Belly River Hydroelectric Plant next to existing irrigation spillway Canadian Hydro's first hydro project

In the late 1980s, Calgary brothers and oil patch veterans, John and Ross Keating, joined forces with geologist Jack McCleary to launch an unusual enterprise-an independent, Green Power company devoted to generating electricity from renewable, non-polluting resources.

While Green Power may have been a novelty back then, the conceptual underpinnings for Canadian Hydro were based on simple logic. As the world gets more and more polluted and as global warming becomes an increasingly destructive force, we will have to turn away from fossil fuel burning and toward new sources of clean, low-impact energy. These include wind, biomass and hydroelectric power—all areas of operation for Canadian Hydro.

By 1989, Canadian Hydro had raised $1.3 million in equity financing and had secured contracts with TransAlta to build three small run-of-river plants in southern Alberta. The first of these was commissioned in April of 1990, yielding $500,000 in power sales for the year. By reinvesting cash flow from this and subsequent operations, the company found it could grow at the rate of one plant per year without raising additional funds.

This strategy has allowed Canadian Hydro to grow from a single three-megawatt plant on the Belly River in southern Alberta to 20 hydroelectric, wind power and biomass facilities in three provinces, with net generating capacity of 364 megawatts of green power today.

Chief Executive Officer John Keating says, "We've always managed under the assumption that slow and steady wins the race." He adds, “Our compounded average growth over the last ten years has been around 24 per cent per year. If we can  continue  on  a  track like  that  over  the  next  five  years,  the  growth will be dramatic."