A quarter of the Midwest’s electric customers live in small towns and cities and rural areas that are served by publicly-owned utilities or POUs, a term that includes municipal and co-op utilities, public power districts and state or federally-owned utilities. Though the policies for POU energy efficiency in the Midwest vary from state to state, many of these utilities run strong energy efficiency programs. We identified 360 Midwestern POUs with reported energy efficiency savings in 2019.

Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa have the largest number of POUs providing energy efficiency programs to their customers, because of the large number of POUs in those states and their long history of offering EE programs. Most, but not all, WI POUs are members of the statewide Focus on Energy program administrator. Minnesota POUs saved a total of 273 GWh of electricity in 2019, the most of any state in the region. Missouri, Indiana and Kentucky POUs had the highest average savings per POU, because a small number of POUs were responsible for the bulk of the electricity savings in the state.