The Massachusetts company said Monday it has installed the largest organic photovoltaic (OPV) solar thin-film installation of its kind at its factory in New Bedford, Mass., an announcement designed to broadcast its participation at the Intersolar trade show in Germany this week. Konarka’s OPV films use a photo-reactive material printed onto plastic, and they are quite different from the silicon or cadmium-telluride semiconductors used in conventional solar cells today. Instead of encasing the films in glass like other solar panels on the market, Konarka makes its films in protective polymer layers so that they are flexible.

OPV films also have far lower efficiencies than solar cells in panels that sit on rooftops today. Konarka’s 40 Series OPV films, for example, have less than 2 percent efficiency. Rooftop solar cells have efficiencies typically in the mid-teens. Konarka was able to develop a cell in its lab last year that could fetch 8.3 percent efficiency, but a lab cell takes a while to become a commercial product.

The company, founded in 2001, has raised close to $200 million in private equity, according to our calculations (and reported by various other outlets). In March last year, Konarka said it lined up $20 million from Konica Minolta, which wanted to create a manufacturing joint venture with Konarka at some point. We are waiting to hear from Konarka on its progress with Konica as well as more information about its latest pilot installation.

Konarka has shipped its films for lining umbrellas and shoulder bags, but it’s not clear whether these shipments and sales represent any significant volumes. Konarka has been marketing its OPV films to architects and builders in the building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) market, which has barely emerged and is a tough market to crack. Architects like the idea of adding eco-friendly features, but they tend to balk at the added expense and worry about the logistics of embedding, operating and replacing electrical equipment that isn’t likely to last as long as the buildings.

The lackluster housing market in the past few years also hasn’t helped. Just last week, Dow Chemical said it was delaying the launch of its solar shingles for the roofing market. Solar shingles are among the building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) products that solar companies hope will one day become widely adopted.

Konarka wants to stick its OPV films on glass building facades. It installed a pilot project on an office building owned by Arch Aluminum and Glass in Florida more than a year ago. At the time of the announcement, Konarka said it was working on a transparent version of the OPV films because architects seemed to favor them over the more opaque variety for aesthetic reasons.

But transparent films aren’t as efficient at converting sunlight into electricity, said the company’s then-VP of business development, Terri Jordan. The pilot project at Konarka’s New Bedford factory uses semi-transparent films. The company hired a new business development and CTO earlier this year.

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Are the twisted tentacles of the so-called Kochtopus — the network of political funding from Koch Industries — moving away from support of climate change denial? Well, that’s what a spokesperson claiming to be the massive private company, which owns oil refiners, pipelines, Brawny paper towels, dixie cups, and Georgia Pacific Lumber among many other ventures, is claiming this morning. Greenpeace has called Koch industries the “kingpin of climate science denial.”

Update: The Hill and the New York Times, who spoke to the real spokesperson for Koch Industries, are reporting that Koch Industries denies sending out the phony press release.

In the fake press release Koch stated that it is discontinuing funding for organizations “whose positions on climate change could jeopardize America’s continued global competitiveness in the energy and chemical sectors,” including Americans for Prosperity, Fraser Institute, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and the George C. Marshall Institute, among others starting in January 2011. The fake release says that Koch said it took the actions after “a recent internal and thorough company review.”

To get a good idea of the climate change denial nonsense that is spewing from some of these groups, the Americans for Prosperity created this Hot Air from Cancun campaign, which seeks to expose “that energy rationing will kill jobs, raise taxes, and crush our freedoms,” and the group protested in front of the Cancun-based COP 16 U.N. climate negotiations that are going on this week. My guess is that some of the things these groups are doing is just bad for business.

As this investigative piece in the New Yorker details, David Koch, one of the two brothers that leads Koch Industries, started Americans for Prosperity and is Chairman of the Board of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a sister group to the AFP. The Koch press release doesn’t say if discontinuing funding includes stepping down from boards of any of these companies.

Given Koch is a private company and doesn’t have to disclose much, there’s no way to know the extent of its commitment to dropping funding for climate change denial research. Koch has never before been transparent when it comes to the hundreds of millions of dollars in funding it has given out to organizations over the years. In the fake press release Koch Industries also repeatedly insists that it is “proud of its environmental record.”

In the New Yorker article, Koch’s environmental record is pretty clear. In the mid-90s, the Justice Department filed two lawsuits against Koch Industries, saying it was responsible for more than three hundred oil spills, which had released an estimated three million gallons of oil into lakes and rivers. Koch Industries settled paying a $30 million civil fine, and agreed to spend $5 million dollars on environmental projects.

The Justice Department also levelled a ninety-seven-count indictment against Koch Industries, for covering up the discharge of ninety-one tons of benzene, a carcinogen, from its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. The Koch Petroleum Group pled guilty to one criminal charge of covering up environmental violations, including the falsification of documents, and paid a $21 million fine.

David Koch reportedly told New York that he was not convinced that global warming has been caused by human activity, but even if it has been, the heating of the planet he said will be beneficial, resulting in longer growing seasons: “The Earth will be able to support enormously more people because far greater land area will be available to produce food.”

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The Koch brothers, Charles and David who run the company, have political motivations as well as financial motivations for their support of anti-climate change messaging. Much less oversight of industry and fewer environmental regulations mean more profits for Koch Industries. Here’s some of the more egregious findings of New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer:

• The University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute has named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States.
• A Greenpeace report found that the company has been a “kingpin of climate science denial,” and between 2005 to 2008, the Kochs “vastly outdid” ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change.
• The founder of the Center for Public Integrity, Charles Lewis, told the New Yorker: “The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”
• Charles and David Koch have poured more than a hundred million dollars into dozens of seemingly independent organizations. Tax records indicate that in 2008 the three main Koch family foundations gave money to thirty-four political and policy organizations, three of which they founded, and several of which they direct. These include the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Mercatus Center, the Citizens for a Sound Economy, & the spinoff group, Citizens for the Environment, and the Americans for Prosperity.
• A trust called Triad Management spent more than three million dollars on attack ads in twenty-six House races and three Senate races recently, and the New Yorker reports that more than half of the advertising money came from an obscure nonprofit group, the Economic Education Trust. A Senate committee minority report found that “the trust was financed in whole or in part by Charles and David Koch of Wichita, Kansas.” Triad Management’s funds “may have played a decisive role in four of six federal races,” says the New Yorker.
• David Koch reportedly told New York that he was not convinced that global warming has been caused by human activity, but even if it has been, the heating of the planet he said will be beneficial, resulting in longer growing seasons: “The Earth will be able to support enormously more people because far greater land area will be available to produce food.”
• In the mid-90s, the Justice Department filed two lawsuits against Koch Industries, saying it was responsible for more than three hundred oil spills, which had released an estimated three million gallons of oil into lakes and rivers. Koch Industries settled paying a $30 million civil fine, and agreed to spend $5 million dollars on environmental projects.
• The Justice Department also levelled a ninety-seven-count indictment against Koch Industries, for covering up the discharge of ninety-one tons of benzene, a carcinogen, from its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. The Koch Petroleum Group pled guilty to one criminal charge of covering up environmental violations, including the falsification of documents, and paid a $21 million fine.