Rob Roy, the man who wants to change the energy marketplace in Nevada, has a lot of…energy.

As Riley Snyder and I sat for three hours with the Switch CEO and self-made billionaire, he struck me as a hybrid of the Energizer Bunny and that fast-talking guy from those old FedEx ads. (I can talk fast, but Roy makes me look like a piker.)

As Roy used the interview to herald his exit from “Switcherland” to declare war against NV Energy’s long-held monopoly, I couldn’t decide whether he was a Polyanna who simply believes in the righteousness of his cause or yet another solipsistic rich guy who thinks he has all the answers.

Or put another way, as Riley pricelessly described the Switch fortress as resembling a James Bond villain’s lair: Is he more Ernst Stavro Blofeld or S.R. Hadden?

I can assure you which side of the argument NV Energy will take as the utility, owned by the nationally respected Warren Buffett and run by the locally respected Paul Caudill, prepares to embark on an expensive ($30 million-plus, they claim) campaign to defeat the Energy Choice Initiative, which passed in 2016 with 72 percent of the vote and needs to pass again because it is a constitutional amendment.

We have seen epic battles in Nevada before, but this may eclipse all of them: NV Energy and its Omaha ownership, perhaps bolstered by unions here and nationally, vs. Switch, Sheldon Adelson, other gamers and major users of the future of a marketplace that will affect every Nevadan. I thought the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races would suck all the oxygen out of Election ’18, but those two marquee contests may have difficulty breathing amid the conflict over ECI. (Insert my usual comment about what a good time this is to own a TV station in Nevada.)

As you can see from Roy’s comments here and here, he believes that countering the utility’s $30 million with “a billion dollars of truth” will be good enough to win in November. By “truth,” he means portraying the utility as a rapacious monopoly that has taken in much more money than it should have from customers and failed to fully embrace the coming renewable marketplace, preferring instead to use “fear-branding” to frighten people about the uncertainty in a choice environment.

NV Energy is at a decided disadvantage here, some of it of the utility’s own making. By posing as neutral when ECI was first on the ballot two years ago and doing little to combat it except pushing union shills out front, the initiative passed by a 3-to-1 margin, making it astronomically difficult to defeat it this time.

Combine that with most people’s natural antipathy toward their power supplier – especially in Vegas during the summer – and this would seem to be more futile than tilting at windmills. (Why did Don Quixote hate wind power?)

The truth is that energy policy is remarkably complex, yet lends itself to simple political shibboleths: Choice is good, renewables are good, monopolies are bad. And: How in the world have we not created a solar-driven energy-exporting economy in the sunniest state in the country?

That’s why NV Energy is in such jeopardy. But name the last monopoly that willingly gave up, ahem, power.

The utility will not go gently, and it has nothing to lose. They are not looking for love, and they may indeed be sowing fear and distrust of Switch’s motives.

I also suspect you will see many sops to customers such as this one, where they are going to reduce rates. And it may not be a billion dollars worth of truth, but the fact is that in study after study, Nevada’s rates rank roughly in the middle of the states.

But it seems to me, too, that this truth is like Nevada’s low property tax rates: No one thinks they are low enough.

It’s also true that some experts, including the Legislature’s resident energy maven, Chris Brooks, have raised questions about what a post-NV Energy world will look like. Brooks is certainly no fan of the utility, but he said on the IndyMatters podcast that he voted against ECI in 2016.

There are serious questions about what will happen if ECI passes, especially as the Legislature will have to enact new laws and the Public Utilities Commission will have to write the rules. Both have previously been accused of being NV Energy handmaidens, with some justification.

Of course none of this should be happening. Policy should not be made at the ballot box, perhaps energy policy least of all.

But Switch’s argument is that NV Energy has so long dominated the Legislature through campaign contributions and skilled lobbyists that the ECI backers had no choice but to go around the Gang of 63. It was only a few sessions ago that NV Energy persuaded Senate Commerce Chairman Kelvin Atkinson to simply gut an entire bill and replace it with one the utility had written. NV Energy has power, no pun intended.

Roy seemed almost obsessed with that influence during our interview, making repeated references to “Tony and Pete,” aka NV Energy advocates Pete Ernaut and Tony Sanchez. Both will be heavily involved in the anti-ECI campaign.

Roy’s sunny outlook (I could not resist) that the voters will listen (despite the $30 million spent against him) once they learn the truth, or at least his version of it, is belied by how he is arming for battle. He has hired a forensics team, including folks who once worked for the utility, to scrub NV Energy’s books. He has skillful lobbyists and consultants of his own willing to make the case on TV, in the mail and in the digital world. He is wooing lawmakers and unions with pitches at Fortress Switch.

And not only does he have money, so do his partners on Las Vegas Boulevard South. Adelson may only be worth half as much as Buffett, but whether it’s $40 billion or $86 billion, there is only so much TV time to buy. (Sorry, governor and Senate hopefuls.)

There are two great ironies in all of this.

First, Roy, as has been written before, helped supercharge Switch by buying up Enron assets after the symbol of deregulation excesses collapsed. (Roy hates the word “deregulation” for what ECI would do, preferring “thoughtful re-regulation,” which actually is more accurate. ECI consultant Jon Wellinghoff, a former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chair, made the same point on the IndyMatters podcast last week.) I am sure NV Energy will invoke Enron a time or two.

Second, Switch and its allies are going to have to fight fear branding with fear branding. “It’s an all or nothing moment,” Roy told us. Après ECI, le price-gouging?

It may be that NV Energy’s strategy is just to keep the margin of ECI defeat close so its lobbyists can argue to lawmakers in 2019 that there is no overwhelming mandate for choice. It seems almost a Sisyphean task to scuttle ECI and the whirling dervish orchestrating it who is coming out from behind the curtain.

Roy’s energy may be infectious and his optimism may be warranted. But if the utility does erase ECI in November, it will be one of the greatest upsets in campaign history.

Disclosure: NV Energy and Switch have donated to The Nevada Independent. You can see a full list of donors here.

Jon Ralston is the editor of The Nevada Independent. He has been covering Nevada politics for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected] On Twitter: @ralstonreports