Formed in 1938, Cobb Electric Membership Corporation, more commonly known as Cobb EMC, is a non-profit electric utility company serving parts of Cobb, Cherokee, Bartow, Paulding, and small sections of Fulton counties in Georgia. In 2009, it had total sales of over 3.8 billion kilowatt-hours (13.7 billion megajoules).
It was founded in 1938 with 489 residential members and 14 business accounts, and now serves about 200,000 homes and businesses (including over 180,000 in northwest metro Atlanta), making it one of the largest electric membership corporations in the state and country. However, most residents in Cobb and other counties are customers of Georgia Power, while those within the city limits of Marietta (the Cobb county seat) are customers of Marietta Power, a municipal utility run by the city.
Cobb EMC participates in a rebate program for customers who install solar panels. [1] In January 2009, the company joined with Green Power EMC to buy 17 megawatts of electric power from a company which upgraded the power plant at the former Fruit of the Loom factory in Rabun Gap to use logging biomass as a fuel. [2]
Cobb Energy Management Corporation, usually known as Cobb Energy, was created as a for-profit subsidiary in 1997.
It eventually sparked a lawsuit by Cobb EMC members, charging that their money was being funneled into the new company, after a 2007 exposé by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution . Shareholders prevailed, and won again on appeal to the Georgia Court of Appeals in April 2010. Cobb Energy was folded back into the non-profit cooperative. Co-op board elections, delayed by the litigation since 2007, were scheduled to resume in the fall of 2011. [3]
In early January 2011, the CEO of Cobb EMC was arrested and charged with 31 counts of racketeering and theft after his indictment by a county grand jury in the matter, citing more than 50 million dollars taken from or not paid to the EMC by Cobb Energy. [4]
Prior to these events, the company purchased naming rights to the new Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, which still bears the name.
Southern Company is an American gas and electric utility holding company based in the Southern United States. It is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with executive offices also located in Birmingham, Alabama. The company is the second largest utility company in the U.S. in terms of customer base, as of 2021. Through its subsidiaries it serves 9 million gas and electric utility customers in 6 states. Southern Company's regulated regional electric utilities serve a 120,000-square-mile (310,000 km2) territory with 27,000 miles (43,000 km) of distribution lines.
Portland General Electric (PGE) is a Fortune 1000 public utility based in Portland, Oregon. It distributes electricity to customers in parts of Multnomah, Clackamas, Marion, Yamhill, Washington, and Polk counties – 44% of the inhabitants of Oregon. Founded in 1888 as the Willamette Falls Electric Company, the company has been an independent company for most of its existence, though was briefly owned by the Houston-based Enron Corporation from 1997 until 2006 when Enron divested itself of PGE during its bankruptcy.
Energy Future Holdings Corporation is an electric utility company headquartered in Energy Plaza in Downtown Dallas, Texas, United States. The majority of the company's power generation is through coal and nuclear power plants. From 1998 to 2007, the company was known as TXU Corporation until its $45 billion leveraged buyout by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, TPG Capital and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners. That purchase was the largest leveraged buyout in history. As of 2019, TXU Energy is a subsidiary of publicly traded Vistra Energy.
A utility cooperative is a type of cooperative that is tasked with the delivery of a public utility such as electricity, water or telecommunications to its members. Profits are either reinvested for infrastructure or distributed to members in the form of "patronage" or "capital credits", which are dividends paid on a member's investment in the cooperative.
PPL Corporation is an energy company headquartered in Allentown, Pennsylvania in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania. The company is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange as NYSE: PPL and is part of the S&P 500. As of 2022, the company had $7.9 billion in revenue, 6,500 employees, over $37 billion in assets, and serves 3.6 million customers.
Exelon Corporation is a public utility headquartered in Chicago, and incorporated in Pennsylvania. Exelon is the largest electric parent company in the United States by revenue and is the largest regulated electric utility in the United States with approximately 10 million customers. The company is ranked 99th on the Fortune 500.
Constellation Energy Corporation is an American energy company headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. The company provides electric power, natural gas, and energy management services. It has approximately two million customers across the continental United States.
Enmax Corporation is a vertically integrated utility with operations across Alberta, Canada, and in Maine, U.S. Through its subsidiaries, ENMAX Power Corporation and Versant Power, ENMAX owns and operates transmission and distribution utilities that deliver electricity to customers in Calgary, Alberta, and northern and eastern Maine. Through ENMAX Energy Corporation, ENMAX owns and operates power generation facilities and offers electricity and natural gas products and services to residential, commercial and industrial customers across Alberta.
Integrys Energy Group, Inc. was an American energy company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. It was formed by the merger of WPS Resources Corp. and Peoples Energy Corp. on February 21, 2007. The chairman, President, and chief executive officer was Charles A. Schrock. On June 23, 2014, Integrys announced that it was being acquired by Wisconsin Energy Corporation for $9.1 billion. Also in 2014, Integrys entered into an agreement to sell 100% of the Upper Peninsula Power Company (UPPCO) to Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Partners LP for $298.9 million.
SCANA Corporation was an American regulated electric and natural gas public utility. The company was based in Cayce, South Carolina, a suburb of Columbia, South Carolina. Following the Nukegate scandal, the company's stock fell and the company was in disrepair. In January 2019, SCANA was acquired by Dominion Energy. The corporate name SCANA was not an acronym, but was taken from the letters in South Carolina.
WEC Energy Group is an American company based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that provides electricity and natural gas to 4.4 million customers across four states.
Avangrid, Inc., is an energy services and delivery company. Avangrid serves about 3.1 million customers throughout New England, Pennsylvania and New York in the United States.
Southern Company Gas, formerly AGL Resources, is an American Fortune 500 energy services holding company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The company's operations consist of natural gas distribution, wholesale services, retail operations, and midstream operations. Southern Company Gas is one of the largest natural gas distribution companies in the United States. The company serves approximately 4.5 million utility customers through its regulated distribution subsidiaries across four states. Southern Company Gas made the Fortune 500 list in 2015, Forbes 2000 in 2006, and is a member of the S&P 500 Index. In 2016, Southern Company acquired AGL Resources and renamed it Southern Company Gas.
Oglethorpe Power Corporation is a medium-sized electric utility in Georgia, United States. Formed in 1974, Oglethorpe is a not-for-profit cooperative owned by the 38 electric membership corporations that it serves. The utility's headquarters are in Tucker, Georgia.
Metro Atlanta, designated by the United States Office of Management and Budget as the Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Roswell metropolitan statistical area, is the most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. state of Georgia and the sixth-largest in the United States, based on the July 1, 2023 metropolitan area population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Its economic, cultural, and demographic center is Atlanta, and its total population was 6,307,261 in the 2023 estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Jackson Electric Membership Corporation is one of 39 not for profit membership-owned electric cooperatives located in the U.S. state of Georgia with service in the North-East metropolitan Atlanta area. Power is supplied by Constellation Energy and Oglethorpe Power Corporation which supplies generation capacity to most all EMCs in Georgia with the exception of a few supplied by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp. is a Canadian renewable energy and regulated utility conglomerate with assets across North America. Algonquin actively invests in hydroelectric, wind and solar power facilities, and utility businesses, through its three operating subsidiaries: Bermuda Electric Light Company, Liberty Power and Liberty Utilities.
Gas South, based in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, is a natural gas provider that serves more than 425,000 residential, commercial and governmental customers in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, New Jersey and Ohio.
Sawnee EMC is an electrical generation and transmission cooperative founded in July 1938 and based in Cumming, Georgia. As of 2022, Sawnee EMC is the third-largest electric co-op in Georgia and the eighth-largest in the United States, operating 11,982 miles of power lines in seven counties: Cherokee, Dawson, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett, Hall, and Lumpkin. It is a member of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and Touchstone Energy.