Seeing green

Jeannine Mitchell | Image: iStock | Published: May 01, 2008

It’s well into Sunday afternoon by the time Jonathan Rhone finally gets a spare minute to take a media call. These are hectic days for the president and CEO of Vancouver-based Nexterra Energy Corp. – a “clean-tech” firm (as environmental-technology companies are often called) whose unique gasification technology could soon heat universities across the U.S. while also converting beetle-kill wood waste into clean-burning gas to fuel power plants throughout Northern B.C.

Cutting greenhouse gases with its low-cost, waste-derived biofuel gas, Nexterra sells its multimillion-dollar systems in part through strategic alliances with companies such as Johnson Controls Inc. However, Rhone offers an additional reason for Nexterra’s success. “We live in extraordinary times,” he says, ticking off factors such as high oil prices, B.C.’s new carbon tax and pressure on natural-gas reserves. “It’s a great time to be a clean-energy technology company. We’re moving from an economy that has been dominated by fossil fuels into a mix of other types of energy sources and technologies – it’s a very fast-moving and dynamic market right now.”

Times are particularly good for local alternative-energy companies. Last year, when Deloitte & Touche LLP released its inaugural “Technology Green 15” – a list of Canada’s 15 most promising environmental-technology firms – seven of the 15 were based here in B.C. And recognition extends beyond the border: in their book, The Clean Tech Revolution, U.S. authors Clint Wilder and Ron Pernick describe Vancouver as one of the world’s “top 10 new Silicon Valleys” for clean technologies.

Local university research has played a big part in Vancouver’s emergence as a clean-energy hub, as has the pioneering work of fuel-cell manufacturer Ballard Power Systems Inc. and the availability of local venture capital. Add to that the upcoming carbon-credit trading market in Vancouver, the B.C. government’s $25-million Innovative Clean Energy Fund and the various initiatives that comprise the new Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act, and B.C. would appear to have an early edge in the fast-growing clean-tech sector.

Speaking from a Toronto airport “limousine lineup,” Ron Dizy, CEO of North Vancouver-based Sempa Power Systems Ltd. (another Deloitte Green 15 winner), is also on the move. “Things are really happening right now,” says Dizy, citing business growth of “about 100 per cent a year” and sales stretching across the country. Like Nexterra, Sempa is a young, privately held company riding the shift away from fossil fuels.

West Vancouver engineer Malcolm Metcalfe founded Sempa in

2003 as an energy-audit firm, then changed its direction by developing the Sempa Hybrid Heating System, a computerized system that monitors fluctuating fuel prices to switch between sources at optimal times. Although Sempa plans to grow the market by adapting its system for smaller buildings, Dizy says that Sempa has “a very strong pipeline” of large buildings at present; with a promised payback time of three or four years, sales of the heating systems are taking off (though Dizy won’t disclose specific financials).

Commercial viability was definitely one of the criteria that won Sempa a place in the Green 15, along with B.C.’s other winners (all publicly listed companies): Plutonic Power Corp., QuestAir Technologies Inc., SmartCool Systems Inc., VRB Power Systems Inc., Westport Innovations Inc. and Xantrex Technology Inc. But these are early days for most of B.C.’s hot clean-techs, and while Nexterra and Sempa may have the wind at their backs, many green entrepreneurs struggle for years before the market finally catches up with their products.

A good case in point is Vancouver-based Westport Innovations Inc., which has built a niche as a world leader in gaseous fuel-engine technologies. By converting diesel engines to burn cleaner fuels, such as natural gas and biofuels, it began racking up truck and bus conversion orders from China to California. It’s even producing what few B.C. clean-tech firms can yet boast of: profits.

But it’s been a long haul. Back in the late 1980s, UBC professor Philip Hill and colleagues started working on Westport’s technology to reduce air pollution. The company incorporated in 1994, yet it wasn’t until 2007 that Westport would report its first quarterly profit ($7.4 million in Q4). “As a small Vancouver company, we couldn’t have chosen two worse enemies to take on than the incumbent technology of engines and the oil sector,” says Westport’s vice-president for corporate development, Jonathan Burke. He laughs. “I’m just glad we had enough money in the bank to stick it out!”