United Power Electric Cooperative, Colorado
United Power is an electric cooperative operating in Colorado along the Northern Front Range. They have over 60,000 meters and have introduced an innovative cooperative solar program called called Sol Partners http://www.unitedpower.com/solpartners.aspx where members can purchase individual solar panels that are a part of a large commercial solar array operated by the cooperative. United Power also offers incentives to its members for both solar PV and solar hot water installations.

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Delta Montrose Electric Cooperative, Colorado
Delta Montrose Electric Association in Colorado is a standout rural electric cooperative in terms of its prioritization of efficiency over coal. DMEA has established a goal to be the leader in efficiency among the nation's cooperatives, including becoming the benchmark in "environmentally feasible projects and distributive energy technology." DMEA has also set a goal of attaining a 10 percent share of its territory's heating and air conditioning market by 2010 by promoting energy efficient technologies. In addition, DMEA aims to deliver energy savings to its customers by 2010 that are equivalent to 25 percent of its 2000 electricity sales revenue. Read more at the company website http://www.dmea.com/

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Electric co-op could be headed down coal-fired road to ruin
Ron Lehr was chairman of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) in the early 1990s when the Montrose-based Colorado Ute Electric Association went bankrupt because of what he deemed “a colossal blunder that put them out of business.” Lehr, now an attorney for the renewable energy association Interwest Energy Alliance, said Colorado Ute built the Craig 3 coal-fired power plant in northwest Colorado that the co-op’s board felt would be needed to power the state’s about-to-boom oil shale industry. That industry went bust in the 1980s, and Colorado Ute followed suit a few years later.

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Exempt from state oversight
One of the ironies of the controversy over proposed Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) oversight of the state’s second largest utility, Tri-State, is that the rural electric co-op arguably most in need of increased state supervision, the IREA, would be unaffected. IREA has been the subject of environmentalist’s wrath in recent years, with renewable-energy advocates aggressively running for its board and crying foul over questionable election practices, and state lawmakers tailoring legislation specifically aimed at increasing the co-op’s conservation and renewable portfolio.

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Energy Cooperative Election Spending: Outrageous
The first thing former school principal Mike Galvin said he’ll do if elected to the board of Intermountain Rural Electric Association, the state’s largest energy co-op, is enact sweeping reform of the election process itself. “IREA spent $500,000 in 2007 to lobby against alternative energies; spent $100,000 in 2006 to purchase the skewed opinions of an industry-paid spokesperson skeptical of climate change warnings; and, spent less than $75,000 to defray energy costs for senior citizens and low income households,” said co-op member and activist David Harlan of Divide. Harlan also accused the co-op of improperly spending funds to support the campaigns of incumbent board members who rubber-stamp the anti-renewable agenda.

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