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Our Vision

Cooperative Energy Futures believes that the average household can play a powerful role in building solutions to energy problems. This power lies in community and collaboration. Through community energy efficiency, we want to show that truly sustainable solutions save money. We connect neighbors to work with investors, contractors and energy providers to determine their own community’s development.

The current debate about the energy crisis and global warming focuses on what policies, technologies and financial solutions need to be developed to make the change. Most people view action to fix the crises as out of reach of ordinary people, requiring costly new technologies and complex policy mechanisms. This way of thinking leaves most of us with little to do but wait. Rising energy costs that we experience directly seem outside our own control.

But this is not the case.

Cooperative Energy Futures does things differently. We engage members of a neighborhood to work together in efforts that save money and reduce vulnerability to rising energy prices while also building momentum and capital for broader energy solutions. In this way, we can empower our communities with a sense of their broader role in energy solutions that help save money. We see that our biggest challenge has always been implementing the simple, easy, and cheap technologies we already have available, such as light bulbs and faucet aerators. We are hindered by a lack of social technology, not scientific technology. Cooperative Energy Futures supplies the social technology we need. Our communities are the solutions to our most pressing challenges, whether they be home energy costs or the climate crisis.

Average people matter because America’s residential and small-business units account for over 20% of our energy use and carbon emissions. Americans, on average, spend 5% of their income on energy, with low-income residents paying the most – about 16%. There is huge potential here to create savings; simple energy efficiency measures can save 20-50% of that energy. Cooperative Energy Futures will works with you to bring those benefits into your home and your neighborhood. By bringing people together around efficiency, we create economies of scale that bring down costs for individuals and create community.