In what can only be described as a mega-deal, investment firm Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts, & Co. are paying a 15% premium over market close, $69.25 per share, to take TXU Corp private. The $31.8 billion dollar deal is the largest ever to take a company private.

Why do we care? Simple, as a consequence of the takeover, TXU’s planned 11 mega-coal plants will be reduced to 3 as a result of the acquisition and stronger environmental policies are likely to be enacted. The reduction will displace some 56 million tons of carbon emissions, equivalent to preventing 10.2 million new cars from appearing on the road.

This is an interesting development to be sure. Let’s hope the focus shifts from coal to other, less polluting generation mechanisms as a private company. But axing 8 planned coal plants is a good start.


If you liked this entry, Digg It!
Tune: Sugar Bee by Cleveland Crochet
Technorati Tags: Energy | Megadeal | TXU Buyout | Mike Harding Blog

Well, it’s that time of year again. Kevin Chu posted his Oscar predictions and we’ll see how he does. But the real action happened last night as the Golden Raspberry Foundation presented the 27th annual Raspberry Awards at the Ivar Theater in Hollywood. It takes talent to make movies so bad that people cringe, and the Razzies recognize this extraordinary work.

A snippet from the award for worst picture “Basically, it stinks too” is what Basic Instinct 2 really was intended to communicate. The Wayans brothers got into the act with Little Man. The big disappointment of the night was Sylvester Stallone’s absence, the veteran of 30 Razzie nominations and 10 wins didn’t make the cut because Rocky Balboa didn’t uniformly stink.

CNN has surface level coverage of this important event. I can’t wait until next year, the competition is getting tougher for this under appreciated set of achievements. After all, where else would you find “That’s Entertainment” performed by the Merman Tabernacle Choir?


If you liked this entry, Digg It!
Tune: Hillbillies from Outer Space by Stevie Ray Vaughan
Technorati Tags: Razzies | Oscars | Bad Movies | Mike Harding Blog

During a stop in Costa Rica by a cruise ship, several passengers banded together to rent a van and get a guided tour of the sights. At a stop in the tour, three masked men brandished knives and guns attempting to hold up a female passenger at which time a 70 year-old military veteran grabbed one of the attackers, and subdued him (well, more accurately, killed him with his bare hands.) The other two attackers fled and after a short time to straighten things out with the local officials, the passengers were allowed back on the ship as the incident was clearly self-defense.

Aside from one attacker, no one else was harmed, though the female passenger was shaken up. This sounds too bizarre to be real…I’m going to guess that would-be thieves in Costa Rica think twice about future tourist holdups.


If you liked this entry, Digg It!
Tune: Waiting for my Ruca by Sublime
Technorati Tags: Rambo | Robbery | Self Defense | Mike Harding Blog

CalPERS (the California Public Employee Retirement System) doubled down earlier this week adding $400M to the $200M already set aside for clean tech investments. This is encouraging news as it means a large investor seeking outsized returns is seeing something they like in the clean tech space as well as the simple fact that $400M more is available to entrepreneurs in the segment.

Way to go CalPERS, you’re demonstrating great leadership. Thanks to John for the pointer to this event.


If you liked this entry, Digg It!
Tune: Desire by U2
Technorati Tags: Energy | Clean Tech | Investment | Mike Harding Blog

Recently I ran across a reference to the Swiss company Flisom which is a 2005 spinoff of ETH Zurich (The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.)

Traditional photovoltaic (PV) cells use monocrystalline silicon wafers to capture photons in sun light to excite electrons which are then directed to a conductor resulting in direct current. These PV cells are the prevalent technology installed in the marketplace today. Another variation on theme is to coat a silicon substrate with some sort of PV chemical mixture which then performs essentially the same process as pure silicon PV cells. The issue with these approaches is cost, manufacturing and material.

The latest research has revolved around nanocrystal, polymer, and photoelectrochemical cells. That’s where Flisom comes in, they seem to have figured out how to use the photoelectrochemical approach on a plastic foil substrate to harvest sunlight and convert it to direct current. The Flisom approach uses the Cu(In,Ga)Se2 compound (commonly called CIGS) sandwiched between a layer of Zinc Oxide (ZnO) on the top and Molybdenum (Mo) on the bottom. See a cross section of the material in the image below:



The efficiency demonstrated right now is 14%, which is pretty good for an emerging technology. If they can perfect this approach, the solar electric power landscape will change as the material can be cost effectively produced and all of the sudden common items like windows can become solar arrays inobtrusively and cheaply. That would be pretty cool…


If you liked this entry, Digg It!
Tune: Lake Charles by Lucinda Williams
Technorati Tags: Energy | Solar | Photoelectrochemical | Mike Harding Blog