A New Contract with Nature Gabriel D’Arcy, Bord na Móna plc
customers, employees, suppliers and shareholders. Out of this process was born A New Contract with Nature.
D’Arcy is adamant sustainability cannot only be about the environment. “There is no point in being environmentally sustainable if you are economically unsustainable, and there is no point in being economically sustainable if you’re socially unsustainable. We were one of the first companies to introduce the concept of triple bottom line reporting. We report on our economic progress in our annual report, but for the last three years we have also produced a sustainability report and in this we focus on the three areas I’ve outlined: the people part, the planet part, and the profit part.
Bord na Móna has come a long way from its origins in the Thirties as a peat harvesting company. Today it is an integrated utility service provider of electricity, heating solutions, resource recovery, water and horticulture.
Shortly after his appointment as CEO in 2008, Gabriel D’Arcy announced a new direction which would see the organisation invest up to €1.4bn, diversifying and growing over the following five years. It was all part of a new vision for the business to ‘work in harmony with, and minimise the impact on, the environment’. It was named ‘A New Contract with Nature’.
One of the drivers has been the company’s transformation from a peat-based operation. “When I came into the company it was a successful, proud company, but it faced key challenges,” says D’Arcy. “It was essentially peat-based, and the pure laws of supply and demand were beginning to take their toll. We were running out of peat.”
“We asked ourselves was there a context in which we could set the organisation, putting in place a pathway to where we would be in 5, 10, 15 years time?” There followed an “exhaustive process” of consultation with all stakeholders –
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Today Bord na Móna has ambitions to be one of the largest renewable energy players in the British Isles. Back in 1990, it was the first in Ireland to build, own and operate a commercial wind farm in northwest Mayo. What is more, Bord na Móna has planning permission for some of the largest onshore wind developments in Europe. “I see a real opportunity here because we know wind and wind energy, we have our own power plant, our own electricians, our own competent engineers. We have the land assets critically located in key areas on the grid, and finally we have the capital raised.”
Sustainability too is driving success in its €52m compost business. “More and more of it is composted green waste materials, and we are looking at a whole other range of new technologies as well,” says D’Arcy. “Our key market is the United Kingdom, and they have a government-backed target to get to peat-free packaged compost by 2021. That creates a huge challenge but also a massive opportunity. We’re beginning to show clear evidence that you can be sustainable in your practices and be profitable.”
D’Arcy reiterates that sustainability is about opportunity, not cost. “I think this is the biggest challenge for those companies that haven’t made
that link. They see the whole issue of carbon management as a negative and as a cost, while successful companies are getting ahead of this curve and embracing technologies and opportunities that are built on sustainable building blocks.”
Water too represents an opportunity for Bord na Móna according to D’Arcy. The company has been involved in the water business for many years through its waste water systems, but now it is looking further afield.
“In Ireland, we have more water dumping down on us than Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, China or India,” he says. “What’s our problem? We don’t have a system to capture it, to store it, to treat it and to disseminate it. That’s eminently fixable. If I look at Bord na Móna, our commercial capability, our access to capital markets and our existing involvement in water, I say here is a ready-made commercial structure for a water company.”
D’Arcy says he is very supportive of the Carbon Disclosure Project as it offers Bord na Móna credibility vis-a-vis customers and its vital export markets. “Our new strategy is all about more sustainable business practice and reducing our carbon footprint. We feel we have nothing to hide, we know that we’ve got a carbon footprint in excess of a million tonnes of carbon, but we’ve got a very clear path to get down to half that, and ultimately down to carbon neutrality. The CDP process shows that we are serious about this, that this is not just some gimmick.”
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