NTR’S TOP BRASS, including chairman and major shareholder Tom Roche, were out in force in New York yesterday for the launch of its not-for-profit climate change foundation. Former US president Bill Clinton did the honours at a function held at a plush private club in midtown Manhattan that attracted more than 100 executives and local dignitaries.
The board of NTR has agreed to give about €5 million in cash and 2.26 million shares in the plc to support the launch of the foundation, which aims to promote research and back projects in developing countries that could have a positive impact on global climate change.
NTR has credentials in this area, being involved in a range renewable energies, including solar, bio-ethanol and wind power, particularly in the United States.
But it’s also involved in activities that some might argue are not friendly to the environment.
These include sending waste to landfill through its Greenstar subsidiary while it also operates a handful of toll roads in Ireland, including the East Link in Dublin.
Speaking to The Irish Times in New York yesterday, NTR chief executive Jim Barry said the company’s activities are sustainable in environmental terms and outlined how the mix is likely to evolve further in the coming years.
Barry said the toll roads now represent only a small fraction of NTR’s overall business and this activity is currently the subject of a strategic review by Macquarie.
Barry wouldn’t commit to what that review might recommend but it’s not inconceivable that NTR will exit the roads business at some point in the near future. It sold the West Link concession back to the government a couple of years back
As for landfill, Barry said: “We’ve invested more money in the front end of the business in Greenstar than in the back end in terms of recycling,” he said. “We have some of the biggest and most modern facilities for the separation of waste.”
Greenstar is also generating energy from the methane gas produced at its landfill sites, which is sold into the grid. “Landfill will decrease as part of the overall waste mix in Ireland over the next 10 years.”
