QuestionerBerkshire Hathaway is the second largest utility provider in the United States, and at 2025, Reuters' investigation found that is the coal fleet is the dirtiest in the nation. There is currently no concrete plans to retire coal and fully transition to renewable energy. I'm 17 years old. Considering that, what do you have to say to young people like me who will live with the consequences of climate change by companies like Berkshire?
WarrenThank you for your, both your question and your comments, because it is important to understand, say, Berkshire-Athaway Energy, but also how they operate and maybe using Iowa at least as a starting example, because I think that was one of the states cited in the report.
Greg AbelOne of the important things that I'd say early in us acquiring our energy companies, and I go back to when we acquired Mid-American, we acquired it in 1999, Berkshire purchased Mid-American in 2000. But one thing that became very clear to myself and our teams was that what we do within our utilities is really driven in two fronts. One, we absolutely have to meet the requirements and the law that's laid out federally. But most importantly, we had to recognize we implement public policy across these states. And that was an interesting conversation when I go back to Iowa. And again, the report cited that as a significant problem. It was early in the 2000s when, for the first time in Iowa, we were going to as a utility, be short power. So we didn't have the energy. And we entered into a significant discussion with our governor at the time. And really sat down and said, where do you want us to go as mid-American? And what resources do you want as a state? And at that time, we were predominantly a coal-based state. And we recognize that, obviously, and fundamentally, personally viewed it as a risk. But we needed to have that conversation with our state. And as to how we would manage that going forward, the interesting thing was that as we had that conversation in the early 2000s, again, with the leadership of our state, it was clearly decided we wanted to continue to be long power. so I, not be short for our customers, we discussed the type of resource, and I remember a very clear conversation around we wanted to stay balanced across a variety of energy sources. And at that time, it was really coal and natural gas. And at that time, we made the decision to build the largest wind project in the U.S. in Iowa.
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Greg AbelSo we undertook an effort. to build three resources, a coal plant, a gas plant, and a what was the first wind project we owned in Mid-American. And again, it was very consistent with what the state wanted, but we also laid some important groundwork there because we started to define the importance of renewable energy non-carbon resources, but it has to be consistent with what the state wanted. And we've gone on, over the, since that period of time, to deploy $16 billion into Iowa associated with renewable energy. Again, very consistent with what our state wanted us to do, i.e., the underlying policy, we don't get to make that decision and just spend $16 billion. It's done in conjunction with our governors, our legislatures, our regulators, our regulators. And at the same time, we've had the opportunity to retire five of the 10 coal units. Now, as the report highlighted, I understand people would like those other five coal units retired at this time. But to think we deployed 16 billion to retire five, and it's a very good outcome for our customers. We've been able to maintain our rates. They're some of the lowest in the country. So it's been done very efficiently, but the reality is we still need those five coal units to keep the system stable. We cannot have a Spain-Portugal situation. So we absolutely respect the input. We absolutely respect the process, and we'll continue to work with each of our states to identify the path they would like to chart. And we work hard to ensure, you know, there's good, balanced outcomes because we recognize the challenges they're associated with other folks' desires. So I think you'll continue to see our utilities implement policy consistent with the needs of their stakeholders, their customers, and at the same time, always respecting what's required by any of the federal standards. So thank you for your comments.