Indianapolis residents can purchase greener electricity generated from renewable energy sources through Indianapolis Power & Light Company’s Green Power Option.

The option allows IPL customers to specify the amount of their monthly electricity — 10, 25, 50 or 100 percent — they wish to be generated by wind, solar, geothermal or biomass generators.

IPL will service residents enrolled in the Green Power Option, which was created in 1998, by periodically purchasing renewable energy from various generators, including wind facilities located across the Midwest.

The Green Power Option does come with an extra price, which will be added on to IPL’s standard rate. The extra paid will never exceed $0.03 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), and the current Green Power premium is $0.00191 per kWh.

A residential customer using 1,000 kWh per month who is paying for 100 percent of their bill to be generated by renewable sources will pay an additional $1.91 per month.

The energy is purchased from a Minnesota wind farm and Indiana landfill gas generation plants. This Green Power Option is available to all IPL residential customers and to commercial or industrial consumers who do not emit more than 2,000 kWh per month.

The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) authorizes IPL’s Green Power Option.

“We’ve adopted several different kinds of green options for several different companies,” said Mary Beth Fisher, IURC media relations director. “We look at each case as it comes in and look at them and see if they make sense.”

The Green Power Option was created in part by the Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor (OUCC), which still monitors the program.

Customers who want to sign up for the option can call IPL at 317-261-8222.

IPL is also a leader in promoting greener options not only in Indianapolis, but Indiana. In February, IPL signed on with Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman for the state’s Green Power Option in an effort to purchase 7 percent of the electric consumption of state facilities in Marion County from renewable energy sources.

That 7 percent will equal 8,450 megawatt hours of electricity, which is equivalent to the amount consumed by about 800 Indiana homes in one year.

The purchase of the energy (8,450 megawatts) through renewable energy credits (RECs) will be the same as removing 1,582 cars from the road or planting 2,445 acres of trees.

RECs offset emissions from non-renewable energy sources. The purchase of these RECs will amount to $16,140 in additional costs for the state.

The effort is part of a strategic energy plan by the state called Hoosier Homegrown Energy, which calls for Marion County state government entities to purchase 10 percent of its electrical usage from Indiana renewable energy by 2010.

Two other Indiana utility companies — Indiana Michigan and Vectren Corp. — have also joined in the effort to get green. They plan to purchase energy generated by wind power this year.