Along Those Lines

A pandemic-era trend has many Americans relocating from urban areas to smaller cities and towns, but they're facing a growing shortage of available, affordable housing. What's causing this unprecedented housing gap, and what are rural leaders, including electric co-ops, doing to fix it? Hear from Alex Horowitz, project director of the Housing Policy Initiative at the Pew Charitable Trusts, and Lea Hoover, director of member and strategic services at Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative.

The reliability of America's electric grid is no longer a guarantee amid government regulations forcing the disorderly closure of always-on power plants in favor of renewables and demand exceeding supply during critical times in several regions of the country. What have electric co-ops been doing to raise the alarm and offer solutions? Hear from NRECA CEO Jim Matheson and Associated Electric Cooperative CEO David Tudor.

Tony Anderson, general manager of Cherryland Electric Cooperative in Michigan, recently kicked off his two-year term as NRECA president. He's a familiar figure in the electric cooperative program, with a career that has included working at five co-ops in five states and a high-profile charitable campaign that involved running a marathon in every state. Hear from Anderson about his career track, what he'll focus on as NRECA president and what his priorities are going forward.

Over the last 50 years, the Electric Cooperative Youth Tour has sent over 75,000 rural teenagers to Washington, D.C., for the "trip of a lifetime," where they meet with their elected officials and build relationships. Through the Youth Tour and Youth Leadership Council, NRECA works to cultivate our next generation of co-op leaders. Learn more in this episode from NRECA Youth Programs and Training Manager Beth Knudson and 2023 Youth Leadership Council national spokesperson Rukaya Alrubaye.

Electric co-ops saw a major victory last year with the inclusion of direct-pay incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. The law gives co-ops and other tax-exempt entities the ability to receive reimbursements from the government for deploying new energy technologies, putting them on a playing field with for-profit providers. How does this change the game for co-ops going forward? Hear from NRECA's Paul Gutierrez, Minnkota Power Cooperative's Mac McLennan and Northeastern REMC's Eric Jung.

More than 200 electric co-ops have already built or started work to offer broadband either on their own or in a partnership, and that number will only grow with billions in funding on the way to help close the digital divide. But what does it take for a co-op to create and run a broadband business? Hear from Craig Eccher, former CEO of Tri-County REC in Pennsylvania and its broadband subsidiary, Bill Gerski of Beacon Broadband, a subsidiary of Coos-Curry EC in Oregon, and NRECA's Paul Breakman.

Small modular reactors and their smaller cousins, microreactors, are getting plenty of buzz as an important potential source of carbon-free power amid the energy transition. Are they capable of delivering on their many promises from a technological and financial standpoint, and how long will it take until we could realistically expect these devices to be added to the grid? Learn more from NRECA's Dan Walsh and Copper Valley Electric Association's Travis Million.

The $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law passed in late 2021 offers an unprecedented opportunity for electric co-ops to add services and improve their systems, but it also presents a challenge in terms of navigating the complicated and time-consuming process of applying for federal grants. Hear from NRECA's Lauren Khair on the association's infrastructure resources for co-ops and Victoria Electric Cooperative's Jessica Gray on how her co-op is managing the grant application process.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month edition: What do an electric cooperative's internal and operational networks look like to a hacker, and what can co-ops do to tighten their defenses? Hear from Ryan Newlon, NRECA's cybersecurity solutions principal, and Bryan Hatton, a cybersecurity researcher at the Idaho National Laboratory whose work includes "white hat hacking."