If you live in the rural West, you may get your electricity from a rural electric cooperative. If you do, you are a part owner of that coop and can vote for the board of directors. Most coop members believe the coop should have a say in where the electricity that coop buys comes from and it should be able to buy low cost power.
Donald Trump and some of his buddies don’t agree with that basic business sense. They think that a federal board should be able to require that rural coops buy electricity from dirty coal plants even though that power costs more.
Many of us get our electricity from rural electric coops. Big power utilities tend to serve urban areas while the hinterlands get their electricity from little nonprofit electric utilities that run power grids that reach way into the mountains or out to remote ranches.
For decades these coops had little choice where they bought their wholesale power as coal plants were the main source in the West. Recently as wind and solar have been booming across the West, rural coops have sought to buy electricity from these inexpensive sources. Also, coop members have pushed their coops to stop buying sooty, greenhouse gas rich power from antiquated coal plants.
Sometimes electric coops band together into groups so they can get better prices for the individual coop members. One big group of coops called Tri-state serves many electric coops in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Nebraska. Based near Denver, Tri-state provides electricity for some of the most progressive towns in the West – places where much of the public does not want worsening climate conditions or coal fired power plants.
Tri-state has 45 member cooperatives. The company invested heavily in coal fired power plants, buying whole power plants or becoming part-owner of coal plants like the Four Corners Power Plant in Farmington, NM. Tri-state even tried to build its own coal plant in Kansas in the 1990s but abandoned the effort after spending $100 million (of ratepayers money) on the project.
Tri-state’s heavy reliance on coal power is important because it requires its coop members to buy all but 5% of their electricity from Tri-state. If a coop wants to buy into a local solar or wind farm, they cannot do so beyond the 5%. This requirement has generated a rebellion among rate payers for environmental reasons and because coal power is expensive.
In the last few years, member coops of Tri-state said they wanted to get out and be free to buy their power from other sources. Because these coops had long term contracts with Tri-state, they had to negotiate an exit from Tri-state. Two coops exited early – Kit Carson Electric of Taos, and Delta-Montrose of Montrose, Colorado, paying at least $37 million in fees each to free themselves.
Other coops like La Plata Electric of Durango, Colorado asked Tri-state to define the fees needed to exit. Tri-state went to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to ask for a ruling on exit fees. On March 20, the FERC ruled that state energy regulators would have to oversee exit fees, not the federal government. This was good news for local coops but Tri-state was not happy. It wanted a ruling from the FERC because it feared Colorado would set fees that might start a mass exodus from Tri-state, potentially causing the company to fail.
After Trump appointed a new conservative member to FERC, Tri-state made its move. A new non-electric coop member joined Tri-stat; a natural gas company which is a subsidiary of Japan’s Marubeni Corporation. In response, this August, FERC ruled that Tri-state is no longer a cooperative company but now is an energy company given the new corporate member. FERC said it now has jurisdiction over Tri-state’s fees.
This meant that Tri-state may be able to get a ruling from FERC that says that member coops must pay very high fees to break their contracts with Tri-state or FERC could rule that they cannot leave at all. Such a ruling would force local coops to continue to buy dominantly coal generated electricity against the wishes of their members/customers.
Meanwhile Tri-state has made some efforts to increase renewable energy and allow local coops to set up their own solar arrays but for the most part they are committed to coal power even as the coal industry declines.
Critics are ready to challenge, in court, Tri-state’s addition of a corporate member to a company chartered to represent cooperatives. Clearly this addition was a scheme to bypass the Colorado regulators and get the fee issue before a politically conservative FERC.
FERC is meant to be non-partisan and independent but has become more politicized during the Trump years. Donald Trump has stated one of his top priorities is increasing the amount of coal burned in the US. He has tried to remove emission controls from coal fired power plants. Climate change is worsening as a result.
by Tom Ribe
Down with burning coal to produce power. Vote this November and dump Trump