Harvest Power, a company that makes energy and fertilizer products from organic waste, added $6 million to its series B, $51.7 million round, with Rabobank’s SAM Private Equity group, which focuses on sustainability investing and is based in Zurich, Switzerland, joined the company’s other backers: Generation Investment Management, DAG Ventures, Keating Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Waste Management (NYSE: WM), Munich Venture Partners, and TriplePoint Capital.
As Harvest Power CEO Paul Sellew told TechCrunch in March, the company will put the capital into building two, large biomass renewable energy projects — demo facilities — in Richmond, B.C. and another outside of Toronto. At these sites, the company will test new technology that they will use to process organic waste and turn it into fertilizers and energy at a lower cost than anaerobic digesters that are currently available.
[Update, May 24, 2011 1:45 p.m. ET] The company is also investing in a bit of green tech promotion, or as they call it a “knowledge sharing initiative” called SSO Superheroes. The program profiles fresh examples of projects, and people who are doing interesting things to recycle source-separated organics around North America.