Energy Co-ops and Local Ownership

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Cooperatives are businesses owned and managed by the people who use them. There are tens of thousands of cooperative businesses in the United States, managing a wide variety of goods and services, including electricity, insurance, credit, housing, and agriculture.

Wind energy cooperatives enable farmers to pool their resources, meeting the startup capital costs associated with wind turbine installations. Cooperatively-owned biodiesel and ethanol plants offer other benefits too: They tend to increase local prices for soybeans (in the case of biodiesel) and corn (in the case of ethanol). Grower-owners can sell their own commodities to the plant, and are eligible to receive annual dividends. Moreover, biofuel plants provide a hedge against volatile commodity prices. When corn or soy prices drop, so too do the production costs of ethanol or biodiesel, increasing the potential profits from biofuel production.

In short, energy cooperatives allow rural communities to control and profit from their own agricultural resources.

NOTE: Some of the following documents are available as Adobe Acrobat PDFs. Download Acrobat Reader.

ATTRA Publications

Publications

Ownership Matters: Three Steps to Ensure a Biofuels Industry That Truly Benefits Rural America
By David Morris of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance [PDF / 1.4M]

Success Stories

USDA Value-Added Development Grants Assist Farmer Cooperatives

Minnesota Farmer Wind Energy Cooperative

Illinois Cooperative Ethanol Plant Case Study [PDF / 36K]

Minnesota Ethanol Cooperative Case Study [PDF / 339K]

List of Farmer-Owned Ethanol Plants in the United States

Illinois Newspapers Analyzes the Benefits of Farmer Ethanol Cooperatives

2005 Wind Cooperative of the Year: Western Farmers Electric Cooperative

Links

Cooperative Support Organizations
Northwest Sustainable Energy for Economic Development
A non-profit organization working throughout the Pacific Northwest to build rural economies through clean, affordable and distributed energy.

National Council of Farmer Cooperatives (NCFC)
A national advocacy group for farmer cooperatives.

Windustry’s Wind Farm Network
A discussion forum on wind power resources, economics, technology, and how to develop a wind project.

Cooperative Ownership of Ethanol and Biodiesel Production Facilities
Includes information on state programs that assist renewable energy farmer cooperatives.

University of Wisconsin’s Center for Cooperatives
The Center offers extension/outreach programs on all aspects of cooperative business principles, organization, financing, management, and related topics.

Energy Cooperative Examples
Corvallis Biodiesel Cooperative
This Oregon-based energy cooperative produces and purchases biodiesel fuel and distributes the fuel to members.

Our Wind Co-op
In addition to being a functioning wind energy cooperative, the organization assists other communities with cooperative-related questions.

Cooperative Community Energy
This California-based energy cooperative purchases solar photovoltaic and thermal systems and manages residential, commercial, and municipal solar installation projects.

SOAR Energy
An Ohio-based, member-owned solar and renewable energy buyers' cooperative, SOAR formed in late 2001 to develop and serve the market for green power.

Citizens Energy Cooperative
A Wisconsin-based energy cooperative, CEC owns and operates large-scale renewable energy systems on behalf of its members, to whom it sells generated electricity.

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Last Updated May 20, 2008

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