Formed in 1938, Cobb Electric Membership Corporation, more commonly known as Cobb EMC, is a

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

electric utility An electric utility, or a power company, is a company in the electric power industry (often a public utility) that engages in electricity generation and distribution of electricity for sale generally in a regulated market. Electric utilities are ...

company A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of legal people, whether Natural person, natural, Juridical person, juridical or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members ...

serving parts of

Cobb Cobb may refer to: People * Cobb (surname), a list of people and fictional characters with the surname Cobb * Cobb Rooney (1900–1973), American professional football running back Places New Zealand * Cobb River * Cobb Reservoir * Cobb Power ...

Cherokee The Cherokee (; , or ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern ...

, Bartow, Paulding, and small sections of Fulton counties in

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

. In 2009, it had total sales of over 3.8 billion

kilowatt-hour A kilowatt-hour ( unit symbol: kW⋅h or kW h; commonly written as kWh) is a non-SI unit of energy equal to 3.6 megajoules (MJ) in SI units, which is the energy delivered by one kilowatt of power for one hour. Kilowatt-hours are a comm ...

s (13.7 billion

megajoule The joule ( , or ; symbol: J) is the unit of energy in the International System of Units (SI). In terms of SI base units, one joule corresponds to one kilogram- metre squared per second squared One joule is equal to the amount of work don ...

s). 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 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 sixt ...

), making it one of the largest

electric membership corporation 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 t ...

s in the state and country. However, most residents in Cobb and other counties are customers of

Georgia Power Georgia Power is an electric utility headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It was established as the Georgia Railway and Power Company and began operations in 1902 running streetcars in Atlanta as a successor to the Atlanta Consol ...

, while those within the

city limit City limits or city boundaries refer to the defined boundary or border of a city. The area within the city limit can be called the city proper. Town limit/boundary and village limit/boundary apply to towns and villages. Similarly, corporate li ...

s of Marietta (the Cobb

county seat A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or parish (administrative division), civil parish. The term is in use in five countries: Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, and the United States. An equiva ...

) are customers of Marietta Power, a municipal utility run by the city. Cobb EMC participates in a rebate program for customers who install

solar panel A solar panel is a device that converts sunlight into electricity by using photovoltaic (PV) cells. PV cells are made of materials that produce excited electrons when exposed to light. These electrons flow through a circuit and produce direct ...

s. In January 2009, the company joined with Green Power EMC to buy 17

megawatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...

s of

electric power Electric power is the rate of transfer of electrical energy within a electric circuit, circuit. Its SI unit is the watt, the general unit of power (physics), power, defined as one joule per second. Standard prefixes apply to watts as with oth ...

from a company which upgraded the

power plant A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the electricity generation, generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electr ...

at the former

Fruit of the Loom Fruit of the Loom is an American company that manufactures clothing, particularly casual wear and undergarment, underwear. The company's world headquarters are located in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Since 2002, it has been a wholly owned subsidiary ...

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. Th ...

in Rabun Gap to use

logging Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidder, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or trunk (botany), logs onto logging truck, trucksbiomass Biomass is a term used in several contexts: in the context of ecology it means living organisms, and in the context of bioenergy it means matter from recently living (but now dead) organisms. In the latter context, there are variations in how ...

as a

fuel A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work (physics), work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chem ...

Cobb Energy

Cobb Energy Management Corporation, usually known as Cobb Energy, was created as a for-profit

subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company, or daughter company is a company (law), company completely or partially owned or controlled by another company, called the parent company or holding company, which has legal and financial control over the subsidia ...

in 1997. It eventually sparked a

lawsuit A lawsuit is a proceeding by one or more parties (the plaintiff or claimant) against one or more parties (the defendant) in a civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today ...

by Cobb EMC members, charging that their money was being funneled into the new company, after a 2007

exposé Expose, exposé, or exposed may refer to: News sources * Exposé (journalism), a form of investigative journalism * '' The Exposé'', a British conspiracist website * ''Exeposé'', a student-run newspaper of the University of Exeter Film and TV F ...

by the ''

Atlanta Journal-Constitution ''The Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' (''AJC'') is an American daily newspaper based in metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia. It is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the result of the merger ...

''.

Shareholder A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of corporate stock refers to an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the ...

s prevailed, and won again on

appeal In law, an appeal is the process in which Legal case, cases are reviewed by a higher authority, where parties request a formal change to an official decision. Appeals function both as a process for error correction as well as a process of cla ...

to the

Georgia Court of Appeals The Georgia Court of Appeals is the intermediate-level appellate court for the state of Georgia, United States. The court is a single entity with fifteen judges. The judges are assigned into five divisions of three judges each, with the assignm ...

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. In early January 2011, the

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

of Cobb EMC was

arrest An arrest is the act of apprehending and taking a person into custody (legal protection or control), usually because the person has been suspected of or observed committing a crime. After being taken into custody, the person can be question ...

ed and charged with 31 counts of

racketeering Racketeering is a type of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercion, coercive, fraud, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a "racket") to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit. ...

and

theft Theft (, cognate to ) is the act of taking another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. The word ''theft'' is also used as a synonym or informal shor ...

after his

indictment An indictment ( ) is a formal accusation that a person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that use the concept of felonies, the most serious criminal offense is a felony; jurisdictions that do not use that concept often use that of an ind ...

by a county

grand jury A grand jury is a jury empowered by law to conduct legal proceedings, investigate potential criminal conduct, and determine whether criminal charges should be brought. A grand jury may subpoena physical evidence or a person to testify. A grand ju ...

in the matter, citing more than 50 million dollars taken from or not paid to the EMC by Cobb Energy. Prior to these events, the company purchased

naming rights Naming rights are a financial transaction and form of advertising or memorialization where a corporation, person, or other entity purchases the right to name a facility, object, location, program, or event (most often sports venues), typical ...

to the new

Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre is a performing arts venue located in the Cumberland/Galleria edge city, in northwest Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The $145 million facility celebrated its grand opening September 15, 2007, with a concer ...

, which still bears the name.

Partners and affiliates

ENERGY STAR Energy Star (trademarked ENERGY STAR) is an Efficient energy use, energy-efficiency program established in 1992. It is administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The EPA ...

* Green Power EMC * Gas South *

Touchstone Energy Touchstone Energy Cooperatives (also called simply Touchstone) is a cooperative federation composed of more than 750 local, consumer-owned utility cooperatives in 46 states in the United States The United States of America (USA), also know ...

* Georgia Electric Membership Corporation (Georgia EMC)

References

{{reflist

External links

Cobb EMC
official site
Cobb Energy
official site
Cobb EMC Truth
a

watchdog group Watchdog journalism is a form of investigative journalism where journalists, authors or publishers of a news publication fact-check and interview political and public figures to increase accountability in democratic governance systems. Role ...

Take Back Cobb EMC
a citizen action group
Gas South
a wholly owned subsidiary Energy companies established in 1938 Cobb County, Georgia Cherokee County, Georgia Bartow County, Georgia Paulding County, Georgia Fulton County, Georgia Calhoun County, Georgia Clay County, Georgia Quitman County, Georgia Randolph County, Georgia Electric power companies of the United States 1938 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state)