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Elon Musk and Warren Buffett Squabble Over Solar In Nevada
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns NV Energy, the largest utility company in Nevada. NV Energy has recently pressured the Nevada PUC to slash the amount it must pay residential solar customers for electricity from rooftop solar arrays. Elon Musk is not happy.
Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway owns NV Energy, Nevada’s largest electric utility. Part of Tesla Motors’ agreement with the State of Nevada regarding the Gigafactory is a provision that guarantees the factory to receive discounted electricity rates for 8 years. However that discount will result in a $1.50 per year increase to existing NV Energy customers, according to the Las Vegas Sun.
Elon Musk has a major role in SolarCity, the rooftop solar company that specializes in helping residential customers obtain rooftop solar systems for their homes. In Nevada, those homeowners were able to sell any excess electricity back to NV Energy through a process known as net metering. The reimbursement rate was set at 11 cents per kilowatt. That extra money helped fuel a boom in residential rooftop solar with SolarCity leading the way.
But recently, under heavy pressure from NV Energy, the Nevada Public Utilities commission slashed the rate to just 2.6 cents per kilowatt. The rooftop solar companies screamed that the move would eviscerate the residential solar industry in the state. SolarCity shut down its operation in Nevada and laid off hundreds of employees.
Warren Buffett told CNBC on Monday that it is ridiculous for NV Energy to pay rooftop solar customers 11 cents per kilowatt when the company’s base cost of electricity from conventional operations is just 5 cents per kilowatt. He says it is unfair for 1,000,000 customers who don’t have rooftop solar to subsidize the 17,000 or so who do. He says Elon Musk has called and spoken to him about the situation.
“He was unhappy,” Buffett said of Musk. Then he added, “He’s being subsidized with his battery plant big time.” Is that really true? The battery factory Buffett is referring to is the Tesla Gigafactory, which has been designed from the start to be net zero. That means it will generate more electricity every year than it uses. Net zero does not mean it will never draw power from the electrical grid. It means it will put more back into the grid than it uses over the course of a year. There is no information available on how the new rules from the Nevada Public Utilities commission may impact Tesla.
Musk always likes to remind people that the $1.3 billion Tesla is receiving in incentives amount to only a small discount compared to the size of the economic benefits the project is conferring on the area. “It makes sense that if something is the biggest thing on Earth, it’s probably going to have incentives that are big in the absolute, but small in relative terms,” Musk says
Warren Buffett likes to say that Berkshire Hathaway is strongly committed to reducing global carbon emissions. But he, like the Koch Brothers, is heavily invested in fossil fuels. According to ThinkProgress, he wrote in his annual letter to investors recently, “Last year, BHE [Berkshire Hathaway Energy] made major commitments to the future development of renewables in support of the Paris Climate Change Conference.”
That may be true, but last year it also nearly doubled its position in Phillips 66 and boosted its investment in Suncor position by nearly seven million shares to 30 million shares, an investment now worth approximately $1.1 billion. Suncor is the Canadian company that seeks to develop the Alberta tar sands, the dirtiest source of petroleum on the planet.
Buffett may be one of the smartest investors in the history of the planet, but he is no leader on climate change issues the way Musk is. His letter to investors had this paragraph: "As a citizen, you may understandably find climate change keeping you up nights. As a homeowner in a low-lying area, you may wish to consider moving. But when you are thinking only as a shareholder of a major insurer, climate change should not be on your list of worries."
ThinkProgress labels coastal flooding as a potential trillion dollar liability. Berkshire Hathaway is one of the largest companies in flood insurance and therefore has a huge potential risk from rising sea levels.
Photo credit: CNBC
Elon Musk said he is planning to give “every one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, stating that “this will be the first of many.”
SpaceX went public earlier this year, and its stock price has been relatively stable since leveling off shortly after its IPO. Based on its current price, it’s a gift of just over $10 billion to children across the United States.
It appears to be closely related to President Donald Trump’s bank accounts for children, which were set up earlier this year as Trump Accounts.
Just hours earlier, Anthropic had announced the establishment of its Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, “a new wholly-owned entity dedicated entirely to public benefit.” Musk responded by stating he recommended “giving the shares directly to the public,” and that he would be doing it that way.
Just a little bit later, Musk said children across the U.S. would be getting a share from him:
Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America.
This will be the first of many.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026
There are roughly 70 million children, meaning someone under the age of 18, in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk’s ownership of SpaceX stock shows he has around 849 million Class A shares of SpaceX stock, according to filings with the SEC.
Elon Musk revealed in a post on X that “Permits were impossible to get,” explaining the fate of The Boring Company’s most ambitious East Coast proposal.
The comment responded to a query about what became of his July 20, 2017 announcement that he had “just received verbal govt approval” for an underground Hyperloop connecting New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., capable of carrying passengers from the Big Apple to the Nation’s Capital in just 29 minutes.
The Boring Company receives verbal ‘approval’ to build NY to DC Hyperloop tunnel
The 2017 post, which envisioned city-center stations and multiple elevators in each city, sparked immediate scrutiny. Local and state officials in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D.C. said they had no knowledge of any approval. A White House spokesperson confirmed only “promising conversations” about the transformative infrastructure.
Musk clarified shortly after that there was “still a lot of work” to do for formal approvals.
@cybrtrkguy Permits were impossible to get
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026
Limited progress followed, as Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s administration issued a conditional utility permit and supported work near Fort Meade. In 2018, Washington, D.C., granted a preliminary permit for site preparation and excavation on a vacant lot at 53 New York Ave. NE in the NoMa neighborhood, which The Boring Company said could become a station.
A draft environmental assessment for a D.C.-Baltimore segment was released in 2019. Yet, by April 2021, the company had removed the project from its website, and the Federal Highway Administration reported receiving no indication of further interest. Communication with Maryland officials had ceased.
The full corridor would have required coordination among the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, the Federal Highway Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service, and other agencies.
Environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, utility clearances, and approvals for novel infrastructure added to the overall complexity of the project and its approval.
Speculation on the permitting barriers centers around a few factors, but a multi-state, multi-level route involving unproven high-speed vacuum-tube technology inherently triggers exhaustive safety, environmental, and engineering reviews that can stretch for years, even for conventional projects.
There are also other elements, of course, like officials who may face political exposure if a privately funded, untested system encountered anything such as cost overruns, delays, or safety issues. On the outset of this project, there were limited things such as engineering plans or demonstrated technology maturity, which also added to the potential skepticism.
The East Coast vision for Boring Co., once framed as a privately funded revolution that could reshape Northeast travel, quietly ended without construction of the promised network. Musk’s recent statement frames the outcome as a regulatory impasse, unfortunate but not unexpected.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to his social media platform X on Sunday to remind everyone that the Roadster’s true meaning is not about company growth or adding dollars to shareholders’ pockets. Sometimes, you just do things because you can.
Following the Roadster’s epic unveiling event last Thursday, skeptics and critics of the company or the project itself came out to say that the vehicle is a pointless project because it is not geared toward growing the company, delivering supreme margins for profitability, nor does it contribute to the big picture of Artificial/Super Intelligence.
But that’s just the thing: Roadster is not meant to be some shareholder dream; it’s meant to be a vehicle that people buy just because it is something awesome, unique, and the first of its kind.
Tesla Roadster: Three configs, one can fly, 0-60 in 0.8 seconds
Musk had to remind those who are skeptical about the Roadster’s importance to the company mission that while it is not a major contributor to Tesla’s long-term goals, it is something that is being built just because it can be:
“Optimus and Cybercab will be the vast majority of Tesla’s value. The only things that will scale to incredible size (K2 and beyond) economically are super intelligence, robots, solar power, and mass to space. And, of course, if you have the first two, the rest will follow. But Roadster is super cool, so we’re doing it anyway.”
Musk has said on many occasions that Optimus would be the project that would make up the vast majority of Tesla’s value in the coming years.
Robotics will be a major focus of Tesla over the coming years, especially as Musk believes Optimus will enable work to be optional for humans and will enable what he calls “High Universal Income.”
Optimus and Cybercab will be the vast majority of Tesla’s value.
The only things that will scale to incredible size (K2 and beyond) economically are super intelligence, robots, solar power and mass to space.
And, of course, if you have the first two, the rest will follow.
But Roadster is super cool, so we’re doing it anyway.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 18, 2026
Cybercab will be a passive income opportunity for owners, Musk and Tesla have said for a very long time, as a fleet of self-driving vehicles will operate within a ride-hailing Robotaxi service that won’t require a human driver to be present.
Tesla investors are more than enthusiastic about the company’s future projects, at least from a general consensus perspective. However, it is important to note that the Roadster is a fun and cool project that pushes the boundaries of what people thought was possible for an automobile.
What we saw last week was the first true example of a flying car, and despite the backlash about how it might not contribute to Tesla’s grand ambitions, it’s okay to have fun sometimes, too.
Elon Musk will give ‘every kid in America’ a SpaceX share in 2027
Elon Musk reveals why Boring Co’s biggest East Coast project never happened
Tesla CEO Elon Musk reminds everyone about Roadster’s true meaning
SpaceX reveals how its 1 Million AI satellite network will work and prevent space collisions
Tesla Roadster: Three configs, one can fly, 0-60 in 0.8 seconds
