ARTICLE: Aries receives financing for waste-to-energy projects

Source

Canadian Biomass

Publication Date

January 10, 2018

Aries Clean Energy is poised for growth, with a leading and proven technology, a wide-open market opportunity, and an experienced, high-execution management team

Aries Clean Energy LLC, designer of the world’s largest downdraft gasification plant, today announced that it has issued approximately $21.4 million of new equity led by existing investors and received additional capital commitments from Spring Lane Capital of $25 million for equity in future gasification projects. Proceeds from the offering will be used to fund project development, retire debt and other general corporate purposes. Spring Lane Capital is a private equity firm focused on project finance investments for smaller-scale solutions in the energy, water, food and waste industries.

The financing marks a significant milestone for the emerging set of municipal and industrial-scale solutions providers in the waste management industry, which has been historically challenged to access affordable financing tailored to the needs of sub-utility scale projects in the industry.

Aries plans to use the proceeds from the investment to deploy an immediate pipeline of customer-ready projects using their proprietary waste gasification technology, as well as to accelerate business development in new markets within the U.S, increase efficiencies in current products, and advance growth outside the U.S. borders.

“I am pleased that Spring Lane Capital has recognized our award-winning, patented clean energy technology and wants to help share these solutions with more cities and industries,” said Gregory L. Bafalis, CEO of Aries. “Their model of financing distributed scale solutions is ideal for our business as we look to develop and operate a series of small-to-mid scale plants.”

Aries’ latest project is the Lebanon Gasification Initiative in Lebanon, Tennessee. At full capacity, this plant annually will keep 8,000 tons of waste from landfills and eliminate 2,500 tons of carbon emissions from the air. The syngas converted from waste can generate 1.8 million kilo-watt hours of electricity in a year.

“Aries Clean Energy is poised for growth, with a leading and proven technology, a wide-open market opportunity, and an experienced, high-execution management team,” said Nikhil Garg, General Partner at Spring Lane Capital. “This financing gives Aries the runway to accelerate the business and deploy their solution at scale while providing strong economic benefits to their municipal and industrial customers.”

Spring Lane Capital addresses some of the fastest growing segments of the energy, food, water and waste markets that more traditional forms of capital cannot work with at scale. The clean energy and waste/wastewater systems of Aries reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide other economic and environmental benefits for the communities around each of its plants.

Garg continued, “We believe in the long-term social and economic benefits natural resource efficiency brings to everyone. My colleagues and I are pleased to support Aries Clean Energy as it pushes forward to take its technology across this country and overseas.”

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