• Harvest Power Raises Another $6 Million To Turn Food And Yard Scraps Into Energy, Or Fertilizer

    Lora Kolodny

    Lora Kolodny is a technology journalist. As of 2012 she works as a reporter for Dow Jones covering startups and venture capital. Her writing is also syndicated to the Dow Jones owned Wall Street Journal. Lora began reporting on business, technology and entertainment in 2002. She has worked as greentech writer and editor at TechCrunch, and as a staff reporter... → Learn More

    Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

    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.