OPV Lives!!

I was very pleased to see this morning's announcement that Total , the oil and gas giant, had just invested $45 million, in the organic photovoltaics (OPV) developer, Konarka. Quite frankly, in the current financial environment, any investment activity looks mighty good.

But - leaving aside doom and gloom - the 20 percent or so stake that Total now owns in Konarka is really a credibility booster for OPV as a whole, not just Konarka.

For the past two or three years, OPV has been carried along by the passion of investors for all things cleantech. The meltdown of the past two months has meant that investors have very little passion left. Meanwhile, in an environment in which traditional energy prices are declining, the arguments for all forms of PV weaken. But the business case for OPV has always been a little difficult to make, because of the low conversion efficiencies, because of encapsulation issues, and because some of the most attractive applications for OPV (e.g., solar curtains) are a little on the futuristic side.

With all this working against OPV and given the early stage of technological development at which OPV finds itself, OPV could easily have become a victim of the recession; one of those exciting new technologies that ultimately ends up in the dustbins of technological history.

It should be remembered that Total is already active in the PV business and also in the organic electronics business (through Sartomer.) And with Konarka being able to tap into the enviable resources of Total's chemical subsidiaries - Atotech, Bostik, Hutchinson, Sartomer and Total Petrochemicals and with access to the Total distribution chain, OPV may prove a winner after all.