He makes his living promoting alternative automotive fuels, particularly natural gas and hydrogen.

But John Webb also chairs the Chamber of Commerce in Calgary, a.k.a. Gasoline Alley, where every CEO drives a gas-swilling SUV and every suburbanite worships at the Church of Internal Combustion.

Larry MacDougal
John Webb, CEO of Alternative Fuel Systems, envisions a "green corridor" of traffic in Alberta.

So John, do the old-school energy types ever give you the gears?

It happens, concedes the smooth, silver-haired Webb, who doubles as CEO of Alternative Fuel Systems Inc.

“Some try to tell me we don’t have the natural gas reserves to fuel all our vehicles,” Webb says.

“But (North America) has huge coal reserves,” he adds. “And we’re starting to hear about companies developing a process of converting coal to natural gas that’s totally clean, zero emissions. It’s going to happen.”

However, since settling into the cockpit last Jan. 1, the ex-CEO of Cell-Loc Inc. has been primarily concerned with restoring an atmosphere of stability to his new shop (TSE-ATF).

It’s a company that unexpectedly lurched into rough water in the past year, during which both CEO John Anderson and a former board chair died.

Webb, a well-seasoned ex-Nortel and TELUS senior exec, has no intention of spinning any torqued-up delusionary projections about the AFS share price, which lingered below the 50-cent mark last week.

“I like to sleep at night,” Webb murmurs, meaning that analysts won’t be bombarded with breathlessly-hyped AFS press releases on his watch.

“All I want to see is the price of the stock track the performance of the company,” he adds.

“This company’s going to squeak from being clean. But I’d like to see (the price) around a buck by the end of the year.”

A modest ambition. And, based on encouraging signs, not beyond reach for a company that was forced to cut staff, reduce salaries and sublease 8,000 sq. ft. of its premises in an austerity drive last fall.

During its last reported quarter, AFS revenues rose 66 per cent over the same period in 2000, based on sales of the company’s two primary products – the Sparrow engine-management system, and the Falcon natural-gas pressure regulator.

AFS is under contract to convert 1,000 buses in Mexico City to its computerized injector systems, which can be adapted to existing engines, allowing them to run on clean, fuel-efficient compressed natural gas (CNG).

“We’re also converting vehicles in Iran, where they flare a lot of their natural gas. Politically, the Iranians’ feeling is, if they start using more natural gas internally, they can export more oil and gasoline,” he says.

Webb shares the industry view that a fully-integrated world of vehicles propelled by hydrogen fuel cells remains 25 years in the future.

Nevertheless, he’s adamant that hydrogen has a role to play in the here and now. To that end, Webb’s team is actively seeking public and private partners to implement what he believes could be a “killer application” – marrying super-clean hydrogen and natural gas to fuel the automobile of today.

“We’d treat hydrogen as a premium fuel, mixed with natural gas intelligently, i.e. one cylinder of hydrogen and one cylinder of natural gas,” he says, explaining AFS’s computer-managed system, now in “patent pending” mode.

Briefly sketched, the system centres around catalytic converters, the pollution- control devices that limit emissions from internal-combustion engines.

“Catalytic converters don’t work in the cold,” Webb explains.

“Certainly in climates like ours, vehicles are polluting at start-up, when they’re idling.

“We would inject hydrogen during the cold start-up. Then, when you’re on the road, the computer switches to natural gas.”

By adding hydrogen storage to a dozen existing natural gas stations (six in Edmonton, four in Calgary, one each in Lethbridge and Medicine Hat), Webb pictures a ‘green corridor’ of traffic reaching from the capital to the province’s deep south.

It seems the grim message is sinking in around this ozone-challenged globe, even in urban jungles where you can taste the fossil-fuel emissions in the street haze. Emissions kill.

“Everybody’s saying enough is enough,” Webb shrugs.

Yet Webb remains in sync with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s rhythmic chant: Go Slow on Kyoto.

“One of the problems with Kyoto is it’s an outcome as opposed to a plan to GET to an outcome,” he says.

“What it’s really lacking is an understandable set of (steps) to take us towards the desired results.”

So, John, no doubt you’re among the vanguard, running a CNG conversion in your own Cadillac?

“No, they wouldn’t allow it,” Webb grins sheepishly. “Mine’s a lease.”