Group - will champion tangible, scalable and sustainable circular business practices, while raising awareness about supportive regulatory frameworks. 

Jan Jenisch, Chairman and CEO of Holcim: "With our world’s rising population and urbanization, we need to build better with less to raise living standards for all while preserving nature. Circularity is a gamechanger to make this happen at scale. At Holcim we are driving circular construction across all metropolitan areas where we operate to build cities from cities, recycling construction demolition materials into new building solutions. I am excited to be joining like-minded organizations to accelerate the shift to a more circular future together."

Our team was named as an "Energy Transition Changemaker" by the COP28 Presidency. We were chosen as just one of nine Changemaker companies in our category for our "Carbon2Business" carbon capture project in Lägerdorf, Germany, designed to capture more than 1 million tons of CO₂ annually from 2029 for utilization as a raw material across industries in the region.

 The COP28 Presidency Energy Transition Changemakers initiative aims to foster private sector collaboration in delivering innovative and scalable decarbonization projects globally, and to demonstrate solutions that speed up the energy transition. A total of 39 awards were given at COP28 across four categories. In this spirit of partnership, we look forward to deepening and extending our collaborations across our value chain and beyond to scale up our impact.

Plenary session: Progress since COP26

Part of the Business & Philanthropy Forum, this CEO session was a chance for companies to speak about progress made on the First Mover Coalition (FMC) targets since the initiative's inception at COP26. 

Holcim has been working with partners on all ends of the technology readiness spectrum – from low-carbon cement (ECOPlanet) offering to customers, to partnership with Volvo on electric trucks, to supporting startups and think tanks on accelerating the scale-up of innovative building decarbonization solutions. During the panel discussions, Jan Jenisch, Holcim CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors, shared the lessons learnt through these partnerships, specifically the differences from the perspective of a supplier and being on the demand-side of FMC.

Cédric de Meeûs - Vice President, Group Public Affairs & Social Impact, moderated the panel discussion "Enabling Circularity in the Built Environment" organized by Holcim, ICLEI, Arup, Architecture 2030 and the Concrete Sustainability Council.

The built environment is responsible for half of global resource use, construction demolition waste accounts for nearly 40% of total solid waste and around 45% of GHG emissions come from the production and consumption of resources and materials. 

Circular economy enables decarbonization and reduces the use of natural resources. Hence, there is a need to accelerate the shift from a linear “take-make-waste” economy to a circular “reduce-reuse-recycle” in the built environment. 

This discussion focused on how to accelerate the shift towards circular buildings and the role of innovative building solutions (including design, materials, waste management, etc.), to achieve this shift. 

The session also aimed at discussing the collaboration levers between partners to create an enabling environment to successfully scale the transition to a circular built environment globally and the various obstacles that are yet to be overcome to achieve this scale up.