An Appreciative Inquiry: How South Carolina’s Electric Cooperatives Build Capacity through Multi-Level Governance


Recommended Citation
Taylor, Keith, and Sarah Outcault. 2019. An Appreciative Inquiry: How South Carolina’s Electric Cooperatives Build Capacity through Multi-Level Governance. U.C. Davis Energy and Efficiency Institute.

Abstract

Electric cooperatives serve over 40 million consumers in the United States, and have a history stretching back eight decades. Historically, the provision of high-quality electricity services at the lowest possible wholesale price to its distribution cooperative members might have proven sufficient to declare generation and transmission (G&T) cooperatives a success. But electric cooperatives’ business and governance models are facing new pressures as distributed energy technologies evolve and emerge; consumer-member preferences shift; and the economics of electric utilities changes regarding the cost structures of nuclear, coal, natural gas, and utility-scale renewables. Little information exists on how the governance models of G&T electric cooperatives are prepared to weather these changes. This study, sponsored by Central Electric Power Cooperative (“Central”) of South Carolina, is an effort to address this gap.

Links

Full Text (at energy.ucdavis.edu)