Lead the Transition — A Cement-Maker CEO Sequences Decarbonization

A four-round, advanced sustainable-leadership and capital-allocation simulation set inside Boréal Matériaux inc., a TSX-listed, CA$1.9 billion Montréal cement-maker emitting ~2.6 Mt of CO₂ a year — roughly 60% of it process emissions inherent to making clinker, structurally hard to abate. In April 2026 a 4.8% activist demands a credible net-zero pathway and threatens a proxy fight while a federal carbon-price step-up adds CA$90M to the 2027 bill; left unmanaged, the carbon cost climbs toward CA$440M a year by 2030 as the price reaches CA$170/tonne — larger than today's entire EBITDA cushion. Playing the CEO with a two-quarter board mandate, you lead the transition as a leadership challenge of holding a polarized coalition together (Dominique Anglade's sustainable-leadership-in-polarization framework), not as a technical optimization. Round 1 — Map the transition and the polarization: diagnose which emissions are addressable now versus structurally hard, and read a genuinely polarized field where ESG investors want speed, a 60%-income-focused dividend base fears the capex, a union has 480 jobs at the oldest kiln, the province wants both jobs and cuts, and NGOs watch for greenwashing. Round 2 — Sequence and allocate: spend a CA$600M transition budget across four levers with sharply different marginal abatement costs (alternative fuels ~CA$40/t and ready now, clinker substitution ~CA$55/t, kiln electrification ~CA$110/t and multi-year, a carbon-capture pilot at CA$200+/t and unproven), under the constraint that capex now cuts EPS and pressures the dividend — and the math rewards MACC discipline while punishing the symbolic even-split that funds capture for optics. Round 3 — Hold the coalition: negotiate the at-risk kiln as a just transition versus idling it for fast cuts, bridge both investor camps, build a public-private compact with the province, engage the NGOs on verification, and — decisively — state an explicit dividend stance, because in a polarized field silence is read as the bad answer. Round 4 — Announce and defend under earnings pressure: decide which targets to commit to publicly versus frame as ambitions (over-promising a 50%-by-2030 cut sets up a credibility-and-greenwashing crisis), choose consistent quarterly metrics, and defend against the activist's proxy slate with the coalition rather than capitulating to one pole or dismissing the activist. The model wires in the concept's common errors — pleasing one pole and mobilizing the other, speed over a just transition, symbolic budgeting over abatement-cost logic, over-committing targets under uncertainty, and treating the dividend as a footnote — so wrong strategies measurably underperform. Final KPIs track abatement on a credible path (% of 2.6 Mt), coalition support (0–100), the indexed share price (100 = day 1) and plan credibility (/10).