PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

By Todd Ware, President & Chief Executive Officer

After working in the utility business for almost 30 years, l still marvel at how our interconnected electric network, which we commonly call "the grid", works on a daily basis. The grid has taken equal parts of engineering, ingenuity and hard work to design, build and sustain a network that makes electricity available every hour of every day, regardless of the temperature. Please read more about the essential workings of the power grid in the article on page 4

Unfortunately, we can no longer take 24/7 electricity availability for granted. Over the past several years, we have experienced a tightening of the balance between supply and demand that is critical to the function of our power grid. Since 2020, the electricity supply has proved inadequate each time a large area of the country has experienced extreme temperatures for more than a day or two. In times of unmet demand, the regional grid operators shut off power to consumers to keep the system from crashing.

Across the country, we are facing the disorderly retirement of baseload coal and nuclear power plants because of poorly conceived and harmful energy policies that include:

Overreaching and excessive environmental regulations that result in unnecessarily high costs while providing only minimal ecological benefits.

Poorly designed market rules that under-compensate reliable baseload power plants that supply a steady and controllable output while over-compensating less reliable and intermittent sources.

Unreasonable goals and deadlines to achieve more significant reductions in carbon emissions from electricity providers, even though the U.S. electric sector has cut CO2 emissions by 36% since 2005 while producing nearly 5% more electricity.

Organizations charged with ensuring a reliable electric grid, such as the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (nerc.com) and the PJM Interconnection (pjm.com), have each independently published reports that outline concerning trends that are resulting in increased reliability risks.

While the mission of your cooperative and our commitment to you remains the same, the harsh reality is that it is getting more and more challenging to bring you safe, reliable, affordable electricity. Therefore, we need changes in the policies that affect our electric reliability and supply.