Warren Buffett: Solar will never be the only source of electricity
This question is for Warren Buffet and great Abel. My name is Maria Prenas. I am a retiree from Las Vegas, NV. I am here today as a member of Chispa, Nevada, a group developed Latin leaders for the environment of Justices. I am also I’m. I’m almost here, Representative Mary Latin Families in Nevada who are struggling to pay their utility bills and want access to affordable, clean electricity. I want to add today. Why is NB Energy, which is owned by the Berkshire Hathaway, building new gas plants instead of investing in solar energy? With Nevada one and there’s sunniest state in the country? Can I expect to see future leadership take dangerous investments in the fossils levels more seriously? Thank you. And thank you, Maria. Very good one. Sure. Thank you. So as we touched on with Envy energy even earlier, there’s a lot going on there. And I when I think of there’s no question solar’s a great opportunity for Envy Energy and we’ll continue to utilize that as a resource and continue to invest in it in that utility and and the other utility we have in Nevada. We’re also in a point where when you think of a transition that’s going on within the energy sector, we are transitioning from carbon resources to renewable resources as was noted. But it it it will not occur overnight. That transition will take many years and as we use be it renewable resources such as solar or wind, they are in intermittent and we do try to combine it with batteries but it does at this point in time we cannot transition completely away from the carbon resources. So if I think of Nevada in the in the next two years, our last two coal units are well actually in the next year our last two coal units will retire, but we are replacing them with a new gas unit which is is truly needed to make sure that system remains reliable and available to our to our customers. And that’s and that’s done in conjunction with our with the state representatives and our regulatory agencies to make sure we can serve those customers every day and every minute. We have great examples in Iowa where at times 100% of our energy comes from wind and we’re and we’re thrilled with that. And I believe we hit that for example on Earth Day every we had enough wind that we could meet the demand of that state. But the next day if the wind’s not blowing, we need our gas resources, our gas plants to to fill that gap. And really that’s the situation we still have in in Nevada. So we’ll continue the transition to renewable resources be it solar in Nevada and wind and other areas combined with batteries. But for the foreseeable future, we do see gas being a very important resource to help maintain reliability and meet meet our customer, customer needs and and to meet it in an affordable way is also an important piece of that. So thank you for your comments. Yeah. We and and we we’ve got the capital to do whatever makes the most sense in a place like Nevada and the Nebraska, Nevada, I don’t know each each state calls their ruling Commission something different, but they probably call it the Public Service Commission or something like that. And they they’re making the decision as to what they think can and should be done in terms of getting from where a vastly complicated utility business moves towards something different without messing things up in the meantime. And and now having the lights go off and they they, I think they would probably agree with you and very much Maria that they what they what they want to get. But they can’t, they can’t do it tomorrow, you know, because they intermittent problems and their job is to make sure the lights stay on and their job is also the move toward better sources. But solar will never be the only source of of electricity because it well, Greg may know more about this, but I’m borrowing some real breakthroughs and storage and that sort of thing, right. Yeah. Yeah. Generally a battery right now to do it in a economical way is is a four hour battery and and when you think of the time without the the sun being available that’s that’s about that’s a challenge. Now there there’s a lot of technology advancements and that’s stretching out and you throw dollars at a lot of things you can accomplish things. But the reality is that there’s a there’s a careful balance of of the reliability and also balancing as you as it was noted the rates do matter and and how much customers are paying. So delicate balance of both delivering reliability but doing it in an affordable way. My friend Bill Gates, he’s working on shortening up that, lengthening the time the battery works on. And so you’ve got some very smart people working on, but it isn’t something that you actually do overnight and and I can understand why people want it then overnight, but it it is going to take a lot of money. It’s going to take a lot of good ideas and smart people like Bill and Greg, Not me. I don’t, I don’t understand why the damn lights go on when I even turn a switch. But those those fellows really do know, and there’s plenty of them working on it, and we got plenty of money to implement it. But there are there are certain things that that just take a certain amount of time. My daughter hates it when I use this example, but it’s really true that you can’t create a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant. I mean that that, you know, you may want you you may want a baby, but so there are certain laws of nature that that you have to work with.