Electric Cooperatives: One Potentially Positive Path for Advancing a Clean, Equitable Energy Transition

The climate crisis doesn’t need help getting worse, but that is exactly what unchecked data center expansion and reckless deregulation are doing! With federal leadership failing to protect communities, a new Center policy brief asks a critical question: What alternatives exist when private utilities won’t act in the public interest? The answer may lie in a century-old solution: electric cooperatives. They once brought power to rural America when for-profit utilities ignored them. Today, they could help lower costs, modernize infrastructure, and support a clean energy transition if communities organize to make them truly democratic. 📘 Read our new brief: Electric Cooperatives: One Potentially Positive Path for Advancing a Clean, Equitable Energy Transition https://bit.ly/4rnzil6

Corporate utilities helped create the climate crisis. Data centers and deregulation are making things worse! So what can communities do when Washington won’t act? Our new brief looks to an old solution with new relevance: electric cooperatives.

Investor-owned utilities have little incentive to lead on climate action, particularly as data center expansion and deregulation increase costs, pollution, and inequity for communities. In a new brief, Center for Progressive Reform Policy Analyst Sophie Loeb argues that one century-old policy innovation is long overdue to be revitalized for our current political and climate moment: electric cooperatives. Loeb lays out the history of these cooperatives — from what they did well to where they may have fallen short. 📄 Read Electric Cooperatives: One Potentially Positive Path for Advancing a Clean, Equitable Energy Transition. https://bit.ly/4rnzil6 🔁 Share with colleagues and partners working on energy and climate policy.