Subject: Re: BRK's Coal-Fired Plants
Thanks for this. I read it all, and I think it goes out of its way to be unflattering to Berkshire. The article largely glosses over the fact that customers would have to pay more for power to install and run the scrubbers. The “Everything is about the earnings.” quote is particularly offensive in that regard. Berkshire could make more from the utilities if it built every improvement suggested to it and passed the costs onto the ratepayers, but they're looking out for the customers instead. There's no discussion of what the utilities that added scrubbers to their coal plants did to ratepayers, and that's likely because it would make Berkshire's point.
The “Everything is about the earnings” quote is attributed to a former director so that Reuters can say they didn't write a hitpiece, while writing a hitpiece.

The one section that talks about installation costs tries to make it seem like PacifiCorps grossly overestimated the costs, and yet, the difference in cost estimates for the project was only 30%. I've seen lots of projects with way higher differences between engineer cost estimates and contractor bids, to not even mention the differences between high and low bidders.

What Andover Technology Partners actually said about the project costs of eyewash stations other expenses is that they were already included in some Scrubber-Cost-per-KWH-of-plant-capacity factor the got from comparison of other stations. Reuters reporting it as "having nothing to do with SCR controls" is quite unfair seems quite inconsistent with the Andover report you can find online. You're adding a bunch of processes that didn't exist in the power plant before, and chemicals that require emergency showers and eyewash stations, and you'll need to direct delivery trucks to navigate getting to the chemical storage locations.

The article ends with disconnected quotes from Berkshire on Utah's handling of electric utility fire dangers. It has so little to do with the topic of the article, they just call it "a favorable regulatory environment". And they worked in the link so they could use a quote from the Annual Meeting where Abel praised Utah's clarification about what to do with fire-endangering yet life-sustaining electricity. And who holds the risk.

I'm hard on the article because it glosses over the costs. The EPA, Berkshire, and the electric regulating agencies all came to an agreement about what was best for these power plants and the people served by them. And here comes Reuters "knowing better". Electricity is used for more than mining bitcoins. It's useful for operating oxygen concentrators, CPAP machines, ventilators, preventing heat stroke, providing controlled refuge from the outside air. It's intellectually dishonest to report on the health costs of pollution from electricity generation while turning a blind eye to the health benefits of having the electricity.