2011 Cleantech & Information Technology EOY: Don McInnes
Congratulations to Don McInnes , CEO and vice-chair of Alterra Power Corp., the 2011 Pacific Region Entrepreneur of the Year in Cleantech and Information Technology.
In less than a decade, Alterra Power vice-chairman Donald McInnes has turned the clean-energy concept of run-of-the-river power generation into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise.
It’s an impressive achievement by any standard, but even more so for the 47-year-old McInnes, who started in the resource industry 25 years ago with nothing more than a political science degree and a youthful supply of entrepreneurial ambition.
The son of former federal politician Stewart McInnes, a Halifax lawyer, McInnes left home in 1987 to take a summer job with a small mining exploration firm in B.C. called Equity Engineering. “I ended up working there for six years,” says McInnes, a graduate of Dalhousie University. “I started as a manual labourer taking soil samples in the bush, but I learned a lot.”
In 2003 McInnes founded Plutonic Power Corp. to build medium-scale run-of-the-river hydroelectric plants that minimize impacts on watersheds. Since then the company, whose name was changed to Alterra Power Corp. in a restructuring following its merger with Magma Energy Corp. earlier this year, has invested more than $1 billion in hydroelectric projects in B.C. Last year, Alterra completed it first project, a $663-million facility in Toba Inlet.
Next in line is a second major facility in the Upper Toba region, plus preliminary work on another 17 proposed sites in Bute Inlet, representing $4 billion in additional construction. Alterra is also spearheading the development of the Dokie Ridge wind farm near Chetwynd, a $228-million project that Plutonic rescued from bankruptcy in 2009.
Just for good measure, McInnes launched a major aquaculture venture this year, based on his conviction that disappearing wild fish stocks will create a huge demand for cultivated seafood in the future.
Whether it’s hydro-electricity, wind power or fish farming, McInnes says the key to success is staying ahead of the curve: “It all comes down to looking around you at what’s happening in terms of trends.”
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