Smart Energy News

Waltham, Mass. – Harvest Power, a Waltham-based company that extracts renewable energy, soil and fertilizer from organic materials, announced on Thursday it has raised $110 million in its third round of venture capital, which was led by True North Venture Partners.

Founded in 2008, Harvest allows communities to produce low-cost renewable energy and high-value products from organic waste materials. Its fuel products include processed engineered fuel, which is derived from recovered wood waste materials and made from clean wood, painted wood, plywood, oriented strand board, particle board, shake and shingles, film plastics, rigid plastics, cardboard and tar paper.

The company also makes “Hog Fuel,” which comes from the Norwegian word “hogge” meaning “hacked or chipped,” and refers to an unprocessed mix of coarse chips of bark and wood fiber. Hog fuel can be used to efficiently drive boiler systems, which then can produce electricity and heat.

Harvest owns and operates North American facilities in British Columbia, Ontario, California and throughout the Mid-Atlantic states.

In September 2011, Harvest Power has acquired Coastal Supply Co., a Delaware-based soil and mulch manufacturer.

Other investors in Harvest Power include American Refining and Biochemical; Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; DAG Ventures and Generation Investment Management, among others.

Harvest Power website

Pittsburgh – Thar Energy, a privately held developer of green energy technology, has raised $3 million in venture capital and debt, the company disclosed in new filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including $2 million in equity and $1 million in debt.

Thar Energy is developing a new biofuel manufacturing process that focuses on high-value food products, with biodiesel as a byproduct. The company is working on ways to convert agricultural residues into liquid fuel.

Another application of Thar’s technology reduces the energy consumed by conventional distillation of ethanol in a corn-to-ethanol plant. According to the company, it offers a “drop-in replacement for distillation/dehydration.”

Founded as Thar Technologies over 20 years ago, the company has produced supercritical-fluid process systems for the pharmaceutical, food, chemicals and electronics industries. Its technology focuses on nature’s “most common compounds,” carbon dioxide and water.

Last year, the Green Building Alliance (GBA) selected Thar for a Product Innovation Grant to address challenges in the green building marketplace.

Prior to that, in 2008, Thar was awarded a $2 million grant from the Advanced Technology Program of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop green, biodiesel fuel technology.

Image credit: Thar Energy

Thar Energy website

Bend, Ore. – InEnTec, a privately held developer of technology for producing renewable fuels and other commercial products from household, industrial, and chemical wastes, has received a strategic investment of equity from Lakeside Energy, a provider of power generation and renewable energy technologies.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the companies said that Lakeside has become a “significant investor” in InEnTech.

InEnTec previously announced a similar deal in which Waste Management Inc. took a significant equity position in the company. In connection with that financing, InEnTec became the sole owner of S4 Energy Solutions.

Founded in 2009, S4 developed technology to convert solid waste, such as household garbage, into clean fuels for electricity production and transportation. S4 recently started up a commercial scale “Plasma Enhanced Melter (PEM)” at Waste Management’s Columbia Ridge site in Oregon. The project has already demonstrated the ability to create useable fuels out of the trash from the western part of the state, according to the company.

Based in Bend, InEnTec was formed by scientists and engineers from MIT and Battelle. The company’s gasification system can transform household, commercial, medical, and most industrial and hazardous wastes into clean renewable syngas that can be used to produce products, such as electric energy, diesel fuel, ethanol, methanol and hydrogen.

InEnTec was the winner of The Wall Street Journal 2010 Technology Innovation Award in Energy.

InEnTec website

Lakeside Energy website

San Diego — Sapphire Energy, a privately held developer of algae-based crude oil production technology, announced on Monday it has raised $144 million in its third round of venture capital, bringing the total raised by the company so far to over $300 million.

Investors in the latest funding round include Arrowpoint Partners, Monsanto, and other undisclosed participants.

The financing will support Sapphire’s commercial demonstration project in Luna County, N.M., knows as The Green Crude Farm, which purports to be the world’s first commercial demonstration scale, “algae-to-energy” facility, integrating the entire chain of algae-based fuel production, from cultivation to production to extraction of ready-to-refine “green crude.”

Founded in 2007, Sapphire is developing production methods that are based solely on photosynthetic microorganisms (algae and cyanobacteria), using sunlight and CO2 as their feedstock. Its products are designed to enhance and replace petroleum-based products and are compatible with the existing fuel refinery and distribution infrastructure, according to the company.

Image credit: Sapphire Energy

Sapphire Energy website

Washington, DC — Imperative Energy, an Ireland-based provider of biomass heat and power technology, announced it has formed two partnerships that will substantially expand its presence in the U.S. market.

Founded in 2007, Imperative Energy offers bioenergy systems for heat, steam and power to the industrial, commercial and public sectors. The company recently closed a round of fundraising, taking in investment from the Northwest Fund for Energy & Environment, which is managed by CT Investment Partners.

Imperative’s first new partnership in the U.S. is with Northline Energy, a Lynnwood, Wash.-based provider of biomass combustion systems. Under the agreement, Imperative will contribute project finance and project development expertise with Northline’s U.S.-based technical team to offer fully financed biomass systems to users under long-term energy supply agreements.

Imperative and Northline already have a project pipeline planned with a capital spend of over $100 million in the next few year.

Imperative’s second U.S. initiative is a proposed Bio-Park in Taunton, Mass, which is modeled on a similar facility in County Mayo, Ireland designed by Imperative and its partner on the project, J.P. Prendergast.

The Taunton Bio-Park will incorporate a biomass-fired, combined heat and power, wood pellet production facility and biopharma facility. A detailed feasibility study has already been initiated for the $10 million-plus Taunton project, according to the announcement from Imperative.

Image credit: Imperative Energy

Imperative Energy website