Magen Howard

Take a dash of youthful curiosity, combine it with inspired teachers, and add a free curriculum, and that’s a winning formula for the Be E3 Smart program.

The E’s stand for energy, efficiency, and education, and the program’s goal is to help middle school teachers help their students understand the power of energy. It comes with the teacher’s curriculum from the Ohio Energy Project, a nonprofit based in Worthington, as well as energy efficiency items for students to use at home thanks to sponsorship support from 23 electric cooperatives serving Ohio.

When it comes to adopting new technology, electric cooperatives are David beating Goliath.

“The smaller size of co-ops allows us to be more nimble because we have fewer consumers,” says Pat O’Loughlin, president and CEO of Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives, the wholesale power supplier and trade association for the 24 co-ops serving the state. “We can try new things and deploy them faster than some big utilities.”