21st Century Regenerative Technology

1. People Power: Using Facebook To Cut Carbon
2. Harvest Power Cuts Deal with Waste Management, Snags More VC Cash

People Power: Using Facebook To Cut Carbon

2010-01-26 08:00

Justin Moresco - smart grid

The home energy management industry has become saturated with new players looking for creative ways to be heard among the crowd. That's at least part of the reason why People Power, which says it's developing plug-and-play devices for monitoring home energy use, plans to launch a Facebook app on Tuesday that calculates the amount of carbon emissions users have avoided emitting by turning off heaters, clothes dryers, PCs and other home appliances (the energy saved is based on what users say they will do, not what they’ve actually achieved).

The Facebook app asks users to pledge to "unplug" one or more home appliance from a list of 20 during Earth Day. The user selects how many hours those appliances will be turned off, and the app calculates the emissions avoided and what the rough equivalent would be in terms of miles driven in a car. "Unplug" users can invite friends, view their friends' commitments, and track their collective emissions reductions. "If we band together then we can make a difference," People Power Chief Executive Gene Wang told us.

People Power, which is backed by New Cycle Capital and plans to launch its core products later this year, aimed to make the app fast and easy to use. Based on my quick test drive, they've at least accomplished that. Whether the calculator receives "viral adoption," as People Power made it clear it hopes for, of course remains to be seen. In addition to the app, the startup also decided to go musical — it launched the "People Power Band" (we’re not kidding) and produced a single called "Happy Birthday Mother Earth," which is available for download on the company's website.

The marketing push, effective or not, at least underscores People Power's emphasis on the consumer. When I spoke with Wang before the startup's launch last year, he told me one of the ways People Power would differentiate itself would be with a consumer-friendly product design. That could be a smart move if retail becomes a key distribution channel for home energy monitoring devices in a few years (after the current surge dominated by utility distribution deals).

There’s a variety of Facebook applications and iPhone apps already out there intended to help users cut carbon, by reducing home energy consumption and driving times in vehicles. Last March at Green:Net 2009 we featured a panel that looked at how difficult it’s been to start a web-based social movement around fighting climate change. However, sites like 350.org, founded by Bill McKibben, have more recently found some success at galvanizing young people on the web around “350,” the upper limit of carbon dioxide parts per million in the atmosphere. Leading up to the Copenhagen summit in October 2009, 350.org was able to help organize what it calls “the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history,” with more than 5200 events in 181 countries.

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Harvest Power Cuts Deal with Waste Management, Snags More VC Cash

2010-01-25 23:00

Justin Moresco - Energy

Harvest Power, which builds, owns and operates facilities to turn yard clippings and other organic waste into renewable energy and composted soil, announced today that it is partnering with Waste Management, a leading waste services company, to expand its organics recycling operations. As part of the agreement, Waste Management — along with returning venture backers Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Munich Venture Partners — has invested an undisclosed amount into the Waltham, Mass.-based startup.

The partnership with Waste Management represents a major milestone for Harvest Power, which was founded in 2008 and so far has just one facility up and running: its Fraser Richmond plant near Vancouver, Canada. The deal gives Harvest Power a well-established partner in the waste businesses, and it paves the way for the startup to access organic waste (feedstock for its recycling processes) from Waste Management's operations across the United States and Canada. Waste Management serves more than 20 million customers through a network of 367 collection operations, 273 active landfill disposal sites and 134 recycling plants.

Harvest Power chief executive Paul Sellew told us that the two companies are still working out the details of their agreement, but it likely will involve the startup building and operating recycling plants at select Waste Management facilities. "They have a great infrastructure in place, and it only makes sense to utilize that," Sellew said.

Harvest Power's business is to convert renewable organic materials from municipal and other waste streams into fuels such as biogas and compressed natural gas, as well as composted soil. The startup plans to use onsite combined heat and power systems to convert much of the fuel into electricty, which would be sold to utilities. The compost would be marketed to communities near the processing plants. Yard trimmings and food residuals account for about a quarter of the total U.S. municipal solid waste stream, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Harvest, which has some proprietary technology around composting but uses processes developed by Germany's Bekon Energy Technology and others for converting the waste into renewable forms of energy, aims to build as many as 50 facilities in North America over the next 4-6 years, Sellew told us. Each facility would be able to process at least 30,000 tons of organic waste – or about what a community of 100,000 produces – per year, depending on the availability of feedstock. The startup has so far raised $40 million in equity, debt and grants, including this latest round of funding.

Image courtesy of Harvest Power. It shows steaming at a composting vessel at the Fraser Richmond plant.