edward helmore on a radical business deal that may herald a new approach to saving the planet |
|
Despite the perception that private equity is leading an ever-intensifying effort to asset-strip the planet, the record buy-out of Texan energy firm TXU could be the first mega-deal to be underpinned with ecological consciousness.
Promoters of the $44bn buy-out stress the new management will reduce the number of existing coal-fired power-stations, scrap plans to build most new plants proposed by TXU - thereby cutting 78m tons of CO2 Emissions - and support a $400m energy efficiency initiative.
With $63bn going into US green energy investments this year, and the climate issue being drummed into the US consciousness by Al Gore and half of Hollywood, it is no surprise that the deal's leading partners, Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts, Texas Pacific Group and Goldman Sachs, would seek this cloak of eco-respectability: being green - or at least
|
|
 |
 |
 |
| With the former Secretary of State James Baker on board, the deal won the backing of two eco-groups |
|
|
displaying green credentials - is now integral to the stagecraft of ultra-capitalism.
The deal's partners have been careful to push their eco-credentialed executives out in front: Texas Pacific's William Reilly, a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and David Bonderman, who serves on the board of the Wilderness Society.
Even Henry Kravis, founding partner of KKR and one of the most fearsome capitalists in the take-over game, has pledged to make TXU a more environmentally friendly company.
This amounts to a leap in the political art of the buyout. With former Secretary of State James Baker III as the partners' advisory chairman, they won the support of two prominent eco-groups, the Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council, before the deal was made public.
Even the Rainforest Action Network, which wants to see more guaranteed green concessions before it will give its blessing to the buy-out, says the deal "marks the beginning of the end of Big Coal's dominance over America's energy future." 
FIRST POSTED FEBRUARY 27, 2007
|
