By Dakoury Godo-Solo, Environmental Defense Fund and Lidiya Kassahun and Margarita Parra, Clean Energy Works
- Rural electric co-ops face both challenges and opportunities as electric trucks and buses drive new demand. Proactive planning is essential to avoid costly grid upgrades, as well as missed economic and public health benefits.
- A new report prepared by Clean Energy Works for EDF makes the case that by acting proactively now, rural co-ops can accommodate (and even attract) medium and heavy-duty EVs while also reducing long-term grid upgrade costs to their members.
Rural electric cooperatives have always thrived when they’ve looked ahead. Nearly a century ago, they brought power to places investor-owned utilities deemed too costly to serve. Today, they stand at another crossroads. Load growth is accelerating across the country, driven by artificial intelligence, new manufacturing, data centers and the electrification of homes and vehicles. Among these, the electrification of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles – delivery vans, school buses and long-haul trucks – presents both a challenge and an enormous opportunity for rural co-ops.
Electric Trucks and Buses: A Challenge and Opportunity for Rural Co-Ops Share on X
The challenge is straightforward: these vehicles require large amounts of power, often in locations where rural grids were not originally designed for it. A single electric school bus can draw as much electricity as several homes. An electrified truck stop may need a small town’s worth of power. For co-ops already stretched by aging infrastructure and flat revenues, the prospect of unanticipated high-power demand after years of steady or shrinking load can be daunting. Failure to overcome these challenges risks leaving behind rural communities while urban and suburban communities continue electrifying.
But the opportunity is just as clear. For co-op member-owners, truck and bus electrification can increase system utilization and put downward pressure on rates, as they can provide more revenue than a utility’s cost to serve them. Electric trucks and buses also provide enormous benefits to their owners and communities in which they operate. EVs can provide lower fuel and maintenance costs for operators and reduce air pollution in the communities in which they operate. And, through managed charging and vehicle-to-grid services, they can act as flexible loads or even mobile storage – adding new load while mitigating or deferring expensive upgrades and supporting resilient energy systems.
The new report Grid Readiness in Rural Electric Cooperatives for Medium and Heavy Duty Vehicle Electrification makes the case that by acting proactively now, rural co-ops can accommodate (and even attract) these beneficial loads while also reducing long-term grid upgrade costs to their members. Delaying planning until electrified fleets ask for service risks costlier upgrades and missing out on the first-mover advantage of serving this new load. Instead, co-ops can take practical steps now to make the most of electrification trends.
One step is strengthening relationships with capital providers. Co-ops already rely on the U.S. Department of Agriculture, CoBank and the National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation for affordable grants and loans for new capital investments. Co-ops should ensure that transportation electrification is factored into grant and loan terms and the associated load forecasting when working with any of these entities. Aligning USDA grant cycles with the co-op’s capital investment timelines can also help avoid cash flow gaps that too often slow down rural projects.
Another step is to leverage available data and analytics. Tools developed by national labs and industry groups can forecast where electric vehicle demand is most likely to emerge – along freight corridors, near industrial hubs or in school districts eager to switch to electric buses. Many co-ops already use IT platforms like NISC or Meridian that could integrate these forecasting models, but don’t leverage these capabilities today. By applying better data, co-ops can target limited resources to the highest-priority sites.
Strategic grid planning and buildout also matters. Overlaying service territories with maps of priority freight corridors and other areas with a high likelihood of EV adoption can identify where the earliest loads will likely appear, allowing the co-op to anticipate future EV deployments and load growth. Building out the grid today for an all-electric future may be prohibitively expensive, but a phased approach – e.g. designing substations with room to upsize transformers as new loads emerge – keeps upfront costs lower while accommodating future growth.
Proactive engagement with fleet owners is similarly valuable. Companies nationwide have made firm commitments to electrify tens of thousands of delivery vehicles. More than 1,500 school districts in 54 states and territories have already deployed or committed to deploying electric school buses. Plans like these from businesses, schools, and government agencies will shape demand in co-op territories, but only if co-ops are part of the conversation early. Meeting with local fleet operators, requesting load letters in advance and coordinating on siting can turn potential surprises into well-managed projects.
Integrating medium- and heavy-duty vehicles into broader distributed energy resource strategies should be the final piece. Rural co-ops are already innovators here, piloting solar, battery storage and inclusive utility investment programs that enable energy upgrades for members. Adding electric trucks and buses into DER planning – particularly as mobile storage or components of microgrids – could help balance intermittent renewables and provide resilience during outages, offering additional community benefits on top of what the grid does today.
These actions are not just technical. They connect directly to the cooperative principles that guide co-ops: democratic control, concern for community and cooperation among cooperatives. Preparing for electric trucks and buses is about more than wires and transformers – it is about ensuring affordability, reliability and opportunity for the members who own the system.
The choice now is between leadership and lagging. If co-ops lead, they can shape transportation electrification in ways that maximize community benefit: lowering long-term costs, improving air quality and strengthening local economies. If they lag, they risk being caught off guard by member demand and national fleet commitments, facing steep costs and lost opportunities to grow their customer base.
With foresight, planning and collaboration, co-ops can support and even accelerate electric truck and bus adoption in rural America. In doing so, they can once again prove that cooperatives are not just keeping the lights on, but lighting the way forward.
Dakoury Godo-Solo , Project Manager, Electric Vehicle Charging Systems, EDF, works at the intersection of the grid and vehicle electrification. More specifically, Dakoury focuses on ensuring the regulatory and policy reform needed to prepare the grid to accommodate medium and heavy-duty charging loads in a timely fashion. Some of the crucial parts of his work include writing regulatory comments, conducting research and advocating for charging infrastructure related best practices.
Lidiya Kassahun is a Senior Associate at Clean Energy Works. She has worked on diverse projects, including transport decarbonization, medium—and heavy-duty vehicle electrification, and coordinated international transport coalitions in Africa, Europe, and the United States. Lidiya was a Technical Advisor for the Green People’s Energy project at a German development agency, where she collaborated with the Ministry of Energy and Transport to improve electricity distribution in rural communities. While at the World Resources Institute, Lidiya helped identify strategies to increase electric bus adoption in major East African and Latin American cities.
Margarita Parra, Director of Transportation Decarbonization, Clean Energy Works. Margarita leads Clean Energy Works’ transportation portfolio. Trained as a chemical engineer from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia with a masters in Environmental Engineering from New Zealand and a diploma in Sustainable Development from India, Ms. Parra has worked for more than two decades in Latin America, China, India, and the United States to reduce local air pollution and global carbon emissions from transportation.
You can download the EDF/CEW report, Grid Readiness in Rural Electric Cooperatives for Medium and Heavy Duty Vehicle Electrification here: www.edf.org/Rural-Co-ops-and-EVs
This piece originally appeared in Public Utilities Fortnightly. see it here.
