If you live in the United States, there is a one-in-eight chance that you own your electric utility. That is to say that there’s a one-in-eight chance that your electric utility has a similar structure to a credit union or food cooperative. And if you are one of the many millions of residents who pay a gas and electric bill to a co-op utility, then you have a lot of potential power that can be leveraged to save yourself—and others in your community—money through proven affordability programs that shift local infrastructure toward efficient, modernized, renewable energy.

But it’s not just a random roll of an eight-sided die that determines whether or not you belong to a cooperative utility. If you live in a rural area, it’s quite likely you are a member-owner of an electric co-op. If you live in a bigger city, it’s almost guaranteed that you aren’t.

About 13% of customers—or 42 million residents around the United States—are member-owners of rural electric cooperatives .…