In a recent interview with APPA, Fred Clark, President and CEO of Energy Southeast, details the decision-making process behind the move to rebrand Alabama Municipal Electric Authority and change its name to Energy Southeast.
At the start of 2025, Alabama Municipal Electric Authority changed its name to Energy Southeast. Energy Southeast is a joint action agency that is a wholesale power provider for 11 public power utilities in Alabama.
“Some years ago we saw an initiative to be able to grow a resource in terms of Energy Southeast, a cooperative district. We have thought about rebranding for many years, probably 10 years, as we focus on improving our image both in state and out of state,” he said. “But then through this initiative, which is the ability to do prepayments of energy using the tax code associated with that to reduce costs for public power, which led us to create a cooperative district entity which can issue bonds for the purposes of reducing energy costs.”
In doing so, “we've been successful thus far over the last several years of issuing some $2.1 billion in bonds by Energy Southeast, a cooperative district, and saving some $100 million over a seven-year period -- approximately $14 and a half million dollars annually -- with our first three issuances.”
Through the beginnings of Energy Southeast, a cooperative district, that “led us to come to strategies of providing this same benefit to public power across the country and so that was the beginning of our rebranding thoughts and efforts as it not only is supportive of our existing members, but how we can assist public power.”
The move follows the success of recent energy initiatives and partnerships that have expanded Energy Southeast’s reach far beyond its headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama. Also, Energy Southeast is broadening its services, functionally and geographically.
Clark offered additional details on those energy initiatives and partnerships, as well as the ways in which it is broadening its services.
“We of course are very pleased with our power supply initiatives, which will have our member cities as some of the low cost providers in the Southeast and eastern half of the United States,” he said.
“But in this effort, as we have talked about the prepayment initiative, we believe that that will save public power millions of dollars as they participate in this over the next several years, and so we're so excited about not only where we stand in power supply, but about the benefits of this new program.”
