Implementing Energy Efficiency: Challenges and Opportunities for Rural Electric Co-Operatives and Small Municipal Utilities

This report explores the fact that most studies of demand-side management (DSM) programs are focused on large investor-owned utilities, however, smaller rural co-operatives and municipal utilities provide a significant share of the electricity consumed in the United States. The study presented in this report finds that while there are similarities in efforts to implement DSM programs, there are also challenges in their organizational size and the rural nature of their customer base that require smaller utilities to adopt different policy approaches.