About

Marc McClean is director of legal at leading green energy provider EDF EN Canada. McClean has been instrumental in a number of successful acquisitions across the region. When discussing his highlights he explains how he contributed to the development of the three largest wind projects in Canada, in particular the 300 MW black spring ridge wind project in Alberta, the largest project in Western Canada. Of this process he says that they ‘acquired it on a short and intense fuse with very little time to close and commence construction. In less than two months we diligenced the entire project and Alberta market place’. McClean has assisted the business to develop models to bring in external groups as partners in ways that ‘make sense for all the parties while creating competitive projects’. In his experience a well-run legal department removes from the business some of the noise that can hamper the objective of growth. When day-to-day legal issues are dealt with and a standard of conduct is put in place it allows senior executives to ultimately focus on the business as much as possible. McClean has been able to achieve this by not ‘hiding behind legal risk’ but by being proactive and understanding and managing it. Prior to this role he had a short stint as legal counsel at Shell Canada.