Harvest Power Raises $51.7 Million To Turn Yard Scraps, Food Waste Into Energy

Harvest Power, a producer of renewable energy from organic waste, attained $51.7 million series B financing, in a round led by Generation Investment Management, the companies announced today.

The London-based fund was started by Nobel prize winner Al Gore and the former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, David Blood. DAG Ventures and Keating Capital also invested alongside Harvest Power’s earlier backers Kleiner Perkins, Waste Management (NYSE: WM), Munich Venture Partners, and TriplePoint Capital.

According to Harvest Power’s chief executive Paul Sellew, the company will put the capital into building two of the “largest biomass renewable energy projects in North America, one in Richmond, B.C. and another outside of Toronto.” The demo facilities will help Harvest Power test and commercialize new technology to process organic waste and turn it into fertilizers and energy at a lower cost than anaerobic digesters that are currently available and widely used.

Current customers of Harvest Power are municipalities including Tulare County in California, and commercial and industrial producers of food waste, like the Canadian grocery chain, Loblaws. Sellew believes state laws making yard and food waste mandatory recyclables in the U.S. will drive additional business for the company, domestically.