Warren Buffett’s empire is shaping wildfire laws to shield utilities
Lawmakers across the western United States are enacting a plan outlined by one of the world’s biggest companies to shield utilities from the legal risks of their equipment sparking wildfires.
Berkshire Hathaway, which owns utilities in the West via a subsidiary, PacifiCorp, has been pushing legislation in multiple states that would make it easier for the company to defend itself in court if the company’s equipment is tied to wildfires. The company also is pursuing limitations on the amount of money it would pay to victims if it’s found liable.
The force and speed of the multistate blitz has surprised both consumer advocates and other industries, leaving some powerful sectors — including the insurance and forestry industries, each with their own massive wildfire exposure — scrambling to counter what appears to be a coordinated effort to reshape the way society pays for wildfires.
“They’re hitting all the states at the same time, so we’re all dealing with it in real time,” said Chris Edwards, president of the Oregon Forest Industries Council.
Opponents are only now organizing to counter the lobbying muscle of Berkshire Hathaway’s national reach.
“It was a good sneak attack,” said Jason Callahan, policy and communications manager for Green Diamond Resource, a timber business and one of the country’s largest landowners with operations across the Western states where PacifiCorp operates. “It was an organized effort across the West.”
Shielding utilities alone from the growing costs of wildfires, opponents say, will simply transfer those costs to the rest of society.
That’s an alarming prospect for residents of the West, especially as property insurance becomes more expensive or unattainable — and as the Trump administration considers eliminating or downsizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“Where does that leave us?” asked Debi Ferrer, one of the leaders of the Consolidated Oregon Indivisible Network, a liberal activist group. “How are people going to cope with a wildfire if the utilities are immune from paying for damages if they cause them, and if FEMA is out of money?”
Some also worry that without the threat of massive lawsuits, utilities will have less reason to invest in wildfire safety.
Debates across the West
The push comes as Berkshire Hathaway faces billions of dollars in wildfire liabilities after an Oregon jury found PacifiCorp “grossly negligent” for its role in the 2020 Labor Day fires.
PacifiCorp has already paid $1.2 billion to settle some claims from those blazes as well as a 2022 fire. Berkshire Hathaway has estimated that it could face at least $8 billion in wildfire claims.
As climate change makes wildfires more frequent and dangerous, Berkshire Hathaway executives are looking for ways to shield the company from future billion-dollar liabilities — especially on the vast, dry landscapes where PacifiCorp runs thousands of miles of high-voltage lines.
The company is not alone. Beyond PacifiCorp’s service area, several states — including Colorado, Texas, Arizona and Montana — are debating how to overhaul the way insurance companies, utilities and other sectors shoulder the costs and risks of climate change.
What sets Berkshire Hathaway apart, observers say, is its size, its legal exposure — and its success at getting these bills signed into law.
The company already has notched major wins in Utah, which passed a law in 2024 establishing a ratepayer-financed fund to pay wildfire claims. That law built on 2020 legislation limiting utilities’ liability if it adheres to a wildfire mitigation plan filed with the state.
As a result, even if a utility causes a fire in Utah, its liability is capped if the state determines it was in compliance with its wildfire plan.
Warren Buffett, the legendary investor who leads Berkshire Hathaway, warned last year that his company might stop investing money into PacifiCorp states if wildfire liability continued.
“We’re not going to throw good money after bad,” he said during last year’s annual shareholder meeting.
Buffett’s designated successor, Greg Abel — the chair of Berkshire Hathaway Energy — put a finer point on it: “Fundamentally, as we go forward, we need both legislative and regulatory reform across the PacifiCorp states,” he said at the same event.
Utah’s legislation, he said, is “the gold standard.”
Those public remarks presaged a push to enact laws similar to Utah’s measures, according to company documents, interviews and legislative testimony.
In a November presentation to the Edison Electric Institute’s financial conference, Berkshire Hathaway Energy executives outlined their plans.
“PacifiCorp continues to execute its regulatory and financial stabilization strategy across its six states,” the company wrote in the presentation slides.
The company’s focus, according to the presentation, would be “more conservative and safer operating practices, creating supplemental insurance funds and limiting liability to mitigate exposure to existing and future wildfire risk.”
“Utah passed favorable legislation,” the company’s presentation noted. “PacifiCorp is pursuing similar legislation in its other states.”
The company also suggested its approach in the states could be a model for “federal solutions.”
Over the following months, lawmakers in Wyoming, Oregon and Idaho introduced legislation along the lines of Berkshire Hathaway’s “gold standard” policies.
Since then, Wyoming has put liability limits into law. And Idaho lawmakers — after initially voting down a similar proposal — passed a bill to limit utilities’ liability if they’re in compliance with their wildfire mitigation plans. That bill awaits action from Republican Gov. Brad Little.
Broad protections for utilities
Many of these bills have followed the same general outline, said Lee Ann Alexander, vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Association.
“Given the history of utility-ignited fires in the United States and the vast destruction that has resulted from those, we would all agree — and [utilities] seem to be acknowledging it as well — that there should be a wildfire mitigation plan in place, right? Even if you get nothing in exchange, those should exist,” she said.
But in exchange for filing such plans, she said, some of these bills would grant utilities broad protections.
For instance, Idaho’s bill says that if a utility “reasonably implemented” its wildfire mitigation plan, there is a “rebuttable presumption” that the utility “acted without negligence.”
If wildfire survivors or an insurance company cannot sue a utility for causing a wildfire, Alexander said, that would undermine the ability of communities to recover.
“All of those concepts fly in the face of how we take care of people in this country,” she said. “Which is, if you’re responsible for a loss, you are held responsible for that — with varying degrees of accountability, burdens of proof, standards, etc.”
If insurance companies can’t sue utilities to recover the costs of disasters, Alexander said, “that’s going to harm the insurance marketplace. And nobody ever wants to do that, but these are particularly trying times.”
The proposals have differed from state to state. In Oregon, for instance, H.B. 3666 would offer less liability protection than Utah. H.B. 3917, establishing a catastrophic wildfire fund, would also have several differences from Utah’s, though it would set similar limits for some kinds of damages.
Cody Berne, a Portland-based attorney representing wildfire plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against PacifiCorp, said the Oregon legislation — especially the wildfire fund — would protect the utility at the expense of survivors.
“This is language that, if not drafted by PacifiCorp’s lobbyists, might as well have been,” he said, criticizing the wildfire fund’s requirement that victims opt-in to the fund before they know what it might pay them, in exchange for granting the utility a release from liability.
“Survivors who are desperately in need of funds to rebuild their lives are forced into the impossible position of giving PacifiCorp a get-out-of-jail-free card to get a fraction of what they’re owed,” he said.
In Washington, lawmakers are only proposing to study the issue for further policymaking. And in Nevada, PacifiCorp’s subsidiaries are asking regulators to create a wildfire risk pool without going to the Legislature.
Each state’s proposal seems crafted to seek the maximum amount that utilities can get through each legislature, according to representatives for other industries that oppose the changes.
“If they think they have a shot all the way to absolutely being indemnified from any liability, they will take it,” said Edwards of the Oregon Forest Industries Council.
“They don’t think they have that clean shot in Oregon, so they’re getting what they can,” he added.
Needed: ‘Better guidance and review’
Supporters of the legislation, however, say they’re trying to find a balance that will keep utilities delivering essential electricity while keeping power both reliable and affordable.
In a statement, PacifiCorp said it prioritizes safety while providing an essential service, even as wildfire risk grows nationwide.
“PacifiCorp supports state policy solutions that include wildfire funds to help speed recovery, limits on liability to prevent customers and utilities from being insurers of last resort, standards of care to ensure that utilities invest prudently and effectively to mitigate the risks of wildfire and securitization to allow recovery of costs over a longer period, addressing customer affordability,” Erin Isselmann, PacifiCorp’s vice president of corporate communications, said in a statement.
“Utah, Wyoming and Idaho have stepped forward with policy solutions that are positive for our customers and investor confidence in those states, and we encourage other states to do the same,” she said.
Oregon state Rep. Pam Marsh, the Democratic sponsor of a pair of wildfire liability bills, said she specifically crafted them not to grant immunity to utilities for starting wildfires.
But states need to set better standards for what they want utilities to do about wildfire hazard, she said.
“Without better guidance and review, utilities are left on their own to make decisions about safety and mitigation,” she said at a hearing in March, describing that as a “risk to solvency of the utility itself.”
“A utility that is viewed as having unchecked wildfire risk will struggle to obtain secure financing or capital,” she said. “Without the confidence of the market, utilities will fall short in their efforts to meet growing demand, maintain reliable service or respond adequately in times of true crisis.”
But others see the effort to protect utilities as a zero-sum game to keep shareholder profits intact while ordinary people eat the costs.
“Old Warren Buffett has been saying, ‘Oh, we’ll just pack up and leave.’ And I say, good, please do,” said Dan Meek, an attorney who co-founded the Independent Party of Oregon and is working with the Consolidated Oregon Indivisible Network to oppose the bills.
In lawsuits over the Labor Day fires, Oregon juries are awarding each victim an average of about $6 million, said Berne, a governor at large of the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association.
“No other utility has been reckless enough to burn down entire communities and then try to dodge accountability to the bitter end, through jury verdict after jury verdict,” he said.
“The utilities are using this crisis they created as an opportunity to effectively immunize themselves, or to minimize what their liability might be going forward,” he said.
This story also appears in Energywire.