Connect with us

Published

on

Originally published at ILSR.org

After moving to Colorado, Joe Smyth found he was barred from participating in his generation and transmission cooperative — despite a Colorado law promoting co-op transparency.

For this episode of the Local Energy Rules Podcast, host John Farrell speaks with Joe Smyth, researcher at the Energy and Policy Institute and author of CleanCooperative.com. Farrell and Smyth discuss barriers to democratic participation in rural electric cooperative decision-making and how to promote transparency at all electric co-ops.

Listen to the full episode and explore more resources below — including a transcript and summary of the conversation.


Reforming the Rural Electric Cooperative

Joe Smyth has a history of environmental activism and clean energy advocacy, but did not take an interest in electric cooperatives until he was served by one. At a board meeting for his cooperative, Smyth watched as the co-op leaders grappled with the declining costs of solar energy.

In his view, the cooperative had two choices: treat solar energy as a threat and clamp down on net metering, or embrace the transition and support members as they go solar. He soon realized, however, that their decision was not that simple. Distribution cooperatives like his get their power from a larger wholesale power provider: the generation and transmission cooperative.

Rural electric cooperatives are a product of the New Deal era. Since it was not profitable to electrify sparsely-populated areas, rural America was left in the dark. The Rural Electrification Act of 1936 established hundreds of electric cooperatives which, with no shareholders or profit motive, could serve these areas with less overhead cost. Because electric co-ops are not-for-profit and owned by the customers, they are often unregulated by state agencies. Without that oversight, many cooperatives are falling behind as the electricity sector undergoes a rapid transition.

Customer-Owners Face Participation Barriers

In the absence of state law, electric cooperatives can set their own rules — including whether co-op members can attend board meetings. They can also decide what information they will publish and what to withhold. Without access to information, it is difficult for member-owners to have any input and influence over their cooperative.

We see some coops making decisions really behind closed doors, not informing their members about why they made decisions of where the electric cooperative is going as we transition away from coal

Colorado has long had a law ensuring cooperative transparency and access to board meetings. However, that transparency and access did not apply to the generation and transmission cooperative Tri-State. Since Tri-State’s decisions have “huge implications” for the coops they serve, says Smyth, there was a call for those decisions to be made in a public forum. A 2021 bill enacted by the Colorado General Assembly enforces that public forum.

We can’t have a democratically run utility unless there’s transparency and accountability.

Distribution Cooperatives Break Free of their Contracts

Prior to the 2021 bill, two electric co-ops successfully left Tri-State’s umbrella: Kit Carson Electric in New Mexico and Delta Montrose Electric Association in Colorado. These distribution cooperatives found that they could get cheaper wholesale rates elsewhere. The two co-ops, bound by the principle “concern for community,” also wanted to satisfy the local demand for renewable energy capacity.

Both Kit Carson and Delta Montrose faced multi-year processes to get out of their contracts with Tri-State. As the two broke away, the other distribution co-ops supplied by Tri-State watched carefully. Tri-State does not want to lose any more members, especially its largest customers. Because of this threat, says Smyth, Tri-State may now be willing to offer more flexibility to its remaining members.


Listen to our 2018 interview with Kit Carson General Manager Luis Reyes and our 2016 interview with Delta Montrose former Board Member Ed Marston.


Does Tri-State Have a Future?

To have any future at all, says Smyth, Tri-State needs to transition away from coal — it’s just too expensive. He hopes in that transition away from coal, Tri-State will also empower members to participate in decision making. Co-ops don’t just want affordable, clean energy, says Smyth. They want to provide input and support their communities.

What’s clear is that Tri-State now understands that they have to transition away from their uneconomic coal plants, both to keep their member co-ops and to comply with the rules that Colorado and New Mexico have … but whether they do that in a way that just reinforces the fairly centralized, top-down decision-making processes that they’ve historically operated under, or that more empowers their electric cooperative members, the distribution utilities, to do what makes sense for their communities, that’s not clear yet.

Episode Notes

See these resources for more behind the story:

For concrete examples of how towns and cities can take action toward gaining more control over their clean energy future, explore ILSR’s Community Power Toolkit.

Explore local and state policies and programs that help advance clean energy goals across the country, using ILSR’s interactive Community Power Map.


This is the 139th episode of Local Energy Rules, an ILSR podcast with Energy Democracy Director John Farrell, which shares powerful stories of successful local renewable energy and exposes the policy and practical barriers to its expansion.

Local Energy Rules is Produced by ILSR’s John Farrell and Maria McCoy. Audio engineering by Drew Birschbach.

This article originally posted at ilsr.org. For timely updates, follow John Farrell on Twitter, our energy work on Facebook, or sign up to get the Energy Democracy weekly update.

Featured photo credit: National Renewable Energy Lab via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

 

Appreciate CleanTechnica’s originality? Consider becoming a CleanTechnica Member, Supporter, Technician, or Ambassador — or a patron on Patreon.

 

 


Advertisement



 


Have a tip for CleanTechnica, want to advertise, or want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Continue Reading

Environment

Hyundai recalls more than 145,000 EVs

Published

on

By

Hyundai recalls more than 145,000 EVs

Hyundai Motors is recalling 145,235 EVs and other “electrified” vehicles in the US, citing concerns about a loss of driving power, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said on Friday.

The NHTSA announced this morning that the recall affects selected IONIQ 5 and IONIQ 6 EVs, as well as certain luxury Genesis models, including the GV60, GV70, and G80 electrified variants, from the 2022-2025 model years, Reuters reported.

2025-Hyundai-IONIQ-5-prices
2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 (Source: Hyundai)

It looks like the issue stems from “the integrated charging control units in these vehicles, which may become damaged and fail to charge the 12-volt battery. This malfunction could lead to a complete loss of drive power, posing safety risks for drivers,” the NHTSA stated.

If you’re an owner of one of these Hyundai models dating 2022-2025, stay tuned. Hyundai has not yet provided a timeline as to when affected vehicles will be repaired.

To make that happen, the company’s dealers will inspect and replace the charging unit and its fuse if necessary, NHTSA said. Free of charge, of course.

Importantly, no crashes, injuries, fatalities, or fires due to this issue have been reported in the US, Hyundai reported.


If you’re an electric vehicle owner, charge up your car at home with rooftop solar panels. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing on solar, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. They have hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them. 

Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisers to help you every step of the way. Get started here.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Continue Reading

Environment

Tesla brings ‘Actually Smart Summon’ to Europe and Middle East where FSD is limited

Published

on

By

Tesla brings 'Actually Smart Summon' to Europe and Middle East where FSD is limited

Tesla announced that ‘Actually Smart Summon,’ its autonomous driving feature that enables moving its vehicles without anyone inside over short distances, is now being launched in Europe and the Middle East.

The automaker’s Full Self-Driving suite of features has been limited in those markets due to regulations and Tesla’s focus on making them work in North America first.

Actually Smart Summon is the vision-only version of Tesla’s “smart summon” feature, which was released years ago on Tesla vehicles with ultrasonic sensors.

When Tesla transitioned away from ultrasonic sensors, Smart Summon was one of the missing features that Tesla had yet to adapt to the vision-only (cameras and neural nets) system.

CEO Elon Musk said that it would be coming in 2022, but it finally came only a few months ago, in 2024.

However, that’s only in North America where Tesla focuses its Full Self-Driving (FSD) development, the feature package that includes Actually Smart Summon, also referred to as ‘ASS’.

Most of Tesla’s other markets, including Europe, don’t have the same capabilities under the Full Self-Driving package. That’s partly due to regulations, but Tesla also focuses on making the features work on North American roads first.

Now, Tesla has announced that its Actually Smart Summon feature is launching in Europe and the Middle East:

The feature can only be used on private roads, like parking lots and driveways. Most people have used it to bring their vehicles parked in a large parking lot to them as they exit a store or restaurant. However, the vehicle moves quite slowly under the feature and the owner needs to keep an eye on it at all time and be ready to cancel the summon as Tesla doesn’t take any responsibility for accidents caused by using Actually Smart Summon., like all other FSD features.

Therefore, most people I know who have the feature, myself included, tried once or try to see or impress some friends who have never seen a car move without anyone inside and then stopped using it.

The feature’s main useful use-case is for people with extremely tight parking spots. It enables them to exit the vehicle before it is in its final parking spot and then move the car in and out remotely.

However, that has been the case for years with the regular Smart Summon, as you generally don’t need the vehicle to handle complex parking lots. You mostly need it to move a few feet forward or backward.

But a recent update has broken this feature for some people. We recently reported on a very unfortunate situation that resulted in a Tesla owner having to get out of his car through his trunk.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Continue Reading

Environment

Big auto learned its lesson? It’s begging Trump not to blow up emissions rules

Published

on

By

Big auto learned its lesson? It's begging Trump not to blow up emissions rules

US Automakers are planning to ask Mr. Trump to retain President Biden’s EPA exhaust rules, in the face of signs that Mr. Trump might try to reverse them. If the rules are reversed, it would cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of deaths per year.

Interestingly, this is the opposite of what big auto did the last time a reality TV show came to the White House – signaling that they have perhaps learned their lesson this time ’round.

First, some history.

In the middle of the 20th century, the effects of human activity on the atmosphere became readily apparent. Certain cities – with Los Angeles among the forefront – were choked by smog, and it was soon found out that vehicle pollution was the primary reason for this smog.

Since Los Angeles was one of the most smog-choked cities, California led the way on clean air regulation, creating the California Air Resources Board in 1967 (under then-Governor Ronald Reagan).

The federal government gave California special dispensation to set stricter regulations than the rest of the country, in recognition that it had a unique smog problem in its primary metropolis. California has retained this dispensation, in the form of a “waiver,” since then. And other states can follow California’s rules, but only if they copy all of the rules exactly.

Thus, there have been two separate sets of clean air regulation in this country since then – the federal rules, and then the “CARB states” which follow California’s rules.

In 2012 that finally changed, when President Obama’s EPA negotiated with California to finally harmonize these standards and also implement higher fuel efficiency nationwide. This would have been a huge boon for both industry and consumers, saving money and giving regulatory certainty to the auto industry.

But then, in 2016, the candidate who got the 2nd most votes in the presidential election was headed for the White House. And automakers responded by immediately lobbying to torpedo these standards, even before inauguration.

Now, you might think that asking a profoundly ignorant individual, who ended up staffing the EPA with bought-and-sold science deniers (huh, that would never happen again would it?), to change rules which had already been set through years of negotiation and lobbying was not a great idea. And you’d be right.

Not long after automakers had the dumb idea to ask an idiot to fix something that wasn’t broken, that idiot went and broke things further, fracturing the agreement between California and the federal government and ensuring less regulatory certainty for automakers.

After realizing their blunder (which they could have avoided by, y’know, thinking at all about it beforehand), big auto relented and asked the government to please not implement the rollbacks automakers had asked for. Some companies even forged their own agreement with California.

But it was too late, and we are now back in the era of disparate regulatory regimes – something which John Bozzella, head of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation (formerly called Global Automakers), keeps complaining about these days, despite having lobbied for exactly this in the first place.

The US EPA and California are still not fully harmonized, but both released recent new standards which do have somewhat similar targets. If a manufacturer builds towards one set of rules, they’ll probably not be too far off from meeting the other.

So in the end, we did get better emissions regulations and California has continued to push forward with clean air regulations, thus signaling a failure on the part of Mr. Trump to cause the long term harm to Americans that he and his oil industry solicitors so desperately seem to desire.

The most recent EPA standards, finalized in March (after being softened at the auto industry’s request), do not mandate any particular powertrain, but rather require steep emissions cuts – and EVs are the easiest way to achieve lower emissions.

Notably, Tesla lobbied in favor of making this last set of standards stronger, and they also lobbied against ruining the Obama/CA standards in 2016 – being one of very few automakers who were on the correct side of that discussion.

Despite that the President Biden EPA’s rules do not mandate any particular powertrain, Mr. Trump, in his usual ignorance, has said that he will end the nonexistent EV mandate. And now that he has received more votes than his opponent for the first time (after three tries, and despite committing treason in 2021 for which there is a clear legal remedy), it looks like the upcoming EPA might be directed to end these emissions cuts and fuel/health cost savings for Americans.

But in this instance, it sounds like the automakers might actually do the right thing for once, and ask the government not to do any rollbacks, and instead let them continue on with the plans without disruption from a convicted felon who seems determined to cede a US EV manufacturing boom back to China.

Detroit’s Big Three automakers – GM, Ford and Stellantis – are all reportedly trying to figure out how to ensure that these rules stay in place. The mentality is that constantly changing regulations are not beneficial for companies – particularly in the auto realm, where models take on the order of 7 years to plan and execute. Long-term planning is important for the hundreds of billions in manufacturing investment that EVs have attracted in the US during Biden’s EV push.

These attitudes are notable, given that this is not what automakers did in 2016/2017. That time, they compulsively pushed for fewer regulations, and now they are asking for regulations to remain in place.

It’s further notable that Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose company lobbied strongly in favor of emissions cuts and makes more use of the federal EV tax credit than any other company, is now allied with the very entity that’s looking to harm EVs. It seems that we have entered opposite world.

So it remains to be seen where we will go from here – on the one hand, doctorsnursesscientists, environmental groupsmany businessespeople who recognize that they have lungs which they would like to continue using, and so on, generally support the strongest regulation possible. Now, automakers have been added to the pile asking for strong regulations.

On the other hand, a former reality TV host – tagged along with by the CEO of the company that has sold more electric cars than any other – seem determined to kill electric cars, despite the harm that would cause to Americans’ pocketbooks and health insurance premiums. And that famously vindictive character may be even more spurred towards this harmful course of action after failing in his efforts the first time.

Who ya got?


Charge your electric vehicle at home using rooftop solar panels. Find a reliable and competitively priced solar installer near you on EnergySage, for free. They have pre-vetted installers competing for your business, ensuring high-quality solutions and 20-30% savings. It’s free, with no sales calls until you choose an installer. Compare personalized solar quotes online and receive guidance from unbiased Energy Advisers. Get started here. – ad*

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Continue Reading

Trending