Renewable energy is rapidly replacing coal, except in rural America

U.S. utilities are poised to replace coal-fired power plants with renewable energy sources, but change is happening more slowly in the co-ops that serve much of rural America.

Electric cooperatives got 32% of their electricity from coal in 2019, according to industry data. By comparison, the United States as a whole obtained about 23% of its electricity from coal that year, a low of 42 years, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Co-ops, which provide electricity to about 42 million Americans, mostly in the Midwest and West, have remained more reliant on coal than investor-owned utilities, in part because they have not the same means or motivations to withdraw coal plants.

Today, a growing number of cooperative members are campaigning for a faster transition to wind and solar power, which is cleaner and increasingly cheaper than coal power. This surge is creating tensions within organizations, which exist to share the costs of producing and supplying electricity to less populated areas, leading some members to go their separate ways.

“The energy transition is behind schedule for co-ops,” said Duane Highley, general manager of the Tri-State Generation & Transmission Association, which serves more than one million customers in New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and in Nebraska, and saw some members leave. “But in part because we don’t have the same financial tools.”