Members for Reform works toward lower rates,
cleaner, healthier power, & resilient local economies
for rural Colorado
VICTORY-Times 2! Two recent rural co-op developments show just how important and powerful it is for co-op members to engage in decision-making processes.
The first comes from the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, where Tri-State has agreed to make significant changes to its resource plan, which sets the course for how it will meet the power-supply needs of its 42 member cooperatives for the next decade or more. More than 120 people just like you from Tri-State member co-ops submitted comments to the Commission urging them to hasten the transition to more affordable clean energy. And your voices were heard. A settlement agreement makes significant improvements to Tri-State’s resource plan. Read more here.
Member voices also were instrumental in turning back a horribly backwards net metering policy that had been approved by the Sangre de Cristo Electric Association board and which would have penalized solar rooftop owners and low-income customers. A grassroots petition with more than 500 signatures from co-op members prompted the board to reverse course and rescind the new policy. Read more here.
Without a doubt, your voice makes a difference. Please visit Members4Reform often for the latest updates on how to stay involved in your local rural electric co-op and Tri-State.
Why Reform?
Tri-State Generation and Transmission provides wholesale electricity to 30% of Coloradans across 70% of our state, from Front Range communities to rural parts of the Western Slope and Eastern Plains. Tri-State is slowly moving in the right direction by replacing some of its expensive, coal-heavy energy portfolio with less expensive renewable energy resources, but the transition is not happening swiftly enough, and it’s being done in a way that keeps rural Colorado communities from fully embracing the benefits of the switch to clean energy.
Tri-State’s sluggish transition and the obstacles it is putting up hurt the rural electric cooperatives, their members, who are its customers, and the rural communities we live in. We pay for all of this with higher electricity prices than neighboring utilities, and through lost opportunities to develop local clean energy projects that can bring jobs and economic development to rural Colorado.
The rural electric cooperative system is supposed to function from bottom up, with wholesale generation and transmission cooperatives like Tri-State working in the service of its members to provide them with reliable and inexpensive electricity. This system has been turned on its head, with Tri-State taking a top-down approach that treats member co-ops as subsidiaries working for the parent corporation’s benefit.
Fixing this distortion of how the co-op system is supposed to operate, so that Tri-State once again works for its members and not the reverse, is one of the main goals of Members4Reform. We strive to provide the member-owners of Tri-State’s 17 member cooperatives in Colorado with with a platform that facilitates the sharing of objective information and tools that are needed to effect change.