Enwave: another neighborhood story...
When you bike around toronto's downtown core.. you can't help but notice the odd Enwave buildings. They seem like big smokestacks (but aren't) with no big building/factory-- just the stack. And what they're doing, is sucking up the cold from deep in lake ontario and cooling buildings. Its actually the largest geothermal heat pumping system in the world. And it works! They already service over 130 of toronto's main buildings, including the air canada center (where the Maple Leafs play-- sometimes it has to be somewhat cold in there, right?) as well as the banking towers and fancy-pants hotels. Last month they signed their first retailer the Hudsons Smallpox-- I mean Bay Corporation (I like the fact that the HBC cares about energy efficiency, but they sell plastic and other unsustainable crap, and have a crappy history). But Enwave is a great story.. and really it's very much the story of one man:

Dennis Fotinos, founder and CEO. I like this guy... in a similar way to Sanyo's new chief, he isn't afraid to say things that normally CEOs wont say louder than they breathe if at all. Stuff like believing in being a "private sector disciple," and how he knew that he could make a company (with "Freecool," later renamed Enwave) that "could be on the side of the angels." That's the kind of heartfelt passion that scares the shit out of board of directors. So no doubt its been a tough ride, but Fotinos has weathered the storms and brought the company to considerabel success... Geothermal, especially ground source heat exchange is such a no-brainer of an idea.. but Fotinos says (in a recent Toronto STar article that, sorry, isn't archived online) that this idea is what took him out of politics. He said that he was working in this Toronto District Heating Corp., a government job in a government run company that sounds very slothlike in their ability to do anything new or smart. That's where he found out about the research into Freecool. He got tired of watching the government slow the process to a halt and decided to act on it. He got the government here to privatize TDHC and turned it into EnWave (maybe privatization can be good?). The company is now well on its way to recouping it's capital costs (earned $55M this year and only cost $200M) and moving into the United States. I'm certain they will be the toast of Chicago when Mayor Daley finds out about it!