The U.S.
“Buckeye Power has invested more than $1 billion in environmental controls over the past 20 years,” says Pat O’Loughlin, Buckeye’s president and CEO. “To put it in perspective, that’s over half of everything we’ve invested in the entire history of our company, and those investments have produced dramatic results in cleaner air, cleaner water, and significantly reduced solid waste such as ash.”
There’s an important debate going on currently about the best way to generate electricity to power America’s homes and businesses, framed something like this: Low- or zero-carbon-emission sources that are both generally expensive and only intermittently available on the one
“While coal and natural gas provide the bulk of our electricity supply in a reliable and cost-competitive manner, we continue to seek opportunities to develop renewable energy projects that make sense for our members,” says Pat O’Loughlin, president and CEO of Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives, the trade association that provides services to the 24 electric distribution cooperatives in the state. “Our hydropower, bio-gas, and solar resources are an important part of the mix. We’re always looking to grow and expand our supply resources in economical, practical, and beneficial ways.”
Electric-industry leaders nationwide are pushing back against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recently announced regulations that those leaders say are a threat to the reliability and affordability of electricity in the U.S.
One of the new rules would require Cardinal and other coal-fired plants to be 90% carbon-emission free by 2032 and points to carbon capture and sequestration — technology that does not and is not likely to exist at a scale that would be necessary — as a means to achieve it. Generating facilities unable to meet the demands would be forced to close.
In early March, a spring storm ravaged much of the region served by Logan County Electric Cooperative in Bellefontaine.
“System reliability and safety are extremely important,” says Scott Roach, director of engineering services at LCEC. “With every new project, every work plan, it’s always with that in mind.”
One of the most significant factors affecting that reliability is the presence of trees. Of course, properly placed trees not only are beautiful to look at, but they also provide tangible benefits: increasing property values, reducing the cost to heat and cool a home, providing privacy, and even cutting stormwater runoff.
The U.S. electricity system is poised to change more in the next 30 years than it did over the past century. The main reason for such a rapid transformation: goals set by industry and government to lower carbon dioxide (CO2) by mid-century.
Leaders within and beyond the sector are focused on developing the right mix of resources to enable a low-carbon future. While specific CO2 targets and the resources available to achieve them can vary by region, the early steps of the carbon reduction journey have shown that:
The jobs most people likely think of when they consider working at the local electric cooperative either require advanced electrical engineering degrees or involve climbing poles and working in potentially hazardous conditions — which might make working for the co-op seem e
Along with the aforementioned lineworkers and engineers, most co-ops employ:
Electric cooperatives have a long history of standing up for themselves when the needs of their members are not being met.
Hosting elected officials at the co-ops’ Central Ohio Lineworker Training Facility in Mount Gilead or the Mone power plant in Convoy gives co-ops a chance to highlight the cooperative difference — to show firsthand how locally owned, not-for-profit co-ops do more with less every day to serve their members.
Co-op managers and trustees also meet those leaders on their own turf, traveling to the Ohio Statehouse or to Washington, D.C., to share a united constituent voice.
Every June, electric cooperatives from around Ohio and across the nation sponsor high school sophomores and juniors on a trip to Washington, D.C., where the students learn about the cooperative business model, visit Capitol Hill to meet with legislative leaders, and explore the rich history of th
The Youth Tour was a pivotal experience during my transition from high school to college. Growing up in a tiny Ohio village, attending even tinier Pandora-Gilboa High School, I attended Youth Tour in 2013. After high school, I pursued my education at Harvard University, and I am currently studying at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine.
In the middle of one night this past July, Pioneer Electric Cooperative experienced an outage affecting 1,041 members.
Leading the way
Electric cooperatives are not strangers to overcoming challenges. Co-ops were born because bringing power to rural America was (and remains) a difficult task that for-profit utilities wanted no part of.
That explains why, from their beginnings, electric cooperatives have been at the forefront of developing, adopting, and using cutting-edge technology — not because it’s fun and fancy, but because it’s a necessity.
