This past week, Nevada’s public utilities company, NV Energy, announced they would be happy to sell their northern (not available to Las Vegas) residential and commercial customers energy from renewable resources... if the subscriber is willing to pony up some extra shekels. In one of the most cynical moves by a utility that is held back only by a rubber-stamp utilities commission, you—yes, you!—can get your very own renewable energy delivered to your home or business for just $15.75 a month extra for a 50% green electrical source or $31.40 for a 100% renewable power source.
As Denzel Washington so memorably says in “Devil in a Blue Dress.” “They must have figured me for some new kind of fool.”
Reading this, I recalled my grandmother telling me about the Bell and House phone companies—how everyone needed 2 phones in their home or business to be fully connected to all the subscribers within their city. With this program, is NV Energy going to run 2 additional power lines to every neighborhood in Northern Nevada: one for dirty power, one for half-and-half, and one for 100% renewable energy?
Of course not.
You may recall in the not-very-distant past how energy companies were so very successful at leading the Right Wing ignoranti—watchers of FoxNews, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh—into buying cartons of energy-wasting incandescent bulbs, because FREEDUMZ and ’Merica! Lord knows I’ll be selling these on eBay long after my parents have kicked the bucket. (Wait. Maybe they’re smarter than I think, and this is my retirement fund!) To my mind, this is the single best example of political affiliation being used to create a buying frenzy against consumers' own best interests. Yes, you know where I’m going now: they are “new kind of fools.”
The crazy campaign went over so very well on the Right, some widget at NV Energy obviously decided they could do something similar with the Left. I can just imagine some fat-assed marketing johnny saying, “Hey, those Libtards in Northern Nevada aren’t very smart (otherwise they’d live with the rest of them down in Vegas). Let’s tell ’em we’re gonna sell ’em ‘clean’ energy and they’ll be happy to pay double, heck, TRIPLE!” After which, said fat-ass was given a crown made out of three red Solo cups and wheeled around the office in a parade. Because !GENIUS! (also FREEDUMZ and ’Merica). Look for pro “pay more for fake green energy” advertorials on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz on a TV or computer screen near you.
NV Energy knows this campaign will work, since they’ve got Nevadans installing solar panels on their businesses and houses (we have 340 days of sun, it’s felony-stupid NOT to put up at least a panel to heat your water) and no one has demanded a buy-back or rate cut (every time a bill is introduced in our once-every-two-years-meet-for-102-days legislature, it quickly dies). This is, after all, the utility company that pushed through legislation in the Nevada state senate to dismantle coal plants and put up solar aggregators funded by taxpayers... that will result in at least a 4% rate hike (thus socializing development costs and privatizing profits).
Now, here’s the kicker. In May, NV Energy sold itself for $5.8 billion to Warren Buffet’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings, one of the largest acquisitions of a U.S. power company this century. (The ratepayers get to pay a one-time “acquisition cost” fee of $7 per household/$14 per business, because ... sigh.) Note that since I posted this diary, pdkesq points outthat the paper has removed all language about consumers paying these costs, although, ominously, it doesn't say that they have settled things irrevocably. Buffett said in the statement.
“Through MidAmerican, we have found in NV Energy a great company with similar values, outstanding assets, and a superb management team.”
Was it the Sage of Omaha who green-lighted this green energy hoax on Northern Nevada? Because if so, Buffet obviously expects Nevadans to be some new kind of fools.