director profile
‘People have to understand climate change is actually happening, and ask what are the opportunities for Ireland in climate change? One of them is water’
Forties when we decided to import technology that could actually compress peat in a form that could be effectively manufactured into a briquette. “There has been a number of iterations of Bord na
Móna since – in the Forties and the Fifties we spotted the opportunity that certain extracts actually worked very well as soil conditioners. That was the start of our move into the horticulture business which today is a €50bn business – virtually all of it exported – and it’s profitable and growing.” In the Fifties and the Sixties Bord na Móna discovered
that peat had some key characteristics to act as a filter and allow bacteria to grow and break down sewerage and wastewater, thus leading to its wastewater business. “So, Bord na Móna has reinvented itself on numerous
occasions and that has been thanks to visionary leader- ship, always looking at the medium to long term, not focusing on the short term,” says D’Arcy. It is a criticism he has of today’s Ireland. “From a cor-
porate point of view, and indeed from a societal point of view, we have become incredibly short-term–maybe nec- essarily in recent days, but we really need to shake our- selves out of this and we need to move on,” D’Arcy insists. “There’s a great opportunity for whoever forms the
new administration coming in to actually start putting together some kind of real vision for the country as we move forward.” It is this kind of vision that continues to drive Bord na
Móna, he says. “In 1990 we were the first builders, own- ers and operators of a commercial wind farm in Bellacorick in northwest Mayo, at 7.5 megawatts, and it’s still working today.We have the best line of data on wind of any company in Ireland or indeed in the British Isles.” It is the company’s necessary move away from peat
that has driven much of the change. “In Bord na Móna, we reckon that we have, at the cur-
rent rate of usage, about 20 years of peat. And we know there are challenges associated with that. There are huge environmental challenges, and carbon challenges. “Do you just close down these power stations that use
peat and save on the carbon emissions? This is the sim- plistic view put forward by certain commentators,” says D’Arcy. “Or do we do the responsible thing which is to not open any more bogs, and use the ones we have opened as
expeditiously as possible, while we dilute it withmore and more biomass and develop a biomass supply chain.” Biomass is a key element of the company’s renewables
strategy. “In our own power station we’re up to about 12 or 13pc co-firing with biomass, and our ambition is to get to 30pc,” says D’Arcy. “Biomass is carbon-neutral and, because it’s quite labour intensive, it generates a lot of income for the local hinterland. It’s not forestry and it brings into play, not totally poor land, but reasonable land. “It’s the cheapest form of renewable electricity that
Ireland will ever produce in that we have already got our capital investment – the power station is already there. It’s good for another 30 years, 35 years. As the peat goes down, the biomass goes up.”
The sustainability megatrend The New Contract with Nature programme has been pivotal in all this, says D’Arcy. “Our mission states we will be a leading integrated national utility service provider encompassing water, waste, heating solutions and electricity. “Within Bord na Móna this is absolutely transforma-
tional.We’re saying that we’re going to be at the front of the curve of what is the largest megatrend from a global perspective – the sustainability megatrend. He refers back to his trip to Stanford on the Leadership
4 Growth programme. “Virtually all of the companies I interacted with were growing at double digit growth, and that’s all that these guys think about. Almost all of them are capitalising on the sustainability agenda.” D’Arcy points to Bord na Móna’s second largest cus-
tomer B&Q. “We supply about €23m worth of stuff into B&Q throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland and why are we doing that? We’re doing that because of our contract with nature. B&Q, because of its sustainability agenda, wants to deal with like-minded companies.” D’Arcy is quick to point out that he has not become a
“tree-hugger” overnight. “This is not solely an environ- mental issue, it’s also about social, business and economic sustainability.” On that note, he says turnover for the company (it
reports this month) should be between €390m and €400m, with a revenue increase over three years of 40pc to around €70m. It hasn’t all been plain sailing, and the
28 Irish Director Spring 2011
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