Community Power: How Grassroots Organizing Coalitions Are Democratizing Rural Electricity

We sat down with three leaders who are working to enhance energy democracy and make rural electric cooperatives into engines of a Green New Deal. 

Photo by Fré Sonneveld.

We interviewed three leaders from around the country who are working on transferring political power to the grassroots within their co-operative utilities: Liz Veazey, network director at We Own It, based in Omaha, Nebraska; Chris Woolery, residential energy coordinator at Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, based in Lexington, KY; and Erik Hatlestad, energy democracy program director at Clean Up the River Environment, based in Montevideo, MN. 

These leaders are members of the Rural Electric Cooperative (REC) working group, an initiative within the New Economy Coalition, a network of organizations imagining and building a future where people, communities, and ecosystems thrive. For context, rural electric cooperatives (“co-ops”) are private, independent, non-profit entities that provide electricity to their members, who collectively own the co-op. Roughly 42 million Americans receive their electricity through rural co-ops. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Sam Zacher (interviewer): What is the Rural Electric Cooperative working group?

Liz Veazey: The working group came together a few years ago. We were all folks who were members of the New Economy Coalition and doing rural electrical work, and we asked, what can we do together? One of our first projects was the Rural Electric Cooperative Toolkit [a how-to guide for members of rural electric co-ops to organize to build member power]. We also generate resources to support the work of other people [around the country] in the working group. For example, we did a mapping project that helped member groups map energy burden. We also put on webinars.

SZ: What is the recent past or current state of electricity generation and democratic participation in utilities in rural areas, and what is the ideal future state that you all are working toward?

Chris Woolery: In Kentucky, it's been a story of inertia. For decades, our co-ops were just doing the same thing as they always had for as long as I can remember, and they were not engaged with their membership—their owners. They weren’t transparent—and still aren’t in some cases. In Kentucky, that all ran straight into a new reality, in which all of our utilities, including our co-ps, were seeing, for the first time in their history, declining retail sales. Since they were regulated monopolies—in Kentucky, co-ops are regulated by a state commission—they have never been forced to innovate. They've never been subject to market pressures. And regulatory pressures were pretty much inadequate to get efficiency, clean energy or climate solutions.

We're trying to harness grassroots energy for climate solutions. We want a future that's democratically controlled.

Erik Hatlestad: A majority of people in rural communities like ours want to see action on climate and want to see a greater investment in clean energy. You’ll see that if you look at county-by-county polling in the upper Midwest. You’d think in democratically-owned and operated organizations like electric co-ps, the decision-making process would reflect that kind of political outlook… but it doesn’t. So it really is harnessing that democratic power and requiring co-ops to live up to their founding principles.

There's a lot of different conceptions around the kind of co-op of the future we're fighting for: it certainly looks like 100% clean energy future; it certainly involves stopping the boondoggle that is carbon capture and sequestration; and it certainly is about focusing on energy efficiency and the equitable rollout of clean energy and distributed generation. Putting people and communities directly in control. 

LV: Most of the 42 million Americans who are member-owners of electric co-ops don't know that they're a member-owner. We Own It’s vision is for a lot more of those 42 million people to know they’re members and to engage in their co-ops.

There's an opportunity for electric co-ops, even without federal legislation, to be engines of a Green New Deal and what that means in their communities, in addressing the needs of healthcare, broadband—whatever other needs folks have, working on that together with their members. There are opportunities to help start small, local worker cooperatives through all this. 

SZ: What are the barriers to getting to these ideal worlds? We’ve heard there's low voter turnout in co-ops. Do people not know they’re member-owners and the path forward is to organize and educate them? Are there other nefarious forces out there, like corporate influence? 

LV: The boards are really overwhelmingly male, older—I've heard the average age is 70—and white. I think that that's part of the problem: there's a culture of a good-old-boys’ network that's really hard to overturn in some communities.

There’s also a lot of lack of transparency and good governance. In a lot of states, the board can have closed meetings and not allow the members to come. It can be really difficult to get involved if you can't access certain information.

CW: I want to put this question into the context of what's happening in rural America today. Folks are working two jobs. They're raising their grandkids because of opioids. They don't have opportunity. People just don't have time to dive into [co-op politics] when they're on the hamster wheel all the time. And it's wonky! It's hard to understand. 

SZ: One barrier you described is lack of transparency. In your own areas or when you're helping groups in other areas of the country, do you try to get them to push for reforms that would change rules about what information must be provided, what meetings must everyone know about or must be open? Or even the salaries of board members, or even term limits or other institutional rules?

LV: A lot of how people get started [getting politically active in co-ops] is by just starting to ask their co-op for things. And then, when their co-op says, ‘No, you can't come to the board meetings,’ that often really upsets people who want to learn about what’s happening and get more involved.

Some states—Colorado and South Carolina—have some laws on the books now that require some of that transparency. We are in conversation now with people who are working on introducing state and potentially even federal legislation to try to address some of these concerns.

CURE in Minnesota created a scorecard. They ranked the electric co-ops based on the access of information on their website. They were overall pretty bad, but because the report card came out, some of them said, ‘Oh, I guess we should fix that,’ and then added some of that info to their website. We're seeing some small steps in certain places, but I think the big increases that we need in transparency and good governance are gonna have to come from some legislation and regulation.

SZ: Can you tell me about one concrete case of success with enhancing democracy in a co-op?

CW: In Winchester, Clark County, Kentucky, it was a network of environmental advocates and other stakeholders that said, ‘Look, not only do we not want this coal fired power plant in our place, we don't need it. We made a convincing case that it was unnecessary, and that there were other options available.’ 

As a part of that settlement, an ongoing conversation began about what these communities wanted and needed from their rural electric co-ops. That eventually led directly to the creation and installation of what is called Solar Farm One in the same county, Clark County—directly viewable in all its glory from Interstate 64!

That invalidated the notion that solar can't work in Kentucky. Everybody got to drive by and see it work every day. It was a real game-changer here. That's a tremendous example of what can happen—even in what folks consider to be a pretty politically conservative state, even in a state in which folks have every tie you can think of to the coal industry.

SZ: When people engage more in the democratic process of their co-op—hopefully getting cleaner energy, lower prices, etc.—do you think that also causes people to further engage in other kinds of politics?

LV: If people have good experiences. If a co-op says, ‘No, you can't come to the meeting. No, you can't have that information. No, we don't care what you think,’ that’s bad. If people feel like they have been engaged in a meaningful way and they were able to impact outcomes, I think that that is really powerful in getting people to say, ‘I can make a difference. I should be more involved. I want to vote.’

EH: I think what really excites me is a different avenue for getting people to think about a democratic economy and how an economy might work a little bit differently. There's a huge opportunity to have people see this directly impact their material conditions by being involved with the democratic governance of their electric co-op. 

SZ: What’s something you would want to say to the broader climate justice movement—people doing on-the-ground-organizing in local communities, national politics, Green New Deal policy thinking, etc.—from the perspective of rural electric co-ps?

LV: We need to make sure that rural communities are part of the Green New Deal conversation. There has been messaging on the Right to try to create division on purpose and make rural communities feel like they're left out. I think we need to go above and beyond to make sure that rural communities feel included.

Co-ops can really be this local democratic institution that can engage people to develop the local vision for a Green New Deal and then carry it out.