Michael Weedon's journey into the clean-technology realm began in the 1990s at an Alberta chemical refinery with pollution problems.
At the time, he was executive vice-president and COO of Sherritt Inc., a mining and fertilizer company with a plant on the North Saskatchewan River.
The factory had been built in 1954, and, with little or no provincial environmental regulations in place, had for years drawn water, polluted it with chemicals and dumped it back into the river.
The Government of Alberta then decided to crack down on the contaminants being released into the environment.
Sherritt was forced to clean up its act, but Weedon, with an eye toward the future, didn't believe the cleanup went far enough.
"Many of our regulations still allowed us to pollute even if it was judged to be minor," said Weedon, now executive director of the BC Bioenergy Network. "After we got out of the doghouse, I went to the chairman and said, 'There's got to be something we can do. We've got to go beyond the minimum.'"
Weedon was handed a $250,000 budget to set up an advanced greenhouse.
It contained a small artificial river that drew water from the plant's effluent treatment facility and used sand filters, sunlight and oxygen to purify it.
"At the end of that project we were discharging water into the river that was cleaner than what we were drawing from the river at a modest cost," he said. "That's when I learned that if you treat the environment well it will work for you."
These days, the 58-year-old is the point man for this province's latent bioenergy industry.
Established in 2008 with $25 million in provincial funding, Weedon's BC Bioenergy Network has been focused on deploying capital to near-term bioenergy projects that can advance the clean-technology sector on the West Coast.
Thus far it has committed $12.5 million to 10 large technology and demonstration projects and 11 capacity building projects.
Those projects have received $61.7 million in partnership investments and have allowed clean-tech up-and-comers such as Nexterra Systems, Lignol (TSX-V:LEC), Bakerview Ecodairy and Catalyst Paper (TSX:CTL) to build state-of-the-art projects.
The money has been used to fund technologies that transform wood waste into heat, power and even fuel ethanol – all with the aim of lowering greenhouse gas emissions and producing a cleaner environment.
At Bakerview, the Network's money has funded anaerobic digester systems designed to convert cow dung into electricity, heat, bedding and fertilizer.
At Catalyst Paper's pulp mill in Crofton, the funding has been used to produce biogas from wastewater sludge that can reduce costs and emissions at the plant.
The Network is also focused on developing torrefied fuels such as wood pellets, which Weedon believes could double the size of the province's already burgeoning pellet industry.
Although bioenergy isn't on the tip of every resident's tongue these days, Weedon said it's an industry that has huge job creation potential.
"That's why it's important to the economy; it's another revenue stream," he said. "We have an abundance of resources in B.C. and if we use them wisely then there are more available for export for us to other parts of the world."
The Network is also somewhat of a marriage between the old economy and the new.
It shares offices with the Council of Forest Industries, which represents B.C.'s major lumber producers, but also works hand-in-hand with leading edge technology companies.
That partnership allows junior companies to get their product to market, and senior forest companies to use those new technologies to reduce their costs and improve their competitiveness.
That bridge between traditional and new industries suits Weedon well. He has a long history with heavy industry but a firm commitment to the environment.
"We can't afford not to be green," he said.
Weedon was the second of three children raised by middle-class parents in Toronto.
After demonstrating an early aptitude for academics (he skipped a grade in elementary school), Weedon earned a bachelor of arts from the University of Toronto.
He got the business bug after taking an accounting class during his undergraduate years and later earned an MBA from the University of Western Ontario's Ivey School of Business.
In 1976, he went to work for B.F. Goodrich Canada in Kitchener-Waterloo.
Corporate finance was his game, and he rose rapidly through the ranks, being named vice-president of finance in seven years.
In 1983, he and two other partners pooled their own money to arrange a management buyout of Epton Industries, a struggling arm of B.F. Goodrich.
As CEO, Weedon turned the operation around in a year.
"When we took it over, it was losing $2.4 million," he said. "In 12 months we made $1.5 million, so we turned it around dramatically."
In 1993, he joined Sherritt and helped transform that company into a profitable, multibillion-dollar mining venture.
A few years later, he went to work for the Loewen Group, a funeral services company in a precarious financial condition.
Weedon helped the company navigate through a bankruptcy that successfully restructured $4 billion in assets and liabilities.
"According to a U.S. bankruptcy court, [it was the] most complex restructuring in U.S. history," he said.
After Loewen, Weedon moved into the environmental business before joining the Network in 2008.
Jonathan Rhone, founder of Nexterra and leader of the BC Cleantech CEO Alliance, said Weedon has done a tremendous job building the province's bioenergy industry.
"What Michael has done is take a vision and idea of a B.C. Bioenergy Network … and injected a tremendous amount of entrepreneurial drive and energy into stimulating a whole bunch of activity," said Rhone. "I think it's created a lot of awareness and achieved some meaningful progress in terms of steel in the ground."
Weedon's Network has $12.5 million left in capital to deploy to new bioenergy projects, a figure he believes will last at least another three years.
Although the future of clean energy projects in B.C. remains cloudy amid market volatility and potential policy changes, Weedon believes bioenergy has nowhere to go but up as fossil fuel costs continue to rise.
"We cannot continue to unabatedly use fossil fuels," he said. "First of all, they're getting more expensive and harder to reach … we have to realize the environment has changed and find new things." •
