For our Responsible, Sustainable, Essential Minerals programme, we sat down with Dr Diana Casey, Executive Director of Energy and Climate Change at the Mineral Products Association (MPA).  

Dr Casey is passionate about the role the mineral products sector plays in shaping the UK’s low-carbon economy, and her insights underline a key message: decarbonising this sector is about ensuring the UK has the sustainable resources needed to build a thriving, resilient economy.

“We need the government to make the links between the targets they’re setting on housing and infrastructure and the materials required to deliver that,” she says in her interview with presenter Sharon Thomas.

“Our products are essential for our everyday lives; we can’t build motorways or nuclear power stations or wind turbines without concrete. We need asphalt for our roads, and our cycleways and our footpaths, and we need ballast for our railways… and they have a wider role too in climate adaptation. Mineral products like precast concrete, masonry, and mortar play a really key role in building homes that are safe and resilient to things like flooding and overheating.”

Watch the interview to hear more insights around energy costs, the road to net zero, and the role of government in supporting this essential sector that so much of our daily lives and activities depend upon.