"If BHE profits decline linearly for 5 years and then becomes a zero and confiscated by the government, how much does that alter your value of BRK looking out 10 years? 9%? More? It is a good business but not a great business, right? I think most states will realize BHE is one of the best partners in the game and give them their good but not great returns to keep the lights on. It's a massive undertaking with massive amounts of capital needed so I suspect it will be OK in the end and continue to provide at least the income that it did in 2023. I suspect we've seen the floor on BHE's earnings. Anything can happen though so I am curious of what people think the hit would be in a worst case scenario."

Exactly! This is the thing- states have the exact same incentive as Berkshire in terms of fixing the problem. All Warren did was point out the negative which is his fiduciary responsibility and also a part of his general makeup, but he didn't mention anything by way of a solution because frankly speaking there is none yet. Does anyone really think states expect to just dump this on corporations or that they want to undertake the massive investment involved in doing it themselves?

You can bet there are already extensive discussions going on between Berkshire and the states involved on solving the problem and there's a lot of ways to do that including the usual suspects- tax incentives, subsidies, guaranteed profits etc.