
Warren Buffett is spending billions to make Iowa 'the Saudi Arabia of wind' - corporate_shi11
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-invest-billions-iowa-saudi-arabia-wind-2019-12-1028787852
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jakozaur
Doing good for climate is a valid business strategy, not a philantropy.

Long-term investors should factor in their models that carbon heavy industries
will be negatively hitted by regulations and taxes. Especially as climate
change will get worse and younger generations already overwhelming support
such meassures.

Leading world economists such as Jeremy Rifkin points out that carbon assests
will likely be stranded and this may be the biggest bubble of our times.

~~~
brians
That’s not a strategy. It’s an observation. It’s an important observation!

Now what do we do about it? Discounting carbon heavy industries is one move.
How much? When will those heavy costs hit?

My own preference is to start coffee farming in North America, to offset the
coming end of global shipping. What year will that be, so I can have my crop
ready?

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
There will be small market for your backyard craft coffee...but

Coffee requires a very particular environment to grow, so you are going to
spend more energy adapting your local environment to produce coffee that is
expended by the shipping of coffee.

What I think will happen is someone will make a completely artificial "coffee
flavor" beverage, with added caffeine that the mass market prefers to coffee
and doesn't require importing coffee beans.

~~~
stallmanite
Re: artificial coffee substitutes are you talking about something like Postum?
I’m trying to imagine a palatable take on modern energy drinks adapted to be
served hot but my imagination is failing me.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postum](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postum)

------
text70
[https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/100m_wind/awstwspd100onoff3-...](https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/100m_wind/awstwspd100onoff3-1.jpg)

This is a good resource to determine what is financially viable to assess
where to put wind farms. According to the chloropleth, light blue has the
highest average wind speeds.

------
CivBase
As an Iowan, I'm surprised we're not already the "wind capitol of the world".
You can't throw a rock without hitting a turbine, especially along I-80 and
I-35.

~~~
Zyst
That is cool! Out of curiosity, how intrusive is living around wine turbines?
Is it a problem at all? Or are they mostly unnoticeable?

~~~
CivBase
I live in the Des Moines metro and most of the turbines are in rural areas, so
I can't really speak to living around them.

As for the few turbines in the urban areas, they're completely unnoticable.
They're silent and just blend into the background.

The only thing I could maybe see as annoying is the red flashing lights they
use to help aircraft see them at night. The flashing is at least synchronized
so there isn't a constant twinkling effect.

~~~
froindt
>The only thing I could maybe see as annoying is the red flashing lights they
use to help aircraft see them at night.

I'm also from Iowa. It's a really eerie effect driving through a wind farm in
the pitch dark! I noticed it most recently on 80 near Newton when they put in
a wind farm in the last couple years.

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jayd16
Wind must really be something if there's this much misinformation (birds, farm
land usage) about it.

~~~
ceejayoz
Don't forget the wind cancer one.

[https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2019/apr...](https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2019/apr/08/donald-trump/republicans-dismiss-trumps-windmill-
and-cancer-cla/)

~~~
CivBase
The most common health concern I hear about is claims or turbines causing
headaches. It seems likely to just be misattribution, much like the fabled
wifi headaches.

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sremani
Texas produces 25% of its electricity from Wind and US produces about 5% of
its electricity from Wind. The point is Wind is location specific - the plains
and Rockies is where it is on land.

The state of Jefferson has bright offshore wind future ;)

~~~
arh68
Source for the 25%? I've heard 10% recently on a podcast, and Wiki says
15.6~15.7% for 2017-2018. Maybe that is a peak number?

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westurner
It's both cost-rational and environment-rational to invest heavily in clean
energy (with or without the comparatively paltry tax incentives).

The long-term costs of climate change and inaction are unfortunately still
mostly external costs to energy producers. We should expect that to change as
we start developing competencies in evaluating the costs and frequency of
weather disasters exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change. We all get to
pay for floods, fires, tornados, hurricanes, landslides, blizzards, and the
gosh darn heat.

Insurance firms clearly see these costs. Our military sees the costs of
responding to natural disasters. Local economies see the costs of months and
years spent on disaster relief; on just getting back up to speed so that they
can generate profit from selling goods and services (and pay taxes to support
disaster relief efforts essential to operational readiness).

The cost per kilowatt hour of wind (and solar) energy is now lower than
operating existing dirty energy plants that dump soot on our crops, air, and
water.

With wind, they talk about the "alligator curve". With solar, it's the "duck
curve". Grid-scale energy storage is necessary for reaching 100% renewable
energy as soon as possible.

Iowa's renewable energy tax incentives are logically aligned with
international long-term goals:

UN Sustainable Development Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy
[https://www.globalgoals.org/7-affordable-and-clean-
energy](https://www.globalgoals.org/7-affordable-and-clean-energy)

Goal 13: Climate Action [https://www.globalgoals.org/13-climate-
action](https://www.globalgoals.org/13-climate-action)

SDG Target 12.6: "Encourage companies to adopt sustainable practices and
sustainability reporting" (CSR; e.g. GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards
that we can score portfolios with)

[https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-
develo...](https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-
goals/goal-12-responsible-consumption-and-production/targets.html) :

> _Rationalize inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful
> consumption by removing market distortions, in accordance with national
> circumstances, including by restructuring taxation and phasing out those
> harmful subsidies, where they exist, to reflect their environmental impacts,
> taking fully into account the specific needs and conditions of developing
> countries and minimizing the possible adverse impacts on their development
> in a manner that protects the poor and the affected communities_

...

> _Thanks. How can I say "try and only run this [computational workload] in
> zones with 100% PPA offsets or 100% directly sourced #CleanEnergy"? #Goal7
> #Goal11 #Goal12 #Goal13 #GlobalGoals #SDGs_

It makes good business sense to invest in clean energy to take advantage of
tax incentives, minimize future costs to other business units (e.g. insurance,
taxes), and earn the support of investors choosing portfolios with long term
environmental (and thus economic) sustainability as a primary objective.

------
sverige
Iowa is a terrible place to build wind farms since it still has some of the
most valuable soil on the planet.

Better to build these things on land with steady wind, less agricultural value
and nearer big population centers, such as Wyoming and Colorado (near the I-25
corridor from Cheyenne to Colorado Springs) or the barren hills on either side
of the Bay Area.

~~~
BurningFrog
Can't you farm crops under a wind mill farm?

~~~
yostrovs
The pads used for the turbines are quite large, they require an access road,
power connections, and the turbines create substantial shade, reducing the
productivity of the ground below.

~~~
Robotbeat
All of that is practically a rounding error compared to the actual area used
for crops. Seriously, look at any satellite image of a wind farm in Iowa.
Swamped by 2 or 3 years of annual crop yield growth:
[https://ourworldindata.org/exports/average-corn-yields-in-
th...](https://ourworldindata.org/exports/average-corn-yields-in-the-united-
states-1866-2014_v1_850x600.svg)

~~~
yostrovs
Did you know farmers in Iowa cut down trees around their fields to minimize
shade? The graph you provided is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
Corn yield growth is resultant from political decisions to fund biofuels.

~~~
Robotbeat
Did you look at it? The growth starts around 1940. 2 tons per hectare. Today,
over 10 tons per hectare.

A 5x growth in yield over 80 years is due to ethanol political mandates
starting around 20 years ago?

~~~
sverige
The yield increases have mainly come from two sources: increased use of
chemicals for pest control and fertilizer, and genetic engineering. Both of
those are problematic, with consequences only now slowly dawning on most
people, and heavy resistance by the industry to any naysaying in public
places.

One day, we may recognize the problem and pass laws to limit or prohibit the
use of chemicals. (I think the horse is out of the barn on genetic
modification.) That will mean lower yields. Further, if California's droughts
continue, the Midwest may need to start growing a greater variety of crops
beyond corn and soybeans. There is no other place in the U.S. with soil as
potentially productive and useful. Wasting it on wind farms when literally any
other place will have less potential impact on agriculture is ridiculous.

~~~
Robotbeat
That's not the whole story (you should know!). Organic farming has _also_
increased in yield dramatically.

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hanniabu
Have the been any advanced in either technology or farm design to minimize
bird deaths? While it's seen as somewhat of not a big deal and a necessary
evil now, I imagine that may change as there's more built, there's more built
making it more likely to be present in an area with endangered species, dm'd
climate change affects increase the amount of engaged species.

~~~
superpermutat0r
I'm pretty sure domestic cats kill more birds than windmills.

~~~
sneakernets
Yes, by several orders of magnitude. Last I checked, Windmills killed 100s of
thousands since their inception while domestic cats kill billions each year.

~~~
jsjohnst
You are high by at least an order of magnitude, if not two. Most estimates
I’ve seen put the number of bird deaths from windmills in the thousands across
all time.

~~~
ceejayoz
I think you're mixing up the stats on eagle deaths (I posted a link elsewhere
in this discussion for those, and they are indeed just a couple hundred a year
at most) with that of _all_ birds.

The number of birds killed by windmills is likely somewhere in the six figures
annually. [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-
do-...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-wind-
turbines-really-kill-180948154/)

> In the end, using 58 mortality estimates that met their criteria, they came
> up with an estimate. According to the current literature somewhere between
> 140,000 and 328,000 birds die each year from collisions with wind turbines.

~~~
jsjohnst
You are right, it was your link re: eagles and another I found on Google re:
endangered birds, not all birds in general. My bad, so thanks!

------
WhompingWindows
_Buffett is wary of companies pursuing social and environmental goals. He told
the Financial Times that executives shouldn 't funnel shareholders' money into
peripheral projects and that it was difficult to assess whether businesses
were truly doing good.

"It's very hard to evaluate what they're doing," the so-called Oracle of Omaha
told the newspaper. "I like to eat candy. Is candy good for me or not? I don't
know."_

Wow Warren, really? You don't know if candy is good for you? You don't know if
de-carbonization is good for the planet? I really don't get his rationale
here...candy is a known treat, it is not "good for you" in any nutritive
sense. Is he implying that there is a psychological benefit to the candy, even
if it's not healthy? How does that apply to renewables and companies?

Overall, I know he's hailed as brilliant at investing, but what is this candy
rationale??

~~~
Reedx
Because he's been around the block enough times to know that it's not so
simple. There are a ton of variables, confounding factors and second order
effects in play when it comes to things like forecasting climate and
nutrition. There are plenty of examples where we got things terribly wrong,
even when there were high levels of confidence (e.g., dietary
recommendations).

In the case of candy, he probably thinks sugar isn't good in and of itself and
doesn't eat it with a spoon. But it's the overall effect of candy that
matters. If it reduces stress, then maybe it's not so bad or even a net good
in some amounts or for some people. Warren himself made it to 89 (so far)
eating quite a bit of junk food, drinking coke and is still sharp and has
enough energy to be working, traveling and so on. Many examples like that, so
indeed it's not so simple.

With CO2, he probably thinks there is or can be too much in the atmosphere.
But again it's not the whole picture. For one thing, you need to be sure that
building and operating the solution (making machines, transporting,
maintaining, powering them) doesn't exceed their net benefit.

It's easy to find yourself in a situation where the cure is only marginally
better or even worse than the disease. Which happens a lot with complex
systems.

Warren is exceptionally skilled at getting to the ground truth. When he says
he doesn't know about something that you feel is obvious or basic, then it may
be worth re-evaluating your level of confidence.

------
onreact
Sounds good. Let's just hope he doesn't mean to become the Sheikh of Iowa. In
a democracy being like SA is not desirable.

Remember that SA is killing dissidents and subjugating women and minorities.
It's basically an absolute monarchy.

They have also invaded neighboring Bahrain to subdue the democratic revolution
there.

I'd choose my comparisons and metaphors more wisely.

Wind energy is fantastic as long as it doesn't kill birds (that depends on the
way the wind turbines are built and where they stand).

It's strange how one of the richest men on the planet demands government
subsidies though. Or is it just me?

~~~
corprew
If you care about not killing birds, ban outdoor cats and contribute to your
local feral cat spaying charity.

