About

ReGenerate

The main objective of ReGenerate is to help as many Ontario communities and counties produce as much biogas as is possible with their resources, and to own it.

The passing of the Green Energy Act created this grand opportunity; prior to May 2009, it simply wasn’t economical to build community scale biogas projects, but now it is. This opportunity combined with my desire to make a positive impact on the environment and the well being of communities is what caused the creation of ReGenerate.

There is strong interest from communities around Ontario to be a part of the solution – and a local first attitude is the norm. Combined with our history with co-ops, community owned biogas is an excellent fit for this region.

My mission was inspired by the regenerative process: creating greater output than the sum of your inputs. ReGenerate creates value by helping communities make use of what they have – manure and food wastes - to reduce heat and waste management costs, create jobs, reduce local greenhouse gas emissions, produce renewable energy, and earn revenue from its sale.

If you’d like to find out more, click here.

Me

ReGenerate was created by me, Daniel Bida, in early 2009 to foster the development of community-owned anaerobic digestion for agriculture around Ontario. I would describe myself as a stakeholder capitalist – an entrepreneur aiming to benefit all of his stakeholders, not just the shareholders. To make this official within ReGenerate, I’m currently pursuing B Corporation status.

Iʼve spent the first five years of my career pointing out the risks and opportunities in the power sector related to credit, sustainability and carbon at Scotiabank, DBRS, Innovest and RiskMetrics Group.  After graduating McMaster University with an Honours B.Comm (finance major), I pursued and completed the CFA program.

Another big part of my life is travel.  After going on exchange to Aarhus, Denmark while in university and seeing some of Europe, I became addicted to traveling and day dreaming about places to see and visit around the world. Since then, I’ve seen parts of Europe, Asia, Central and North America and the Middle East. It’s possible this ‘travel bug’ got planted earlier in my life than during that exchange, but it’s cool to think about how the place that started my travel obsession is also a global leader in community-owned biogas projects. Danish renewable energy co-ops have successfully started and operated biogas plants for years. I never thought to check them out my first time there (because I’d never even heard of biogas), but this gives me as good a reason as any to go back…

I normally commute reading a book, my wife and I watch a lot of movies, I manage a fantasy hockey team, like to play basketball and in the summers you may occasionally see me hitting my ball off the wrong fairway.

If you’d like to find out more, click here