Economy

Investment ‘Sage’, Warren Buffet, invests over $2 billion in solar energy

Published

12 years ago

January 4, 2013

Simon Leadbetter

Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. subsidiary MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. has acquired two solar planet projects from, solar developer SunPower, in line with their ‘core business principle of environmental respect’.

On Wednesday, SunPower Corp said it sold the two co-located solar power plants in Kern and Los Angeles Counties, to a company controlled by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc, and would receive up to $2.5 billion in proceeds and related contracts.

“We are pleased to be working with SunPower on this project. MidAmerican Renewables, a subsidiary of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, has a total portfolio of more than 1,830 megawatts of owned assets, including wind, geothermal, solar and hydro assets,” said Bill Fehrman, president of MidAmerican Renewables. “We are excited about these projects because they support our core business principle of environmental respect. We are very proud to add SunPower technology to our portfolio of projects.”

Construction for the projects will begin in the first quarter of 2013 and is expected to be completed by the end of 2015. Yesterday Lazard Capital Markets upgraded the solar power specialist to buy from neutral.

Buffett (82), known as the Sage of Omaha, has long been recognised as the most successful investor of the 20th century (and 21st so far) and was the richest man in the world 2008-2009. In June 2006, he announced a plan to give his fortune away to charity, the majority to the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation.

In a New York Times op-ed in 2009 he wrote, “In nature, every action has consequences, a phenomenon called the butterfly effect. These consequences, moreover, are not necessarily proportional. For example, doubling the carbon dioxide we belch into the atmosphere may far more than double the subsequent problems for society. Realizing this, the world properly worries about greenhouse emissions.”

Back in 1986 he said the perfect sum of money to leave to children is “enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing.”

It seems the world’s most successful investor wants to leave a sustainable environment and planet to them too.

Simon Leadbetter is the founder and publisher of Blue & Green Tomorrow. He has held senior roles at Northcliffe, The Daily Telegraph, Santander, Barclaycard, AXA, Prudential and Fidelity. In 2004, he founded a marketing agency that worked amongst others with The Guardian, Vodafone, E.On and Liverpool Victoria. He sold this agency in 2006 and as Chief Marketing Officer for two VC-backed start-ups launched the online platform Cleantech Intelligence (which underpinned the The Guardian’s Cleantech 100) and StrategyEye Cleantech. Most recently, he was Marketing Director of Emap, the UK’s largest B2B publisher, and the founder of Blue & Green Communications Limited.