A new company launched in March in the Southwest Michigan community of Portage, MI, promises to take waste heat from factories and turn them into electricity. Pro Renewables was created by Windquest Group, a Grand Rapids, MI-based investment firm, and Pro Services, a Portage-based mechanical contractor. Windquest Group is owned by former Michigan gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos. The company’s heat recovery systems, dubbed “Green Machines,” will be marketed to chemical, food-processing, paper, and pharmaceutical companies. Pro Renewables says it expects to hire between 15 and 20 workers in the next six months.
Author: Howard Lovy
Howard Lovy is a veteran journalist who has focused primarily on technology, science and innovation during the past decade.
In 2001, he helped launch Small Times Magazine, a nanotech publication based in Ann Arbor, MI, where he built the freelance team and worked closely with writers to set the tone and style for an emerging sector that had never before been covered from a business perspective. Lovy's work at Small Times, and on one of the first nanotechnology-themed blogs, helped him earn a reputation for making complex subjects understandable, interesting, and even entertaining for a broad audience. It also earned him the 2004 Prize in Communication from the Foresight Institute, a nanotech think tank.
In his freelance work, Lovy covers nanotechnology in addition to technological innovation in Michigan with an emphasis on efforts to survive and retool in the state's post-automotive age. Lovy's work has appeared in many publications, including Wired News, Salon.com, the Wall Street Journal, The Detroit News, The Scientist, the Forbes/Wolfe Nanotech Report, Michigan Messenger, and the Ann Arbor Chronicle.
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