2010 – The Fourth Quarter

The fourth quarter was ReGenerate’s biggest yet, with the beginning of Ontario’s first co-operatively owned biogas plant at the Toronto Zoo.  The project is being developed by a team of players from the biogas and community power industries, and ReGenerate is proud to be a part of it.

Other highlights included:

  • Expansion of the Peterborough General Resource Assessment to the entire Kawartha region.
  • Working with a team of York MBA students to refine my business strategy heading into 2011.
  • The second annual Community Power Conference.

What I’ve Been Up to

  • Development of a 500 kilowatt (kW) community-owned biogas plant at the Toronto Zoo.
    • Working on this project was the biggest use of time over the quarter, with large chunks of October and December dedicated to it.  As mentioned in the last quarterly update, many possibilities for how this project could look passed through my mind over the last six months. Taking it to the next level by building the Zoo Biogas team (ReGenerate, Koenig & Consultants, Riepma Consultants, Angus Power and Kronos Project Management Group) and putting forth a formal proposal, which was accepted by the Zoo Board on November 25 was far more satisfying than writing reports could ever be.
    • Getting to where we are today required numerous meetings and group brainstorming sessions, not only with the Zoo Biogas team and the Toronto Zoo, but also with the Community Energy Partnership Program, Toronto Renewable Energy Co-operative, the Green Municipal Fund and Infrastructure Ontario.
    • This is an innovative and groundbreaking project for a number of reasons, but mainly because it is being funded by the community – ZooShare Biogas Co-operative will offer shares to Zoo members, those living in close proximity the project and the rest of the City of Toronto.  More information on joining ZooShare and owning a piece of the plant will be released in the coming months, stay tuned!
    • Additional project details can be found here.
  • The Peterborough General Resource Assessment (GRA) began to evolve to include the entire Kawartha region
    • After submitting the GRA to the Peterborough Green Energy Co-operative, feedback was received from a number of different sources around the county – “why not include the City of Kawartha Lakes?” was the most common response.  The two regions have a history of working together and there are more dairy farms. CKL is also beginning a curbside organics collection right now.
    • Additional sources of information and data also came forth, including Ontario Holstein who provided ReGenerate with maps and locations of many of Ontario’s dairy producers, and Paul Grieve of Trent University who’s working on a related study on the growing potential of crops, like Jerusalem artichokes, for biogas production around Peterborough County. Both sources are going to make valuable contributions to the expanded Kawartha GRA.
    • In early December, I traveled to Omemee to meet with the team at Green Tractors Omemee, a John Deere dealer. A few of the guys are full-time farmers as well, and all had strong knowledge and connections to the local agriculture industry, so the feedback was valuable and encouraging. The consensus seemed to be that a high-quality fertilizer, like that produced by biogas production, would be extremely valuable to cash crop growers and that there was a growing appetite for sharing ownership and resources among the farming community. This was particularly encouraging because one of the early red flags that had been raised about community-owned biogas was that farmers don’t like to share and would be very hesitant to enter into arrangements where they have limited control.
    • The dealership agreed to have me back in February or March to host an information session for farmers who might be interested in participating, after the revised version of the GRA has been published.
  • Transition Toronto continues to move forward, spreading awareness, starting conversations and sprouting up in new neighbourhoods.
    • Sadly, my commitment to the steering committee of TTo has waned a little over the last quarter.  I’m looking forward to redirecting my energy and making use of the training I received this past summer – by facilitating more Training for Transition workshops around Toronto.  This will allow me to hone my public speaking skills and interact with many of the passionate people who will ultimately support community-owned biogas. TTo is also setting its communications strategy for the first time in January 2011, which will be an exciting and useful exercise.
    • Transition Parkdale-Roncesvalles-Junction also continues to move forward.  I hosted a Transition Cafe at Crema Coffee Co. in the Junction in November and in December the participants had a dinner hosted by Gregory Greene.
  • In November a group of MBA students from York’s Schulich School of Business proposed to do a case study on ReGenerate and make a few recommendations.
    • I was pretty excited about this, mostly because I like talking to students and I wanted to hear what they had to say about my business. We discussed a few of the big questions I had in mind at the time – generating more non-project revenues, expanding the General Resource Assessment to other counties and the province as a whole, and the value of incorporating as a not-for-profit. The experience yielded some definite positives, including suggestions for how to improve regeneratebiogas.com, and potentially an intern or two to help with the Ontario GRA. They also suggested I incorporate as a for-profit company with a positive social mission – along the lines of a B Corp.
  • Marc Van Beusekom from Options for Green Energy got in touch for a cup of coffee.
    • I’ve had my eye on Options for Green Energy since I met the founder at the Green Living Show in Toronto last year.  That and his other larger company, Options for Homes, is building a condo at the end of my street. Marc and I talked about biogas and the interesting way that Options develops projects, selling fixed return investments in non-profit co-operatives and using the excess funds earned by each renewable energy project to develop more projects - like a snowball, the development fund gets bigger as it keeps rolling forward. Options is developing a solar project on the rooftop of a storage building in Toronto’s Riverdale neighbourhood as its first project.  We’re going to see if we can do something similar with biogas.
  • The second annual Community Power Conference took place in November in Toronto.
    • After a full year of FIT contracts and the beginning of the Community Energy Partnership Program in June, it was a good year for community power in Ontario.  However, as is often the case with passionate changemakers, they want more. The majority of projects to receive FIT contracts so far are commercially owned, and there is still a lot of room for community power to grow.  Issues in focus were financing and overcoming NIMBYism – a common problem for wind projects. More experience has been gained on the ground, and there were a lot more people telling interesting stories this year.  But at the same time, a few too many of the sessions were directed towards beginners and those just getting started. What did I tell you about those passionate changemakers, eh? Always wanting more… Overall, a positive experience, I enjoyed meeting and chatting with more good people around the community power industry.
  • Following my tour of the Maryland Farms biogas plant in September, I wrote an article for the winter edition of GreenZine – a Transition publication distributed throughout the Kawartha region.
    • A short summary of my tour and conversations with the farmer/developer/contractor Jim Callaghan about his experiences adding a 500 kW biogas plant to his family dairy operation.
  • In early December, the Ontario biogas industry decided it was time to talk.
    • Fed up and a little concerned that biogas was nowhere near the mainstream power conversation being started by the Ontario Power Authority, who published its Long Term Energy Plan in December. Biogas doesn’t appear to be a high priority, in spite of its many non-energy related benefits. The meeting was extremely productive in starting important conversations among industry players and establishing a game plan to ensure biogas remains a part of Ontario’s energy future when the next provincial election rolls around in October 2011.
    • This meeting left me feeling energized to spread the word and get more people talking about biogas.  Being a grassroots kind of guy, paying a public relations agency to do it didn’t occur to me – my mind immediately went to the internet and social media. Using twitter and facebook, I’m trying to start conversations and hopefully get the right people (voters) talking. Follow us @BiogasOntario.
  • As always, the quarter included a meeting with my business advisors Alex Chamberlain and John Nicholson.
    • These meetings are invaluable as they often provide encouragement and meaningful advice on how to move forward on certain issues related to my business.

Year in Review

2010 was ReGenerate’s real coming out party, as the company went from being my side project to my full-time gig. The first part of the year was about using the knowledge I gained in Entrepreneurship 101 at MaRS and competing in the UpStart business plan competition. Forcing me to clearly articulate my value proposition and present a 10-minute pitch to a room full of people was exactly what I needed to make all of this real for me. Having a better idea of where I was going in 6 months time gave me the confidence to leave my job. My projections weren’t too bad compared to what really happened, although I never expected that by the end of 201o ReGenerate would be part of a team developing Ontario’s first co-operatively owned biogas plant at the Toronto Zoo! To me this was a valuable lesson in putting yourself out there, working towards your goals and allowing good things to come to you - advice I regularly forget.

2010 also marked the launch of the Community Energy Partnership Program, an innovative granting program sponsored by the Ontario Power Authority and being administered by Deloitte and the Community Power Fund.  It is specifically focused on helping community power projects through the design and development phase of development, with soft cost funding assistance. This program is right now one of the key drivers of community power projects around the province.

Progress was also made on the development of an Ontario-wide General Resource Assessment – namely the early assessment of what would be involved, the methodology, what data is available and what data needs to be collected. Some key relationships were built with the Dairy Farmers of Ontario, the Chicken Farmers of Ontario, Ontario Holstein, Ryerson University and York University, which leads me to believe completing the GRA in 2011 is a somewhat realistic goal.

Looking Ahead

The first quarter of 2011 is already shaping up to be an exciting and busy one.  A number of key early milestones are to be met by ReGenerate for the Toronto Zoo biogas project, including an application to the FIT program, contracting with the key parties involved, and the raising of seed financing.  In addition, marketing of the project and the investment opportunity will likely begin towards the end of the quarter when ZooShare.ca goes live.

This is also a big quarter for the biogas industry as a whole with the 3rd annual Canadian Farm and Food Biogas Conference and Agri-Energy Producers Association of Ontario’s Annual General Meeting, both to be held at the end of February in London, Ontario. I will be making a presentation about the Toronto Zoo biogas project on the second day of the conference.

In January, I will be attending the second Our Fields, Our Future agricultural symposium in Peterborough County.  Last year’s event created some good connections and furthered my knowledge of issues facing the agricultural community. As mentioned above, ReGenerate will also host an information session on community-owned biogas in the Kawartha region towards the latter part of the quarter.

ReGenerate’s goals for 2011 will be posted online, together with a review of how I did meeting 2010’s goals.

The Numbers

Oct – Dec 2010 Jan – Dec 2010
Revenue
 0
 14,000
Expenses
General Admin 1,613 11,926
Travel & Accommodation 712 5,343
Rent and Utilities 848 3,010
Bank Interest 164 574
Marketing and Web 389 1,921
Memberships 85 724
Conferences & Training 31 2,670
Total Expenses 3,842 26,168
Net Profit (loss) (3,842) (12,168)