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Clean energy firm Powerspan raises USD50m from venture investors

Powerspan, a clean energy technology company, has announced the closing of over USD50m in new financing from a group of new and returning investors.

The new investors include George Soros, Tenaska Energy AllianceBernstein, and Persimmon Tree Capital, while the returning investorsare  NGEN Partners, Beacon Group, The Tremont Group, RockPort Capital Partners, Calvert, Angeleno Group, Fluor Corporation, and FirstEnergy.
 
The investment will be used to commercially deploy Powerspan’s ECO2 carbon dioxide capture technology for coal-fired electric power plants. In addition, the funding will be used for general corporate purposes.
 
‘This financing round further validates Powerspan as a leading provider of carbon capture technology,’ said Powerspan chief executive Frank Alix. ‘CO2 capture technology is a vital climate change mitigation tool for reducing CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants, the world’s leading source of electricity.’
 
‘Tenaska has assumed a leadership role in the development of power plants with carbon capture and sequestration technologies,’ says Mike Lebens, president and chief executive of Tenaska’s engineering and operations group. ‘We view our financial commitment to Powerspan as a sound investment in a promising CO2 capture technology along with an opportunity to learn more about that cutting-edge technology as we explore future development projects in the energy industry.’
 
Powerspan is currently pilot testing its ECO2 technology on a one-megawatt scale at a power plant in south-eastern Ohio. A 120-MW commercial scale demonstration unit is scheduled to be online at a power plant in North Dakota in 2012. Both the pilot and commercial scale projects are designed to capture 90 per cent CO2 with the captured CO2 from the commercial scale project to be used in enhanced oil recovery operations. Approximately one million tons of CO2 is to be captured annually from the commercial scale project.

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