CoPower: The union-made choice for sustainable energy

CoPower is a non-profit, union-founded, member-run and member-owned co-operative providing sustainable residential electricity to more than 3500 members.

Backed by unions and environmental groups, CoPower directs a portion of its funds to community projects, including some organised by Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA, to support workers affected by global warming.

It also operates a “participatory budgeting” model whereby customer members allocate electricity revenue on a one person, one vote basis. In one year, 25% of electricity revenue funded a "solidarity credit", helping low-income members reduce their power bills.

Godfrey Moase, Executive Director of the United Workers Union, co-founded CoPower in 2015, believing that collective action could improve lives while reshaping the electricity system. Godfrey and fellow unionists believed that collective action could improve customers' lives while influencing the broader electricity system.

When Moase and co devised CoPower, they approached “a bunch of unions, cooperatives, NGOs and community power groups. We really wanted CoPower to sit at the intersection of various social movements that brought different strengths and experience different problems”.

Godfrey told Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA that CoPower is set apart by its “commitment to democratic processes”.

“There are other cooperatives and social enterprises, but our model is different because, number one, we’re not reliant on any small group of well-off people. We’ve deliberately set it up so that it is situated within the social movements and within the labour movement, the climate action movement and the cooperative movements.”

Godfrey said, “at heart what makes us different is that we don’t see the energy transition as just an environmental or technical transition but also a social transition”. 

Members choose their level of involvement, from simply paying their bill to actively deciding where money is spent. In 2022–23, CoPower allocated $100,000 to initiatives including First Nations solidarity, climate action, and economic democracy.

🔗 Learn more: cooperativepower.org.au