Prior to joining EVO, Denis was a senior consultant with 30 years experience providing advice and expertise to clients in industry and governments in Canada and in other countries. As a consultant, his mandates included an extensive policy and market analysis of energy systems in northern and isolated communities, a green financing market study in the renewable energy sector, a blueprint for a building re-commissioning investment fund, energy efficiency program design, as well as various government relation mandates.
Before his recent consulting work, Denis was the President & CEO of the Canadian GeoExchange Coalition (CGC) for 12 years – the last two acting on a part-time basis while conducting his consulting mandates. At the CGC, he engaged the Canadian geothermal heat pump industry into a major market transformation initiative, ensuring market cohesion, industry discipline and trust. He acted as chairman for three years and organized the 11th International Energy Agency Heat Pump Conference in Montréal in May 2014.
Denis started his career as an economist at the Bank of Canada and then joined the federal department of Energy, Mines and Resources (Canada) where he held a number of increasingly senior positions. He left the government in 1994 to become a lobbyist and an independent energy consultant until 1999. From 2000 to 2005, he was the President & CEO of a 600 member based energy efficiency association in Québec.
Denis wrote and published several technical articles, research papers and position papers on energy, energy efficiency as well as geothermal heat pump market and market transformation strategies. He testified at PUB hearings in Québec on electricity issues, in parliamentary commissions at the Québec National Assembly and before House of Commons and Senate of Canada committees.
He holds a Master of Arts (Economics) degree received from Carleton University in 1993 and a Honours BA – Economics from the Université de Sherbrooke. He was a part-time lecturer in Microeconomics and Managerial Economics at the Université du Québec à Hull in the early 1990s. Over the past 25 years, Denis sat on the boards of many government technical committees, not-for-profit and non-governmental organizations.
