Concho Valley Homepage reported Doral Renewables is partnering with Bechtel Corporation on the Cold Creek solar and battery farm. Doral's description indicates they are backed by Apollo, a giant private equity underwriter (PEU). Cold Creek is projected to be operational in 2028.
San Angelo City Council and Tom Green County Commissioners have a new constituency to serve, PEUs with specific hurdle rate requirements.
City Councilman Tom Thompson, Tommy Hiebert and Harry Thomas have been ringing the bell on cutting city services, I take it, to give these and future projects their massive tax abatements.
Cutting retiree healthcare so billionaire founders can add to their massive net worth? That has a national political feel to it.
Politicians Red & Blue love PEU and their new TechGod/CryptoBro brethren. Increasingly, more are one.
Update 11-17-25: Tony Deden wrote:
This essay was born out of revulsion to an accidental summer reading that paraded progress as virtue and private equity as its high priest. Every paragraph spoke the same pious language of “sustainable improvement,” “societal benefit,” and “long-term value creation,” as though leverage, asset-stripping, and balance-sheet cosmetics had become moral acts. I found myself revolted not merely by the hypocrisy, but by the vacuousness of it. In our hyper-financialized society, we have come to mistake valuation for value, and activity for achievement. The word ‘progress’ has been exploited to justify anything that moves—no matter what it destroys. What follows is an act of refusal to bow to the idea that more money is progress. If this essay has a motive, it is contempt for the trivial slogans that pass as thought, and for the hollow theory that confuses financial §engineering with human improvement.Local politicians and Texas voters would be wise to read his piece.
