On May 3, 2025, Sierra Club staff and volunteers from Utah, Wyoming, Iowa, and Nebraska met in Omaha, Nebraska to attend Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders’ meeting. Unlike most other attendees, we weren’t there to bask in “Woodstock for Capitalists” but to call out Berkshire Hathaway’s funding of the climate crisis through its electric utilities PacifiCorp, MidAmerican, and NV Energy. These utilities, which serve approximately 6 million customers across ten states, operate the dirtiest coal fleet in the country, spewing toxins into our air and water.
Leveraging varied skillsets across departments, Sierra Club ran ads on YouTube targeting Berkshire utility customers and shareholders in Utah, Oregon, Nevada, Iowa. We hired a mobile truck billboard to circle the convention center where the shareholders’ meeting was held. We handed out free coffee to shareholder attendees with branded coffee cups reading “It’s getting hot in here, so take off all your coal!” We partnered with local influencer Liz from Iowa to spread our message further and to new audiences. And finally, we strategically positioned a Sierra Club volunteer to ask a question directly to Berkshire’s leadership, including Warren Buffett and named-successor Greg Abel. Our volunteer, a high school student from Omaha, spoke truth to power, calling out Berkshire’s refusal to close its coal plants and asking Greg Abel how he would respond to high school students today who will have to grow up in the age of climate change.
Our varied tactics and immediate response to Warren Buffett naming Greg Abel as his successor at year end resulted in media coverage in outlets including Reuters, Economic Times, Times of India, Financial Times, and others.
This type of strategic organizing and targeting is crucial to removing PacifiCorp, MidAmerican, and NV Energy’s social license to pollute our communities and bankroll climate change, and we are already seeing the political tides turn. In Utah, for instance, PacifiCorp’s proposed 30% rate hike was whittled down to just 4.7%, with the Commission expressing concern that PacifiCorp continues to pay out dividends to shareholders while nickel and diming everyday customers. Next, our legal, organizing, and comms departments will be heavily engaged in the utilities’ integrated resource plans, demanding a change in direction when current strategies have so dramatically failed customers.