Holcim New Zealand believes in operating its business in an environmentally responsible manner. For a business like ours, with long time horizons, to operate otherwise is foolish and self–defeating. We are also dedicated to securing long-term business certainty and security in New Zealand. We think this aim is entirely rational.

We are a company in an energy intensive business, and we recognise the need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption while fostering economic and social development. At its very least, we see climate change as a risk to our business. Our shareholders, customers, neighbours, employees, financiers, insurers and our families expect us to manage that risk – in the same way that we are expected to manage currency risk, environmental risk, and health and safety.

The difficulty in framing and executing a unified national policy for climate change action in New Zealand, coupled with the interesting lessons to be learned from the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), has prompted Holcim New Zealand to scrutinise our own approach to this difficult and complex area of public policy. In mid 2006, we made a commitment to the New Zealand government to identify, in detail, emissions trading design elements that would be appropriate for New Zealand's energy intensive sector - using the wide international experience already gathered by the Holcim Group in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) and elsewhere.

In February 2007, having completed this work, we released our detailed briefing paper "Creating a Good Atmosphere: Insights on Emissions Trading for New Zealand" as our attempt to focus on solutions in the debate on climate change policy in New Zealand. The paper is available for download from the sidebar on the right of this page.