Missouri Law Review Volume 85 Issue 2 Article 20 Spring 2020 Greening the Old New Deal: Strengthening Rural Electric Cooperative Supports and Oversight to Combat Climate Change Gabriel Pacyniak Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/mlr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Gabriel Pacyniak, Greening the Old New Deal: Strengthening Rural Electric Cooperative Supports and Oversight to Combat Climate Change, 85 MO. L. REV. (2020) Available at: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/mlr/vol85/iss2/20 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at University of Missouri School of Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Missouri Law Review by an authorized editor of University of Missouri School of Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Pacyniak: Greening the Old New Deal: Strengthening Rural Electric Cooperati Greening the Old New Deal: Strengthening Rural Electric Cooperative Supports and Oversight to Combat Climate Change Gabriel Pacyniak* ABSTRACT New Deal cooperatives succeeded in electrifying rural America when for- profit utilities would not. Today, however, rural electric cooperatives are lagging behind when it comes to meeting the challenge of climate change. Cooperatives have collectively been slower to embrace the shift to low-carbon electricity than for-profit and municipal utilities and have served as a drag on state and federal clean energy and climate policies. This is partially because of the structural differences between cooperatives and other utilities, but also because of a weak and underdetermined federal and state regulatory structure. A few cooperatives in Colorado and New Mexico are seeking to lead the charge to a low-carbon electricity system, but they are finding themselves stymied by their own power supply cooperative.