Waste Management gets involved - what hope is there for a small fry?
money.cnn.com
December 6, 2010: 6:21 AM ET
This year Waste Management took a stake in Harvest Power, a Massachusetts-based startup that turns organic waste into compost and biogas, which can then be burned to generate electricity. Venture capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is an investor in Harvest Power, which is building its first commercial-scale plant in British Columbia. Its technology could generate $60 to $80 a ton in revenue, Rush estimates.
Two other companies backed by Waste Management -- Terrabon and Enerkem -- are generating transportation fuels from waste, albeit on a very small scale. Houston-based Terrabon is making green gasoline from paper waste and chicken manure at a pilot plant in College Station, Texas, while Enerkem, a Canadian firm, is developing a commercial-scale facility in Edmonton, Alberta, to turn mixed solid waste into ethanol. (Waste Management won't disclose the size of its venture investments but says they are typically $5 million to $10 million.) If Terrabon or Enerkem are able to scale up and bring costs down, Rush says, they could generate about $200 to $250 worth of fuel from a ton of waste.
That would be a game changer. "If we can figure out a way to process and convert organic material better than anybody else, we're going to own that material," says Steiner. Eventually Waste Management could pay its customers for organic waste -- giving it an unbeatable advantage over competitors charging them to put it in landfills. |
