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Total closes SunPower deal: Big oil goes solar

By Larry Dignan | June 15, 2011, 7:30 AM PDT

Oil and gas giant Total said Wednesday that it has completed its cash-tender offer to own 60 percent of solar power system player SunPower.

Total paid $23.25 a share, or $1.3 billion, for its stake. AS noted previously, Total’s plan revolves around taking oil money and funding solar projects via SunPower. Total’s relationships abroad with key power providers and governments will also give SunPower some key connections. European regulators gave the Total investment the go-ahead last week.

In a statement, Philippe Boisseau, president of Total Gas & Power, said “the marketplace requires global integrated industrial players that are financially stable and committed to advancing cutting-edge technology.”

SunPower CEO Tom Werner said the Total investment will bolster the company’s research and development efforts.

The most notable piece of the Total-SunPower deal is a guaranteed credit line that will lower the cost of investing in solar projects upfront. That credit line will be critical as it appears that the solar industry is entering a rough patch as subsidies are cut in Europe.

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About Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is the editor-in-chief of SmartPlanet.

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Sunpower in with oil & Gas Company ????

I understand the need for money But with the Big oil company and with enough shares to control Sunpower.Well I guess the future will Show us.

Posted by Tec1960

15th Jun 2011

Just
In

I Doubt It.

If it were a viable strategy for the oil companies to shut down solar power, one business at a time, how would they decide between them who buys what?
I take your point about a short-term cost and only long-term profits, but the stock market could still smile on this decision if it's seen as a good move for the future of the company - oil companies can't really future-proof themselves without investing in alternatives and buying a solar leader is quite likely to become more expensive as the years roll by.
Shell and BP have each invested a lot in alternative energy and their motivation wasn't altruistic; I'm sure it's partly about PR (they run ad campaigns stressing how they're a "future energy company" not an "oil company") and partly about hedging their bets.

Posted by steve_jonesuk@...

21st Jun 2011

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Sunpower in with oil & Gas Company ????

I understand the need for money But with the Big oil company and with enough shares to control Sunpower.Well I guess the future will Show us.

Posted by Tec1960

15th Jun 2011

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.Well I guess the future will Show us.

Years back when the surgeon general starting applying pressure to the tobacco industry, they got smart real quick... check most of your food manufacturers and some of your store chains, they are owned by the same people that thought tobacco was going to last forever back then.

Only the smart ones realize that they need to move forward when the axe is starting to fall.

Posted by kfortner51

15th Jun 2011

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The PAST has ALREADY shown us!

"...they are owned by the same people that thought tobacco was going to last forever..."

So frickin what? Those people own EVERYTHING! Coincidence of ownership means nothing in the days of the Koch Brothers et al.

And note that when the smoke industry "got smart," the FIRST thing they did, a decades-long project, was to manufacture and push the lies they thought would carry their day. It was only after a long, frustrating struggle by their sensible detractors, that they were finally FORCED to see things our way.

I think it's a safe bet, that they were diversified into other industry areas long before they started even admitting that smoking causes cancer. Because that's what the Rich do...

Never think that business acts from social responsibility. They are profit-seekers always.

Posted by Lightning Joe

16th Jun 2011

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The end of oil moneys and the beginning of clean energy

Divesting the oil wealth into clean energy sources may be the best way of averting the Islamic Holocaust that they promise.
Islamic terrorism is funded with oil money.

The oligarchs want to maintain their power when the oil is gone. So poorer Arab nations are encouraged to indoctrinate and brainwash the youth to die for Allah.

The queens of the hive are the oligarchs of the oil rich gulf & they will have a brainwashed army to do their bidding.
The hive is reaching critical mass.

There are +- 150,000,000 Jihadists world wide. The rest of the 1.5 billion Muslims are strategic support.

Israel is being used to keep them focused on ridding the world of Infidels. The demise of Israel would be the trigger for the world wide Jihad to begin.

The divesting of the oil riches into renewable & clean energy sources will be the best thing for undermining the Islamic Jihad.

Posted by TonyTrenton

Updated - 16th Jun 2011

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Not true...

....terrorism is actually pretty cheap; it doesn't really need a lot of funding.
You really shouldn't characterise all 1.5 billion Muslims as supporting an anti-Western Jihad any more than you should characterise all Christians as being a support system for Christian fundamentalism.
And many people think that if Israel were to disappear that that would ease a lot of the tensions in the Middle East, rather than leading to an escalation in violence. Not that I'm endorsing such a thing (far from it), I'm just saying I think your logic there is backwards.
Hopefully, however, less reliance on oil will reduce the motivation for future oil wars which will reduce antagonism in Arab countries.

Posted by steve_jonesuk@...

21st Jun 2011

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Buy and Sequester is the name of the game.

I can see no way for them to actually profit from this. The "break-even" point (according to another current article) is still ten years away, and any company that works for its shareholders (as all Limited Liability public companies do) cannot be spending its money so "recklessly" that they "short" the shareholders in the present, for putative profits ten years off.

There must be something else in the bag on this one. One must ask, what is the payback for a company, if they simply buy out the leaders in a competing field, and park the R&D in a dead zone?

Posted by Lightning Joe

16th Jun 2011

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I Doubt It.

Posted by steve_jonesuk@...

21st Jun 2011

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Subversion Is A Business Plan

The oil and gas industry has a dense history of purchasing technology for the sole purpose of subverting its growth. I have no trust in Total to do anything different in this case.

Posted by ridelikejehu2000@...

16th Jun 2011

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