Aspire to Better: The 21st Century Electric Cooperative

Historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote that "no single public agency ever so enriched the and brighten the quality of rural living" than the creation of the "Rural Electrification Administration." That was in 1935.

Seventy-eight years later, Mike Williams, CEO of the Texas Electric Cooperatives asked the question, "Can we do it again?"

That simple question created a task force commissioned by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association in 2013 called: "The Electric Cooperative Purpose: A Compass for the 21st Century Cooperative."

Aspire to Better, asks what happen to that document? What have electric cooperatives, serving some 43 million largely rural customers, done these decades latter to affirm that, yes: "We can do it again."

Aspire to Better describes where co-ops have fallen short of responding to climate change, boards of directors that fail to represent the co-op membership, and why some electric co-ops should change their name.

The 21st Century Committee lists 61 recommendations. Aspire to Better adds 25 more, including redressing the all-requirement contracts electric cooperatives signed with their largely coal-centric generation and transmission cooperative, the benefits of merging, why co-ops should have accepted a cap-and-trade proposal on carbon emissions and citing co-op leaders whose efforts have burnished the reputation of America's electric cooperatives.

Written by Mark Glaess, whose 32 years representing electric cooperatives and public power district in Nebraska, Oregon and Minnesota, Aspire to Better is a heartfelt paean to what electric cooperatives have done and what more they can do to improve the lives of their members.