Let’s rise above the temptation to reel off a string of juvenile “potty power” wisecracks and address this thing seriously.

It comes down to this: if a $3.5- million pilot project recently announced by a Calgary startup called Earthrenew Organics Ltd. pans out, Alberta’s power grid will soon be marketing electricity generated by cattle manure.

And that’s the straight poop. Ooops, sorry . . . won’t happen again.

Larry MacDougal photo, Business Edge
Al Fedkenheuer and Christianne Carin with a fertilizer sampl

As the search intensifies for alternative sources of energy, green-power advocates have investigated everything from solar radiation to ethanol to fuel cells to woodchips. As natural gas prices have climbed, wind power has become one reasonably attractive option.

Manure power (or biomass, to use the polite term) has its merits too, abundant and cheap supply being one of the more obvious.

Earthrenew’s plunge into the power business won’t compromise the company’s primary thrust, which is the sale of its manure-based, certified organic fertilizer to organic farmers and gardeners.

But its multi-talented chief executive developed the electrical-generation component to offset the forbidding cost of power she needs to mass-produce her product.

“We were looking for a way to cut our energy costs and this is what we came up with,” explained Christianne Carin, CEO and president of Calgary-based Earthrenew.

“We’re using modified gas turbines which integrate into our technology. We’ve designed a system to provide us with the energy we require for manufacturing. Then we’ll sell the excess electricity to the grid, offsetting our own production costs,” continued Carin, careful not to reveal details about her “proprietary technology,” for which U.S. patents are pending.

Normally, it’s premature to get worked up about a firm that has yet to close its first sale. But Carin scored a significant coup when she convinced a private, Wisconsin-based company called Forte Energy Development to front the necessary funds for the 50-50 joint venture.

“In my presentation to Forte’s CEO and executive team, I explained that our plan was to build six or eight (fertilizer) production units over the next five years,” Carin said.

“They answered: ‘Canadians are so conservative. Why aren’t you telling us you’re going to build 100 units?’ ”

Clearly, Forte liked the pitch. After an exhaustive study of market potential, CEO Jerry McKerac proved it by authorizing the cheque.

The first production plant, to be located near two “host” feedlots south of Lethbridge, should be up and running within the year.

Prior to gaining an audience with her joint-venture partner, Carin had been able to raise the equivalent of $1.9 million by tapping private investors and government sources.

Earthrenew’s senior executive also brings her own tickets – not to mention a fascinating and eclectic C.V. – to the table. Carin is an MBA and a prize-winning organic gardener who trails a number of entrepreneurial credits behind her name.

She’s also a former chair of Vancouver’s Emily Carr College of Art and Design, as well as an artist in her own right. She has exhibited her art in Canadian galleries and even recorded a CD of original music.

As to her background in the fertilizer business, she explained that she once raised horses in the Okanagan.

“That gave me lots of experience handling manure,” Carin said with a straight face.

Meanwhile, her late husband, engineer Brian Gorbell, was a highly regarded innovator, well known within the mushrooming sub-culture of researchers in alternative fuels.

Gorbell (sadly, he died at Foothills Hospital on Sept. 12) had been a key designer at Ballard Power Systems, a Canadian leader in the development of hydrogen fuel-cell technology.

A lover of automobiles as well as a former racer, Gorbell subsequently left Ballard to set up an automotives program for Global Thermoelectric Inc. here in Alberta.

Meanwhile, out of a mutual passion for organic gardening, Gorbell and Carin were simultaneously spinning their business plan for manufacturing fertilizer. And, since the $2.2-billion organic farming industry is the agricultural industry’s fastest-growing sector, there was clearly money to be made. They received grant money from the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Application Program and were on their way.

Earthrenew’s dry granules pack more punch than peat and are superior to compost, she said, because they’re so much easier to package, transport and distribute. At the same time, heat-intensive manufacturing destroys any genetically modified organisms, pathogens and weed seeds which may be present in the source manure.

So don’t hold your nose at the idea of potty power. Nobody said it was easy being green.