If you live in the United States, there is a one-in-eight chance that you own your electric utility. That is to say that there’s a one-in-eight chance that your electric utility has a similar structure to a credit union or food cooperative. And if you are one of the many millions of residents who pay a gas and electric bill to a co-op utility, then you have a lot of potential power that can be leveraged to save yourself—and others in your community—money through proven affordability programs that shift local infrastructure toward efficient, modernized, renewable energy.
But it’s not just a random roll of an eight-sided die that determines whether or not you belong to a cooperative utility. If you live in a rural area, it’s quite likely you are a member-owner of an electric co-op. If you live in a bigger city, it’s almost guaranteed that you aren’t.
About 13% of customers—or 42 million residents around the United States—are member-owners of rural electric cooperatives. Most electric co-ops were created to address the reality that the country was in an economic crisis and people were struggling.
The problems of yesterday, today
In the mid-1930s, the Great Depression was having adverse effects across many areas of life around the United States, and the damage was especially pronounced in rural areas. Rural America was getting left behind as private utilities focused on their own profitability rather than the well-being of broader society. Because of this, the vast majority of the rural US was left without power, while urban areas were getting electrified.
The next time you travel between urban and rural areas, pay attention to how far power lines must span in order to get to one additional home. In urban areas, this distance may just be a few yards. In rural areas, this distance could be miles. This means that urban areas require less infrastructure maintenance per additional billable meter. For for-profit companies, like investor owned utilities (IOUs), this means much more money with less hassle—and this is why a profit-first model for electrification sidelined rural residents, and why cooperatives offered and continue to provide a mechanism by which localized decisionmaking can meet local needs.
Today, we face similar, widespread crises of unaffordability and the constant prioritization of private profits over public well-being. Rural residents can see that their needs and concerns are not being addressed by a leadership that is primarily answerable to corporate interests.
While most of the United States is now electrified, energy costs are skyrocketing. The rapid buildout of AI data centers puts private