Many moves on the Energy pathway require careful planning: insulating your house, installing a heat pump, adding solar power to your property—each one usually means hiring a contractor, obtaining a permit, and often having a conversation with your landlord or banker. But shifting your region’s electricity supply toward wind and solar is simpler. You’ll need just a few minutes and nobody’s permission: pick a wind or solar “green” power program, choose how to pay for it, and your demand on the public power grid will be matched by clean electricity generation. No equipment, no one climbing on your roof.

June is a fitting month for cleaner electricity. Global Wind Day falls on June 15 to celebrate an energy source that now sets in motion about one in twelve of the world’s working electrons. Next Sunday, June 21, is the northern hemisphere’s summer solstice, the longest day of the year. Wind and sunlight are endless, abundant resources. This week’s step is to make them a larger share of the world energy market.

The Energy pathway leads to more value from every watt generated by clean, renewable sources. We’ve shared many steps to improve efficiency and electrify: sealing drafts, upgrading to heat pumps, and cooking with induction. Choosing where your electricity comes from solves the supply side: making our electrical grid more sustainable so that everything you plug into it gets more sustainable, too.

What You’re Actually Paying For

Consider what’s behind nearly every light switch. The average American home draws about 10,500 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, and roughly 60 percent of electricity in the United States still comes from burning fossil fuels, which creates dangerous pollution. Carbon dioxide gets the most attention, but it’s only part of the danger. Burning coal throws fine particles, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury into the air—the pollutants behind asthma hospitalizations, acid rain, and mercury-laced fish.

A 2021 Harvard-led study estimated that fine-particle pollution from fossil fuels contributed to roughly 8.7 million premature deaths worldwide in 2018, about one in five deaths that year. A large share of that burning happens at power plants, to keep our lights on.

Methane (also called “natural” gas) burns cleaner than coal, but there’s an insidious loss with that form of fuel, too. Fossil fuels are finite, concentrated materials that the planet spent hundreds of millions of years making. They’re the raw stock for steel, plastics, fertilizers, and medicines—things we could use and reuse for generations. Burning them is a one-way trip: a flash of heat scattering the molecules into air and water, gone for good.

Wind and solar power are different. They arrive every day, whether we catch them or not. Choosing a renewable supply shifts your household’s share toward fuel-free flows and away from coal, petroleum, and methane. That allows us to find better uses for finite fossil materials than turning them into single-use fuel.

Can You Choose Who Supplies Your Electricity?

Here’s where this week’s step requires expert guidance. While every American can help clean up our electrical grid, exactly how to do it depends on where you live. Whether you can choose who generates the power you pay for on your utility bill depends on how your state regulates its electricity market.

The wires and poles that deliver power to your home are controlled by a state-mandated monopoly almost everywhere—one utility, no competition, by design. What varies is the supply portion: the facilities that actually generate the electricity that flows through those wires. In “deregulated” states with retail choice, you can choose your supply company, including one selling 100 percent renewable power. In “regulated” states without retail choice, your utility has a monopoly on both delivery and supply, so you can’t choose your supply company.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, here’s roughly where each state stands for residential customers. But as you check what your state allows, there are a few wrinkles worth knowing. Even inside states with retail electricity choice, if your power comes from a municipal utility or a rural electric cooperative—Austin Energy in Texas, for example, or many small co-ops—you’re often outside the competitive market, because those utilities chose not to join it. And the reverse is true, too: plenty of municipalities and co-ops run excellent renewable programs of their own within states without electricity choice. Your state sets the rules, but your specific utility decides how they apply to you. The surest way to know what choice you actually have is to look at your electric bill and your utility’s website.

Where Households Have Retail Electricity Choice

If you live in Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Washington, D.C., you can pick a competitive supplier for the supply portion of your bill, often including 100% renewable plans. Texas goes further: in the ERCOT grid area (about 85% of the state), choosing a provider is mandatory (there’s no default supplier like there is in other states with electricity choice).

Where Electricity Choice Is Limited

In some states, residential switching is capped, waitlisted, or reserved mostly for commercial customers. Some allow switching only to buy 100% renewable power that your utility doesn’t offer. States with limited choice include Michigan (10% cap, currently full with a waitlist), Nevada, Oregon, and Virginia. California is a special case: direct access for most residential customers remains closed or highly limited, but Community Choice Aggregation programs in many areas allow cities or counties to procure electricity on residents’ behalf, typically with an opt-out structure and renewable-energy tiers.

Where Electricity Supply Is Still A Monopoly

In Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, a monopoly utility both supplies and delivers your power. You cannot choose your supplier. (But you can still go renewable another way—see below.)

You Can Go Renewable Even Without “Choice”

If your state still operates with a monopoly electricity market, don’t lose hope. Switching suppliers isn’t the only way to put clean power behind your meter. Three other routes might be open to you:

  1. The first is a utility green-power program, sometimes called green pricing. You keep your standard utility and add a renewable option to your existing bill, usually for a small premium. Hundreds of utilities across dozens of states offer one, in both regulated and deregulated states alike.

  2. The second is community solar: you subscribe to a share of a local solar farm and get credit on your bill for the power it produces. It’s a good fit for renters and for anyone whose own roof won’t work, and it’s spreading into more states each year.

  3. The third, available to anyone, is buying renewable energy certificates (RECs) from a certified provider. A REC represents the clean attributes of a megawatt-hour of renewable generation. Buying one is more abstract than the first two—you’re not changing anything about your bill—but it’s a legitimate way to support clean generation when nothing else is on offer.

How to Do It

Start at your own utility’s website and look for “green power,” “renewable option,” or “green pricing.” Many programs let you choose how much of your electricity to match—from a partial block up to your full household consumption. Review your bill to see how many kWh you use; most homes use less than 1,000 kWh per month on average over the year. Renters are often welcome, many programs have no long-term contract, and you can usually cancel anytime. Your voluntary payment supports renewable energy above and beyond the minimum amount of clean power utilities are already required to deliver—creating market demand and funding for more wind and solar generation.

If your state offers retail electricity choice, you’ll find competitive suppliers selling renewable plans. Look for the Green-e label, an independent certification that helps ensure renewable energy is eligible for utility programs, not double-counted, and generally sourced from newer or repowered facilities.

If your state has not deregulated, look for a utility green-power program or community solar first, and treat RECs as the backstop. The federal Guide to Purchasing Green Power, written jointly by the EPA and the Department of Energy, lays out all the options available to households and is a good place to get oriented.

A Warning About Competitive Suppliers

This part is for readers in the retail-choice states. If someone knocks on your door or calls offering “green energy” and big savings from a competitive supplier, do your homework before signing up. Consumer advocates in several states have flagged competitive suppliers for charging more than the standard utility rate and burying the terms in confusing contracts that quietly renew at higher prices.

Your Step This Week

Pull up your most recent electric bill and spend ten minutes finding your renewable option. Check your utility’s green-power page, look into community solar, or start with the EPA’s guide. When you switch to green electricity, nothing will change about how your power works; the electrons coming through the socket will be the same as ever. What will change is the money you send into the market—the funding you’re providing for new wind and solar is precisely what builds more of it.

To see how choosing your supply connects to electrifying your home and eventually generating your own power, explore the Energy pathway in Sustainable Practices: Your Handbook for Effective Action and visitwww.suspra.com for more resources. And here are two articles from our archive that make good next reads while you’re thinking about energy: Electrify Everything: The Climate Solution Already in Your Hands and Power Your Life to 100% Clean Energy: From Less Waste to Solar Freedom.

References and Resources

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