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Co-operative

Rural Colorado Leads Charge For Energy Freedom

July 5, 2015 Steven Winter, www.cleanenergyaction.org , ,
By Steven Winter for Clean Energy Action. Recently, there was a huge victory for energy freedom and rural renewable power on the Western Slope of Colorado. We’ll explain what happened – and why is it so exciting. Delta-Montrose Electric Association (Delta-Montrose), a rural electric co-operative serving 35,000 customers, sought to purchase cheap, reliable and renewable power from a small hydroelectric dam on an irrigation canal in Montrose. That seems simple enough – provide your customers with affordable, clean power that’s right in your backyard – why not? What was standing in Delta-Montrose’s way? What stood in Delta-Montrose’s way was a contract with its wholesale power supplier, Tri-State Generation and Transmission, restricting their freedom to access clean energy. Delta-Montrose buys power from the large utility Tri-State and then sells that power to its members. Tri-State’s contract confined Delta-Montrose, and the 44 other rural electric co-ops it serves, to buying 95% of their electricity from Tri-State. Even if affordable renewables were available literally right next door, these rural electric utilities couldn’t buy them.

Co-ops Enable Low-Income Women To Work As Owners

April 2, 2015 Eleanor J. Bader, www.truth-out.org , ,
Co-ops not only give low-income and immigrant women a way to enter an often unwelcoming - and in some cases, hostile - economy, but also give them a way to exert some control over their work lives and simultaneously support themselves and their families. They have consequently been some of the early adopters in the not-yet-critical-mass movement of worker-owned cooperative businesses that has begun to catch fire in towns and cities throughout the United States. Melissa Hoover, executive director of the Democracy at Work Institute, estimates that there are presently between 300 and 400 worker-owned businesses operating domestically.

At Four Sisters Co-Op, An Affordable Housing Dream Realized

March 2, 2015 David P. Ball, www.thetyee.ca , ,
At one point, Ken Lyotier was literally sleeping on the streets. It was the eighties, and Lyotier was living in the Downtown Eastside -- Skid Row it was called then -- and struggling with alcohol. His makeshift tent of tarp and pallet barely kept out the winter rains under the dead-end that was the north end of Main Street. At other times he "bounced around" between the single-resident occupancy (SRO) hotels that dot the neighbourhood. "The conditions in the hotels were just appalling -- they still are," he says, sitting on a stool in his home of nearly three decades in the Four Sisters Co-op on Powell Street. "There was no heat, no light, no running water in the wintertime, broken windows, people dying in bathtubs." Lyotier's life had once been better. He'd worked assessing real estate for the Land Titles Office, and later worked for a realtor.

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