Greentech VC Funding Roundup: Ostara, Project Frog, MC10

Greentech VC investment is down but not dead.

Eric Wesoff April 22, 2013

Eric Wesoff

Editor-at-Large
Greentech Media

Eric Wesoff is Editor-at-Large at Greentech Media. Prior to joining GTM, Eric Wesoff founded Sage Marketing Partners in 2000 to provide sales and marketing-consulting services to venture-capital firms and their portfolio companies in the alternative energy and telecommunications sectors. Mr. Wesoff has become a well-known, respected authority and speaker in these fields.

His expertise covers solar power, fuel cells, biofuels and advanced batteries. His strengths are in market research and analysis, business development and due diligence for investors. He frequently consults for energy startups and Silicon Valley's premier venture capitalists.

Greentech venture capital investment, in its current state, is down but it's not dead.

Here are three funding rounds from the past few days:

Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies won $13M led by Wheatsheaf Investments (part of the Grosvenor Estate) along with existing investors VantagePoint Capital Partners and Frog Capital. VantagePoint venture partner Robert Kennedy, Jr. is on Ostara's board of directors.

Ostara is a clean water firm that extracts phosphorous, nitrogen, and other nutrients from wastewater and then recycles it into fertilizer.

Ostara's equipment can extract more than 90 percent of the phosphorus and 40 percent of the ammonia load from a sewage sludge stream of 500,000 liters per day, according to the firm. The resulting mixture is used to make roughly 500 kilograms of what the company calls Crystal Green, a slow-release fertilizer which allows farmers to use less material.

Ostara estimates that approximately 200 wastewater plants in North America and several hundred plants in Europe and the rest of the world are candidates for the technology. The firm looks to expand beyond wastewater treatment plants to other industries.

The firm's system is installed at Clean Water Services, a water utility with more than 500,000 customers in urban Washington County, west of Portland. Ostara's process provides revenue from the sale of the fertilizer, as well as reducing the O&M usually spent in de-scaling the equipment from the built-up nutrients. Phosphorous accumulates on equipment in what is called struvite scale and reduces plant performance and lifetime.

Ostara's equipment is operating at five municipal facilities in North America with two more set to come on-line.

Project Frog raised $4.1M of a $4.3M private offering in what was listed as debt in an SEC filing. Project Frog had raised at least $28 million in venture capital prior to this from investors such as Rockport, Elan Management, and Claremont Creek Ventures for green modular buildings.

And arguably cleantech because of a potential solar application, MC10 of Cambridge, Mass. raised an $8 million round C from undisclosed strategic investors, according to Venture Wire. Previous investors for the flexible and wearable electronics from this firm include Medtronic, Braemar Energy Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners.