This is one of the bigger cleantech deals we’ve seen around the country. Waltham, MA-based Harvest Power, a waste-to-energy startup that’s building a plant near Vancouver, BC, said today it has raised a $51.7 million Series B financing round led by Generation Investment Management, a London-based firm co-founded by Al Gore and David Blood. New investors DAG Ventures and Keating Capital also participated in the round, along with Harvest’s previous investors, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Waste Management, Munich Venture Partners, and TriplePoint Capital.
Harvest Power was founded in 2008 and is led by CEO Paul Sellew. As my colleague Wade has reported previously, the company focuses on technology for producing renewable energy and fertilizer products from organic waste such as food scraps and yard trimmings. To do this, Harvest uses naturally occurring microorganisms to break down waste and produce biogas (a mix of methane and carbon dioxide), which can be burned to produce electricity, cleaned to create natural gas, or further processed into compressed natural gas fuel.
If the technology is efficient and successful, it could potentially transform the way waste is managed around the world, as well as provide an important energy source.
Harvest says it has broken ground on a waste-to-energy facility in the Vancouver metro area, which it calls the first of its kind in North America. Its stated plan from here is to use the new money to expand its waste management and energy-producing platform to other geographies and add to its technology toolkit. The company says it is “growing revenue rapidly and is solidly profitable.”
