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viewpoint: cement
WHICH WAY FORWARD? ˆ BY BASIL KARATZAS
Attempting to adhere to an ESG Framework in a post-covid, inflationary world, the cement industry is at the crossroads
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or many, the recent geo-political events in Ukraine amount to a real-life gauge of whether adherence to new regulations for a cleaner environment and a safer world is indeed the way forward. With the world barely having recovered from the covid-19 pandemic, the focus of the global community – having obtained a higher awareness status from the pandemic – had been on environmental, social and governance (ESG) as the way for a better and more equitable society, and a world better positioned to face future crises. But again, combined with supply chain disruptions and generous stimulus packages, inflation has escalated much higher than anytime in recent memory, and prices for commodities have almost doubled since the depths of the pandemic. And, while the governments and central banks globally were shifting their focus on fighting inflation, Russia’s brutal invasion in Ukraine has elevated the inflation problem to a new level. And
BULK TERMINALS
international | SPRING 2022
along with it are the tough decisions that have to be made, on humanitarian and political grounds, but also decisions on momentary and fiscal policy – and, yes, decisions that will show whether the ESG cause had any meaning at all, or was just a “lip-service cause” to be dropped at the first sign of trouble. Decisions on ESG (including decisions about achieving zero -emission goals by the end of this decade or so) are critical for many aspects of our societies and lives. For certain industries that are heavy pollutants by their own nature, such decisions on ESG may be of existential dimensions for companies active in such markets. Fossil fuels and coal, for instance, have been under heavy criticism – understandably – and there has been a concerted effort to move away from such sources of energy. For the maritime industry, where its 940m tons of CO2 emissions or almost 2% of the global greenhouse emissions, the primacy of the goal for emission reduction is self evident.
