BC Business
Don McInnes, Alterra Power Corp | BCBusinessReturn to: B.C. Entrepreneur of the Year 2011
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.?
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.”
What was your first real job? Developing a wholesale division for Clearwater Fine Foods in Atlantic Canada.
What was your first big break in your current business? Winning a power contract with BC Hydro for the Toba Inlet project in 2006.
What’s the secret to success? Natural resource development can only succeed if it’s a win-win for the local community and the aboriginal community and still makes money for shareholders.
Who are your heroes in real life? Entrepreneurs like Harrison McCain, one of the founders of McCain Fine Foods, also the Irving family from Atlantic Canada; they gave me the ability to dare to dream.
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.”