RENEW ENERGY LIMITED
N2ENZ - Waste Energy Ltd - Renew Energy Ltd.
N2ENZ was first registered on May 11, 2015 by Gerard Anthony Gallagher. On June 25, 2016, the name was changed to Waste Energy Limited, and again on August 16, 2017, to Renew Energy Limited.
REL; CURRENT DIRECTORS
Grahame Douglas Christian Feb 2024 – present
Paul Robert Taylor May 2016–present
Mark Anthony McIntyre Aug 2017-present
Geoffrey John Harley Oct 2022–present
Previous Directors have included:
Robert Bruce Grey Jun 2022–Dec 2023
Gerard Anthony Gallagher May 2015–August 2017
Kevin Robert Stratful Aug 2017- Aug 2019
Donald Murray Douglas Cleverley Jun 2016-Jul 2017.
Leonard Hugh Grey Aug 2017–June 2022
SHAREHOLDERS
A list of all the current REL shareholders can be found below.
PAST PROPOSALS
Renew Energy Limited (REL) has been trying to build a waste-to-energy plant since 2016, which has seen them target several small towns with accommodating mayors keen to support their proposals.
First port of call - Westport
A North and South magazine article quoted director Paul Taylor as saying that Buller Mayor, Gary Howard invited the then “small investment group” to investigate building a waste-to-energy plant in Westport in an attempt to revive a struggling local economy. Taylor was also reported as saying that Buller was attractive because coal wagons travelling from the West Coast to the East Coast were returning empty, and the wagons could be filled with rubbish for the return trip.
It was reported that Howard travelled to England at the ratepayer’s expense to visit a waste-to-energy plant; REL also funded him to travel to China to visit a plant near Shanghai.
In 2019, Stuff obtained emails showing that Howard had signed an agreement with CNTY “in secret without the approval of his council” while in China. The agreement said, ‘the council would supply water, build a road to the plant, own the land, and lease it back to the company, and also supply a landfill for toxic ash from the plant. The full council considered none of these details.
Further scandal ensued when REL director and shareholder Gerard Gallagher was investigated by the State Services Commission for fraud in his role while working for the Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA)
Gallagher was prosecuted by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and found guilty of corruption in July 2023. He was sentenced to 12 months of supervision, and the judge stated that Gallagher narrowly escaped a prison term.
OIA material also revealed that Gallagher had sent emails to council employees stating, “How can we legally shut up?” a journalist who was saying too much.
Following the initiation of the SFO investigation in 2017, Gallagher resigned as CEO of Renew Energy and sold his shares, but reportedly continued to be paid by the company as an independent contractor until late 2022.
Reefton
While REL was proposing the building of a WtE plant in Westport, they applied for resource consent to stockpile 132,000 tonnes of waste at an old coal yard on the edge of Reefton township, owned by Birchfield Mines. The application stated that the waste would be railed to site by ERP Group. More on ERP below.
Worried about the threat of the incinerator never being built and the company walking away, leaving the town with the clean-up of stockpiled waste, business group Reefton Inc. hired a Queen’s Counsel to stop it. REL subsequently withdrew its application.
Hokitika
The Westport fiasco and subsequent fallout made it too hard for REL to continue to pursue the Buller region. This saw them move on to Hokitika, where they had another eagerly awaiting mayor, Bruce Smith.
REL’s poor form continued. Released material showed that director Kevin Stratful, who worked as the economic manager for the West Coast regional council and a consultant for Development West Coast, had promoted the waste-to-energy plant via his work emails.
Hokitika locals rallied and formed the opposition group ‘Westland Not Wasteland’. The public’s opposition quickly grew when information about the proposal and its proponents began to surface. The company went quiet and, without any announcement, abandoned Hokitika to pursue another small town, Waimate, on the South Island’s east coast.
Information sourced from an Official Information Act request shows that talks between Kevin Stratful and Waimate District Council about a WtE proposal began in June 2020, perhaps earlier; however, a public announcement of the Waimate proposal was not released until September 2021.
Belfast.
After REL withdrew its consent application to store waste at Reefton, ERP Group continued to bale and store waste in locations around Christchurch. This included a site on Spencerville Road near Belfast where they stored 4000 bales of REL’s waste. Locals complained, saying the stored waste “smelt like Hell” and that some of the bales were torn into and were attracting vermin.
Although ERP Group had applied for consent to discharge contaminants into the air from a waste transfer and processing facility on the site, that consent was inactive, subject to a sealed access road and a building yet to be constructed. ERP did not have consent to store municipal solid waste on site. Owner Michael Corcoran said at the time he had not begun construction of the waste transfer station on the site because it was being used by Renew Energy to store the baled waste. ECan served ERP with an abatement notice to remove the unlawfully stored waste from the site, and the bales were removed over a long and drawn-out period of time.
The unlawful storage of waste didn't stop there!
ERP owner Michael Corcoran operated two waste transfer stations in Woolston and Sockburn and was reportedly baling and stockpiling waste while waiting for a waste-to-energy plant to be built in Waimate. This involved the storage of 10,000 bales of waste. ECan once again served ERP abatement notices to remove the waste from the unapproved sites. At the time, Corcoran stated that he had been operating at the sites for four years without complaint.
A short time later, ERP Group was placed into liquidation proceedings. ERP walked away, leaving its landlords with the waste removal, reported to have cost more than $3 million.
Documents sourced through an official information act request showed that REL and SIRRL director Paul Taylor had attempted to get Timaru District Council (TDC) to sign a heads of agreement (HOA). The HOA included a proposed lease agreement between WDC and ERP Group to store 50–70,000 bales of waste for an approximately 3-year period while commissioning a Waimate incinerator at the council-owned Redruth landfill. Then, a further 50,000 bales per year on a rotational basis would be stored to provide a feedstock buffer as a backup to any supply delays.
Paul Taylor was recently quoted in a North & South article when questioned about REL and SIRRL’s connection to ERP Group. Taylor said that ERP Group had taken on the risk of the project, and “it certainly had nothing to do with” SIRRL. However, this OIA material shows how closely connected the companies were.
A further OIA request of Waitaki District Council showed that a similar HOA between ERP Group and Waitaki DC was explored. The document was heavily redacted to remove names, conditions, quantities, and costings, however the proposed agreement was for ERP to store waste at two council-owned locations in Palmerston and Oamaru.
It is also important to note that SIRRL proposes to burn 365,000 tonnes of waste annually. The bales range between 700 kg and 1200 kg, so approximately 365,000 bales are required annually. That’s 1,000 bales a week. The stockpile in Christchurch would last ten days, making it a relatively insignificant amount in scale. Corcoran had stated that he had been operating for four years at the Sockburn and Woolston sites. With this in mind, the company would require numerous baling operations in multiple locations around the South Island. SIRRL proposes that 260,000 tonnes of the necessary waste will be sourced from Canterbury, mainly Christchurch, requiring numerous storage locations. This storage issue proved problematic for ERP and eventually resulted in their downfall.
SIRRL’s resource consent application states that REL will be contracted to source and provide waste to the incinerator.
Waimate
September 2021 heralded the arrival of a W-t-E proposal in Waimate. REL had once again picked itself up off the canvas, dusted itself off, and, with the new addition of a high-profile public relations firm called Convergence, attempted to reinvent itself as South Island Resource Recovery Limited (SIRRL). However, the greenwashing and touting of Waimate as the ‘Perfect’ location failed to fool anyone, as it quickly became apparent that Waimate was not these guys’ first rodeo. They may have changed the name in an attempt to distance themselves from past failures, but the proponents are the same, as is the propensity to target small towns with easily excited mayors.
Learn more about the Waimate Incinerator proposal below.