Shakers: People in the news—Gates among backers of recycling venture
Bill Gates and Harvard University are backers of a private equity fund that will make a record private investment of as much as $1.5 billion in a technology that enables manufacturers to recycle waste heat.
The commitment from Denham Capital Management, based in Boston, will finance installation of turbines that reuse energy vented from smokestacks, cutting power bills and greenhouse-gas emissions. The projects will be managed by Tom and Sean Casten, a father-and-son team in charge of Recycled Energy Development in Westmont, Illinois.
Harvard Management, custodian of the world’s largest university endowment with $34.9 billion, has identified itself as a Denham investor. Cascade Investment, the private investment fund of Bill Gates, also put up money, according to a person familiar with the financing.