Mungo's discussion of utilities and rails earlier today made me free-associate a connection between the two.

First: years ago, somewhere in Warren & Charlie's early discussions of the BNSF purchase one of them said something along the lines of, Necessarily included in the deal are uncontested rights of transcontinental swaths of land i.e. x feet on either side of the railbed, extending in some cases for thousands of miles. Look at all the problems new pipeline rights of way, for example, have had for the last generation. Who knows what we may want to bury alongside the tracks in the future? (Wikipedia map at (1) - note how the northern BNSF ROW connects Iowa, the Dakotas, and Montana with the PNW, and the TX/OK/NE ROW feed directly to both Southern California and the Bay Area)

Second: BHE has invested heavily in renewable energy especially wind. But I'm hearing more and more of the national holdups in permitting construction of grid-level transmission towers between 21st century supply and demand, which do not exactly line up with the 20th century grid our parents and grandparents had the political will and wisdom to build (Good NYT review at(2))

Third: grid-level transmission lines can indeed be designed and buried from scratch, as a large project in Wales shows (3) (this is even more conceptually attractive as the Welsh project is a pumped-storage project which drops the stored water straight down the turbine shafts during summer evening peak power, then pumps it back uphill via steady-output plants at night)

Remember how much Warren likes toll bridges? Conceptually, this whole scheme links power generation (BHE), transmission (very long BNSF ditch) and consumption (utilities e.g. Pacific Power)...all with the one thing that there's virtually unanimous agreement on being essential for generations to come: cheap, abundant electricity.

And, buried lines are a lot more wildfire-proof than neglected century-old overheated tower lines waving over tinder-dry August forests. What's good for the catastrophic imsurance business is good for BRK.

Maybe Todd the Insurance Guy can pull something like this off in the coming generation. (More about that cynicism later)

--sutton
who can't drive by a Western plateau or mesa with water at its bottom without thinking of all the potential.
I mean, much of the Columbia River looks just like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6...
And with ceaseless wind, to boot
No need for this century to dam the salmon

(1) upload.wikimedia.org - BNSF Railway system map.svg

(2) see for example nytimes.com - Renewable energy US electrical grid

(3) theguardian.com - Beauty of infrastructure electric mountain dinorwig power station north wales