“In a lot of ways, this is classic Warren Buffett.”
The Los Angeles Times reports,
The agreement by investor Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings to buy a $2-billion photovoltaic farm in San Luis Obispo County could bring a ray of financial sunshine to the battered solar-energy industry.
The scale of Buffett’s foray into this sector of the renewable energy scene is considerably more modest than his $34-billion purchase of BNSF Railway, but it could provide the same kind of boost to the solar power business that the 2009 acquisition did to the railroad industry, experts said…
Except that the rail industry provides actual societal value.
$2 billion, that’s a big expensive battery charger. Unless you put spinning reserve behind it it will never be a player in the national grid. If he had put that $2 billion into a nuclear power plant it would be supplying a couple hundred thousand homes with clean inexpensive electricity for heat and power 24/7 for the next 50 years at a nice profit. Why is it that the most successful capitalists turn into socialist mush when they get old?
Buffet is probably looking to pay for his investment through taxpayer paid subsidies.