Environmental fraud costs Nevada taxpayers millions | EDITORIAL | Editorial

NZero has just been inducted into the green energy Hall of Shame alongside Solyndra.

In 2021, Nevada elected officials announced NZero, then called Ledger8760. The company said it would help governments track their carbon emissions in real time. Officials from Reno and Washoe counties and even then-Governor Steve Sisolak held a press conference to announce their partnership with the company.

“This is how we fight climate change and protect our state,” said Governor Sisolak.

“We can be the city, the county and the state that leads the way into a new time and a new era,” said Bob Lucey, then chairman of the Washoe County Commission.

No. Instead, they are the latest — but certainly not the last — politicians duped by well-connected lobbyists selling green-flavored snake oil. As a recent ProPublica investigation revealed, the company failed to deliver on its promises despite landing $5.7 million in government contracts.

“Their software didn’t do what it said it would do,” Robin Yochum, a former program manager in the governor’s energy office, told ProPublica.

One problem was that NZero had difficulty obtaining information from utilities such as NV Energy and Southwest Gas. The information it provided was out of date. These are the kinds of hurdles that officials should have cleared before awarding the company lucrative contracts.

“I don’t recall the program giving us more detailed information beyond what we already generate ourselves,” the state public service energy manager wrote in a 2023 email.

But NZero had a secret weapon. Its founders included influential lobbyists like Josh Griffin. Its leadership team included lobbyists who had successfully worked for Uber, Tesla and the NFL Raiders.

In such relationships, outcomes mattered little. Yvanna Cancela, then serving as Mr. Sisolak’s chief of staff, explored ways to get the company a “$5 million no-bid contract,” ProPublica reported. When Ms. Yochum objected, she said she was told, “We have to do this. The governor’s office wants to do it, so we’re going to do it.”

It gets worse. Real-time emissions data is unlikely to be the best use of incentives. In 2009, the state presented a list of 2,000 energy efficiency projects. More than a decade later, many of them remain unfunded and unfinished.

If politicians are concerned about reducing carbon emissions, they should use the money that went to NZero there too.

But as this story shows, the greenest thing about green energy is often the money that the politically well-connected make from it.