United Power CEO added to NextGen board

BRIGHTON — United Power CEO Mark Gabriel will join the board of NextGen Cooperative Alliance as a founding member, a press release said.

NextGen represents distribution cooperatives. United Power is a member-owned, non-profit electric co-op covering 900 square miles, including 90,000 households and 300,000 people on the northern Front Range.

The alliance said its focus is on clean energy, local control and cooperative democratic oversight and on “developing better, more principled relationships with power providers [so co-ops] can work together to establish more equitable and flexible agreements” with those companies.

United Power is “advancing policy to shift away from a decades-old model,” Gabriel said, “which requires re-envisioning and transforming current relationships with power providers.”

The co-op is a member of Westminster-based Tri-State Generation and Transmission and is tussling with the group, which it has sued, over the issue of local control and whether and how much it must pay to break its contracts with it.

Gabriel was named CEO of United Power in February.

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