Cooperatives can be said to have had their conception here in the UK and still today some of most famous high street names are cooperatives of one type or other. New forms of cooperatives allow an expansion of the basic business model that at its simplest is defined as 'a member led organisation'.
Since deregulation of the utilities we have sort of lost our 'people ownership' of our energy, water and waste services and replaced it with a for profit system where as consumers we could also be shareholders and take our stock market risks while happily flitting from supplier to supplier to make our annual cost savings while leaving the new multi-National owners to make a profit for their shareholders as well as pulling money out of the UK economy.
Apart from one known more than profit involved in energy supply, Ebico Ltd operating here in the UK and a handful of community owned generators of renewable energy there are no National member owned organisations in the field. Why not?

In the USA, Touchstone operates a cooperative with around 40 million members who purchase competitively priced energy but also who all get to have a say in what happens to the revenue aka profits. They decide to invest these monies in more energy saving ideas, like renewable energy generation projects, reducing home and work energy consumption, energy related community enterprise development and education and communication programs.

If this cooperative existed it could also extend its services to road fuel, energy efficient vehicles where the collective buying power would generate significant advantages, rapid growth in the widespread adoption of energy efficiency measures and a sense of personal ownership, leadership and community responsibility to make a real difference to the issues facing us all.
Lets make it happen! to borrow a familiar lowcarboneconomy.com tagline or at least tell me why it wouldn't work?