NRECA: New Report Shows Electric Co-ops Are ‘Powerful Engines of Economic Development’

A new analysis finds that electric cooperatives have a wide-ranging economic impact in the United States, supporting nearly 623,000 jobs with $51 billion in pay and benefits each year while contributing hundreds of billions of dollars to the economy over a five-year period.

According to this analysis, co-ops’ activity contributed $554 billion to U.S. gross domestic product between 2018 and 2022 for an average of $111 billion per year. Co-ops also generated $135 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue over this period.

The report, “Economic Powerhouses: The Economic Impacts of America’s Electric Cooperatives,” was commissioned by NRECA and the National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corp. (CFC) and conducted by Strategen Consulting, an energy strategy consulting firm and NRECA associate member. It details the economic impacts of distribution and generation and transmission cooperatives’ annual capital, operations and maintenance expenditures as they engage in the distribution, transmission and generation of electricity, as well as the disbursement of excess operating revenue returned to consumer-members as capital credits.

Click here to view the original article from NRECA.