This short whiteboard animation explains really well just what an electric cooperative is and how it works. The 3-and-a-half-minute video is well-worth watching.

You’ll see how electric co-ops started in this country, back during the Roosevelt era when farmers and ranchers put in $5 each for membership and equity in a cooperative to bring electricity to their rural areas.

And you’ll see how the not-for-profit electric co-ops operate in ways that really align with how we think and live here in Hawai‘i. Members elect local directors to represent them. Co-ops work with other co-ops (they cooperate) for financing and research, to help after storms, and other times when needed. Profits are returned to members.

A co-op model is also better positioned to accomodate zero or negative economic growth than an investor-owned model.

Forty-two million people in the U.S. currently get their electricity through an electric co-op.

With a co-op model as our electric utility, we would not be all by ourselves. There’s no need to worry that it would just be us out here against the world.  Watch this short video and you’ll see there is a robust association of more than 900 co-ops in the U. S., all helping each other. No one is left behind.