Green homes represent one of the most promising markets in green tech today, in my opinion. The modular homes coming from companies such as Michelle Kaufmann Design (see snazzy video here) and Living Homes can be built at close to the same cost as regular homes but save their owners massive amounts of money over time in lower electricity and water bills. More importantly, they are cool. (see picture of a Living Homes home here. A Kaufmann home is pictured below). They are open, airy and nostalgically modern. If you grew up in Northern California, it's like living in the birdhouse at the Nut Tree. That's a stark contrast to most green products. Bioplastic cups pretty much work like plastic cups. Solar panels, once the thrill of putting them up goes away, pretty much just deliver electrons. It doesn't change your life. Electric cars and green homes are the only two products in green that I know of that give you that "gotta have it" feeling that has animated the PC and consumer electronics market for 30 years. The problem? It's a real tough business. You need a factory, deals and relationships with land developers like Shea Homes and Lennar, and lots of employees. Plus, protectable intellectual property is almost nonexistent. A lot of VCs have told me they have shied away from this market for those reasons. (Kaufmann just got some money, though, said sources. Don't know if that's public, but if not, there you have it.). VC have shown more interest in building components like drywall that can be sold to any contractor. Enter Ikea. The Swedish retailing giant said it is going to invest around 50 million Euros in clean technology start ups and start to market clean products, according to a story in Cleantech.com. Ikea execs speculated that they might invest in lights, solar panel companies or water purification systems, etc. But these investments will probably never really fly. Why does Ikea need to invest in an LED lamp company? There ar 75 people in Taiwan or more that will make 10,000 LED lamps for them a month. Ikea can rename them Snarvik or Liikplatt. Solar panels? Easy. Buy some BP panels, call them Zurbis and make technicians from SolarCity get dressed up in blue and yellow outfits. (Side note: naming stuff at Ikea is on my top ten dream jobs list, right below teaching chimps how to ride bikes.) Ikea, though, builds prefab homes in Europe. It knows the market and the economics of it. And, unlike LEDs and water purification, the number of large, well-oiled partners to work with is relatively small. Mark my words. This is really what this deal is about. In five years, you could be living in a Schnuuri.

British Energy, the UK's nuclear power monopoly, will likely be sold to Electricité de France this week in a deal valuing the company at close to $25 billion. Though negotiations are ongoing and the parties are still apart on the precise value per share of British Energy (EdF thinks the 750p per share valuation a bit too rich), both sides are expecting to end the week with the largest transfer of wealth from Britain to France since Jane Birkin married Serge Gainsbourg. For some, the sale has aroused feelings of economic nationalism. Unlike in the U.S., where we prefer to keep our state-owned enterprises at least nominally private, the Europeans have no problem taking an active position in their largest companies. The British government owns 35 percent of British Energy, while the French governments owns close to 85 percent of EdF. Dieter Helm, an Oxford professor and energy expert, said the sale means "essentially handing the British nuclear industry to the French government." For a country looking to jumpstart their nuclear power industry, I don't think you could do any better than handing it over to the French. They've got nuclear in spades. Britain's decision to move ahead with its nuclear modernization plan, which involves building 10 subsidy-free reactors in the next 25 years at a cost of $140 billion, is flawed for two reasons. Well, three, if you count handing it over to the French. I don't. First, the plan will lead to a reorganization of the British electricity supply industry, effectively killing the only good thing Maggie Thatcher accomplished in her time as PM. The British electricity supply industry was restructured in the early 1990s, a move that paved the way for electricity trading on wholesale power markets and presaged our own move toward deregulation. Restructuring broke up the traditional vertically integrated monopolies, which controlled generation, transmission and distribution, and retail service, and required that generation companies sell their power in bulk through a combination of spot trading and forward agreements to utilities over independently owned wires. This was done to spur competition, to reduce the overhang of depreciating capital stock, and to make generation more efficient. British Energy, incidentally, is one of the largest participants in the wholesale markets - though their presence as an independent power producer is due largely to series of regulations and subsidies that look more like life support than red tape. That the bid-in price of nuclear energy runs close to £0.00/kWh no doubt makes for some serious liquidity problems in the wholesale markets. EdF, which already has a significant presence in Britain, would control about 20 percent of the country's installed capacity after the sale goes through. The only way to sustain generation capacity of this size without subsidies is to re-integrate the company and rely on some form of rate-of-return regulation to push costs to the consumer base. In other words, an indirect subsidy paid for by the British people. Removing such a substantial amount of capacity from the British wholesale market will do more than ruin what little liquidity that currently exists. It will also raise entry barriers for independent power producers, and slough of investment in new capacity. With all this nuclear capacity about to come online, maybe the UK doesn't need another CCGT plant. But it does need to build a lot more offshore wind - about 33 GW worth - to fulfill its EU obligations. Market failure on the supply side will make this a lot tougher. Second, and perhaps less talked about, are the significant water requirements of nuclear energy. Power stations generally account for about one third of all water consumed in Europe, though nuclear power stations have water requirements as much as 83 percent greater than those of other types of generators. In the Summer of 2006, much of Europe's nuclear capacity had to be taken offline because the heat wave roiling the Continent created drought-like conditions that made generating nuclear power extremely difficult. EdF, which generates more than 75 percent of France's electricity from its nuclear power stations, was forced to buy electricity on the spot markets to meet demand. Incidentally, after the British Energy sale goes through, there may not be a spot market big enough to pick up excess load in case this happens again. Water scarcity is not the only problem. Nuclear plants are also tied to severe water pollution and irradiation as well as ecosystem disruption as fish and plant life are exposed to water inflow pipes and heated outflow. It's possible that if the deal moves forward this week, British and EU regulators may force some kind of competitive output arrangement. This would throw a bone to the independent power producers, but probably not the fish.

Not content to create energy from exploding laptops, Japanese computer maker Toshiba announced today they will launch an American nuclear energy unit. The new subsidiary, Toshiba America Nuclear Energy Corp., will provide operations and maintenance for the company's dual-use advanced boiling reactor and foot massager. Toshiba's reactors are extremely popular in Japan, and will be available here in Hello Kitty pink and Domokun brown. Fingers crossed for Toshiba's 200 kW micro reactors to land in stores by Christmas.