Meeting with MP Greg Hands

Meeting with MP Greg Hands

February 03, 2022
Director of Public Affairs, Martin Casey, this week joined a small delegation from the Aldersgate Group at a meeting with MP Greg Hands, the Minister of State for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change, held at the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.

Aldersgate Group published the two reports towards the end of last year on industrial decarbonisation – CEMEX contributed to both. The aim was to inform Hands and his officials about the main points of the reports and the consequent policy asks.

One of the reports was on ‘Accelerating the decarbonisation of industrial clusters and dispersed sites (done with Frontier Economics)’ and the other ‘Delivering competitive industrial electricity prices in an era of transition (done with UCL)’.

The main focus is how to deliver a net zero target whilst remaining competitive.

The points that Martin raised were focused on:

  • policy needs for carbon capture use and storage (CCUS) for dispersed sites like Rugby
  • electricity costs related to market structure (non- commodity costs i.e., not the current gas price) and the need to address them
  • the need for an UK carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) especially if the EU introduce one.

The Minister Greg Hands MP knows CEMEX well and a few years ago visited our Fulham Plant which is in his constituency and even batched some concrete!