Warren Buffett Attacks Clean Energy While Increasing Dirty Oil Investments

onFeb 23, 2016 @ 15:45 PST

Warren Buffett, one of the world’s richest men and a campaign fundraiser and donor for Hillary Clinton’s presidential run, has made headlines lately for the attacks on rooftop solar energy launched by subsidiaries of his holding company Berkshire Hathaway.

As Ben Jervey explained here on DeSmog, Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway have numerous ties to coal-fired power plants, the utility industry and the coal-by-rail industrial complex.

But Buffett’s tentacles reach far into the oil industry, as well.

Buffett appeared in the news recently for buying a nearly $400 million stake in oil and gas pipeline giant Kinder Morgan. Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway also carries much of the oil-by-rail now found on train tracks across the United States.

Beyond Kinder Morgan and oil-by-rail, Buffett also has made a big bet on oil in general.

“In addition to Kinder Morgan, Buffett has increased his stake in oil refiner Phillips 66,” reported CNN Money. “He has bought over $1 billion more of the stock just since the start of 2016. That’s on top of the $5 billion he had previously invested in the company.”

Buffett also owns more than $1 billion worth of stock in tar sands giant Suncor.

The fossil fuel industry sees rooftop solar’s ascendancy as a threat to its bottom line, and it appears Buffett — who butters his financial bread from industry profits — does too.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

By Steve Horn

Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.