Enerkem, the Montreal-based waste-to-ethanol company, continues to raise money and extend its reach through new partnerships. The company announced today it has secured another $60 million in financing and that Valero Energy has joined existing investors Waste Management, Rho Ventures, Braemar Energy Ventures and Cycle Capital in the round. Valero and Enerkem have also agreed to jointly explore future commercial opportunities.

Enerkem is proving to be a Canadian waste-to-energy success story. It has several projects under construction and in the pipeline and it has managed to attract top-tier strategic investors and VCs. Valero is a good catch. It has 10 ethanol refineries across the United States, making it the largest supplier of ethanol in the country. It also has made several investments in next-gen ethanol technology companies, including Mascoma, Zeachem, Terrabon, Solix Biofuels — and now Enerkem. “With Valero joining Waste Management as a strategic investor, Enerkem becomes one of the very few renewable products companies that is aligned with industry leaders from both upstream and downstream parts of the business,” said Vincent Chornet, president and chief executive officer of Enerkem, in a press release.

My Clean Break column today in the Toronto Star talks about why the city, which under previous Mayor David Miller practically banned discussion of energy-from-waste, should open its mind and have an honest dialogue about options for turning the city’s hard-to-recycle solid waste into useful products, such as electricity, ethanol or green chemicals.

They’re doing it in Edmonton with Enerkem, which is turning sorted municipal solid waste into ethanol. They’re doing it in Ottawa with Plasco Energy, which is turning residual municipal waste into syngas that’s used for generating electricity. Trash giant Waste Management, an investor in Enerkem, has been investing heavily in technologies that can cleanly convert waste into useful chemicals and fuels in a safe way that releases virtually no emissions into the atmosphere — at least not, obviously, until any end fuel product is burned. But this fuel product would be displacing a fossil fuel using materials that might otherwise degrade in a landfill and release methane or contaminate groundwater.

This is an area where I part with many of my friends in the environmental community, and believe me, I’ve had my share of debates over a beer. But the landfill option is not better, in my view, and while I fully support waste diversion programs I don’t believe we can ever get to 100 per cent diversion. There’s a lot of wood waste, clothing, unrecyclable plastics, and even certain paper and plastic products can only be recycled so many times. What happens with this garbage? Advanced energy-from-waste technologies, like those being built by Enerkem and Plasco, can help municipalities manage their waste in their own back yard and get a source of energy in return.

I’m not saying we should drink the Kool-Aid, no questions asked. But at the same time, I’m a believer that the technology has changed over the years, the economics have improved, and some systems being piloted and built for commercial use today are dramatically different than the dirty incinerators built in the 1970s. Skepticism is fine, and encouraged, but not when it’s accompanied by outright dismissal or repeated attempts to compare today’s technology with what stirred up controversy 20 years ago.

It’s a conversation Toronto needs to have.

Enerkem being a Canadian company doesn’t seem to impact its ability to get financial support from the U.S. government. Montreal-based Enerkem, on top of an earlier $50 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, has just received another $80 million in loan guarantees, this time from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It was one of only three biofuel companies to get this support — the others were Coskata and INEOS New Planet Bioenergy.

The loan guarantees will back Enerkem’s construction of its landmark waste-to-biofuels project in Pontotoc, Mississippi, which will transform Northeast Mississippi’s municipal solid waste into ethanol. “Enerkem’s biorefinery operation in Mississippi – a 300 ton-per-day facility located on the Three Rivers landfill site – will initially produce 10 million gallons/36 million litres of ethanol annually from sorted municipal solid waste and will reduce the pressure to landfill,” according to the company, which expects to create more than 70 permanent jobs.

It would be nice if our federal government offered more loan guarantees of this sort…

Ottawa-based Plasco Energy Group says its energy-from-waste technology is now proven and it’s time to move to commercial delivery. To help in that effort, it announced today a $110 million private equity placement led largely by Ares Management LLC of Los Angeles. Since 2005 Plasco had already managed to raise $135 million in equity, so this latest haul bring the total to $245 million — not bad in today’s markets. Another $25 million in government grants rounds out the total to $270 million.

Plasco chairman and CEO Rod Bryden called the latest investment in the company “a remarkable expression of confidence.” The company is targeting its efforts at North America, Europe and China. It has two pilot facilities already — a 100-tonne-per-day plant in Ottawa and a much smaller plant in Spain — but a 300 tonne-per-day facility is in the works in Red Deer, Alberta, and is expected to be completed in 2012. One can only assume that the Ottawa facility has worked out its kinks, otherwise I can’t see any responsible investor throwing down $100 million to pursue commercial projects.

This is good news for Plasco and another shot of confidence in the emerging market for new energy-from-waste technologies. Montreal-based Enerkem is another Canadian company riding this wave with its ethanol-from-waste systems, having recently raised nearly $54 million from Waste Management and a number of venture capital firms. Don Roberts, vice-chair of CIBC World Market’s clean technology and green energy team, recently told me that energy-from-waste was one of three main areas to watch over the coming years, along with energy efficiency and water. He may be right.

Kudos to Vincent Chornet. The president, CEO and co-founder of Montreal-based Enerkem (along with his father, Esteban) has in just a few years turned his company into a leading player in the emerging waste-to-fuel market. Today, Enerkem gained even more momentum, announcing it had secured $53.8 million in venture financing in a round that included Houston-based Waste Management, the continent’s top waste-management firm.

Enerkem uses a thermochemical fluidized-bed process to gasify municipal solid waste (organics, wood waste, plastics), demolition wood, and agricultural/forest residues. The resulting syngas is cleaned and, using a proven catalyst, can be turned into a variety of end products, including methanol, ethanol and high-value olefins (plastics). The company is in the process of building a waste-to-ethanol facility in Mississippi (75 million litres a year) and an Edmonton plant (36 million litres a year) that will also turn sorted municipal solid waste into ethanol. The Edmonton facility is being done in partnership with Greenfield Ethanol, Canada’s largest independent ethanol producer. Meanwhile, in Westbury, Quebec, the company has a commercial-scale demonstration facility that currently turns old wooden hydro poles into ethanol.

Rho Ventures, Braemar Energy Ventures and BDR Capital, all existing investors, participated in the financing round with Waste Management, along with new investor Cycle Capital. “This financing round validates Enerkem’s business and advances our path towards leadership in the waste and advanced fuels markets,” said Chornet in a release. In an earlier story (July 2008) I wrote for Greentech Media, Chornet said that burning waste or burning the syngas created from waste is, well, a waste. Based on electricity and ethanol prices at the time, a company can make three times more revenue per tonne of processed waste compared to a plant that simply burns its syngas to generate electricity, he said. Chornet also said Enerkem’s process is profitable with oil at $50 a barrel and if the company can get a competitive tipping fee to take the garage.