Here’s a sentence you won’t hear often: “I love concrete.” But this week, when I visited the Global Innovation Hub of Holcim, a Fortune Global 500 building solutions company, it’s exactly what one executive said. Why? Because of the promise concrete may well hold for a CO2-poor world. “We realized our greatest challenge is our greatest opportunity,” he said.
Construction materials alone account for about 8-10% of global carbon emissions. And after construction, buildings are responsible for 28% of global emissions from heating and cooling. It’s a gigantic share of emissions, and it's surely the greatest yet least talked about challenge of the green transition.
So to go green, construction materials will either be the biggest roadblock or the best lever imaginable. This is where Swiss-based Holcim comes in. After spending decades trying to be the world’s biggest producer of building materials, it wants to go “from volume to value”—and go green. Can it work?
At its new Global Innovation Hub, which opened this week in Lyon, France, the company put its best foot forward to show that it can. There, I saw all kinds of green products coming out of the R&D pipeline: partially recycled concrete, concrete light as chocolate mousse, and concrete that literally turns green from being mixed with seeds that grow over time.
Jan Jenisch, the visionary CEO of Holcim, came up with the transformation plan, the “net zero” pledge that backs it up, and the various green products that make the transition possible. The executives under Jenisch include Miljan Gutovic, the concrete-loving Australian who heads up the company's Europe operation and leads on decarbonization, the use of renewable and green energy, and other elements of the green transition.
They have also included two successive female chief sustainability officers. Magali Anderson was the inaugural CSO, from 2019 to 2023, and as the former head of safety and operations, her deep technical expertise meant that the Holcim net-zero plan was credible upon launch.
Nollaig Forrest, who took over from Anderson on Sept. 1, and whom I spoke to in Lyon, has a background in communications and corporate affairs at multiple industrial companies, plus a three-year stint in social entrepreneurship at the World Economic Forum (note: That’s my former employer).
The shift from an operational CSO to one with a comms background made me wonder: Is the Holcim green transition just another marketing play?
Forrest notes that Holcim’s first step in its green reinvention was to come up with a solid plan, a product pipeline, and operational excellence. But much of the hard work lies in different territory: getting regulators to play ball and forging partnerships across the construction world and beyond. For that, she says, a systems approach is needed, and it’s what she brings.
I get it. In many countries, I imagine, regulators aren’t quite ready for chocolate mousse-style concrete or recycled concrete made from crushed buildings. To get those green products into the market, their blessing is crucial, and takes a skilled communicator to make it happen.
Similarly, bringing to market next-generation innovations like concrete that acts as a CO2 sink requires partnerships with companies outside the industry, such as Air Liquide, Linde, Repsol, or Shell.
What strikes me most about Holcim is how a company can go from villain to hero by embracing the future. When I spoke to Jenisch, he was adamant that the concrete industry wasn’t anything like the tobacco or car industry, fleeing from its responsibilities. And Holcim itself is a future-oriented company, he said, that wants to do its part.
“Now that we know the harmful effect [of CO2], we are fully on it,” he said. “We are part of the solution.” Though the past is "interesting," he said, “it’s more important what action we take now. This is where we want to be part of. It’s more important that we accelerate climate action, with speed and transparency. We don’t want to be greenwashing.”
From my visit to Lyon, I became a little less skeptical. I won’t yet say “I love concrete,” but I don’t mind it, especially if it’s light like chocolate mousse or green like grass.
Separately, we'll be in Atlanta next week for the Impact Initiative and reporting from there. If you can't attend in person but would like a flavor of the event, join us for the LIVE from Impact Initiative on Wednesday, Sept. 13, at 10:30 a.m. ET. You can request a Zoom invite by emailing michelle.chung@fortune.com.
Peter Vanham
Executive Editor, Fortune
peter.vanham@fortune.com
This edition of Impact Report was edited by Holly Ojalvo.
