Why We Pay More for Green Energy

I'm betting 79 cents a month on a greener future.

My local electrical utility, Con Edison(ED Quote - Cramer on ED - Stock Picks), offers a way to switch from standard electricity, sourced from a toxic mixture of coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power, to green energy, theoretically drawn from a cleaner mixture of wind and waterpower.

The environmentalist and penny pincher in me caused me to sign up two years ago.

It cost a little more per kilowatt-hour than the electricity I used previously, partly offset by a break on the taxes added to my bill, but in my small New York apartment the difference seemed negligible. It seemed like a way to help move us away from our dependence on finite foreign oil and dirty, dangerous coal.

Besides, I figured that the way oil prices have been climbing, it can't be long before my green juice would cost less than the brown stuff.

"But it hasn't happened yet, has it?" Sam Swanson, director of the Renewable Energy Technology Analysis Project at Pace Law School in New York, asked rhetorically when I related my cunning plan to him.

No, it hasn't.

According to ConEd Solutions, which sells the green power, electricity from wind and hydroelectric sources costs 1 cent more per kilowatt-hour than the regular stuff, and it is 2.5 cents more if you want your power to be all-wind, which has the least environmental impact, according to the EPA.

Finding out why I'm still paying more was no easy task. I had to talk with customer service people, spokespeople and a ConEd Solutions executive, then supplement that with a tutorial from Swanson, before I could make sense of how green electricity works for ConEd Solutions and for other utilities around the country.

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