I have an awesome neighbor. He’s done many things, from serving in the navy to playing sax in a funk band to developing an inexpensive way to install a solar array on Philadelphia area homes. And sometime in the next few years, we’ll invest the sweat equity and put the panels on our roof.

In the meantime, we switched over to The Energy Coop for our electricity. We picked the all renewable plan which will mean that we’ll pay between eight and fifteen more dollars each month but that all of our energy will be produced through renewable sources (they have a cool graph here) as opposed to PECO where almost 50% of the energy is generated by coal.

When I called with questions, I was struck by how many of my questions were political in nature. The nuts and bolts aren’t that complicated — they take over the generation and transmission charge while PECO continues to be bill for distribution — but I wanted to know why more people wouldn’t make this switch. For $100-150 a year more, you could support an organization that’s trying to build an alternative infrastructure and one whose energy source has a much, much smaller environmental footprint. In terms of my great neighbor, doesn’t it make more sense to support an organization that’s affecting change across PA as opposed to financing and putting together my own power system, one that will really only serve me? What responsibility does a community have to each other, i.e., why couldn’t blocks organize around this issue? Why is the only reason most folks switch because of cost? What kind of campaign could get families and companies to think about these issues?