Joy Ditto is the former CEO of the American Public Power Association and currently serves as CEO of Joy Ditto Consulting.
Do you know what District of Columbia’s sales tax on groceries is?
Zero.
There is a reason for that. Food is a necessity, not a luxury, and local policymakers in our nation’s capital understand that adding costs to basic necessities disproportionately burdens those who can least afford them.
But apparently that principle ends when residents leave the grocery store, go home and turn on the lights.
Electricity has become every bit as essential as food because without it, all essential services such as food cannot be produced and used. Yet District policy deliberately adds to electricity costs through increasingly expensive renewable energy requirements that apply to everyone who pays an electric bill.
In a June letter to the D.C. Council, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser warned about rising utility bills and the higher cost of living facing District residents. She then identified a particular element of the District’s Renewable Portfolio Standard, an outdated mandate that has added costs to residents’ bills without improving the environment.
The District first adopted its RPS in 2004 and repeatedly expanded it, most significantly in 2019, when Mayor Bowser and the Council increased the mandate requiring D.C. to receive 100% of its power from renewable sources by 2032 while also increasing the share that must come from solar power.
To meet that solar requirement, power companies must purchase solar renewable energy credits. Mayor Bowser says D.C.’s solar credits “add $20 to every electricity bill.” Without action from the Council, she warned, that amount could double to $40 by 2029 and continue growing.
The District recognizes that government should be careful about adding costs to necessities because those costs do not affect every household equally. Electricity should be no different. So how did the District get here?
Renewable portfolio standards require electricity suppliers to obtain a certain amount of their electricity from renewable resources. Suppliers meet those requirements in part by buying renewable energy credits, or RECs.
The problem is how D.C. has implemented its policy.
The District requires a portion of its renewable requirement to come from solar facilities within the District and restricts which solar credits qualify. That limits the supply of available credits and makes them more expensive.
According to the PJM Interconnection, which oversees D.C.’s electric grid, the average price of a D.C. solar credit reached $410.72 during the first three months of 2026.
D.C. is not alone in facing questions about the cost of restricting energy-credit markets. On Sept. 3, West Virginia sued Pennsylvania in federal court over laws limiting which out-of-state power producers can sell energy credits there. The complaint alleges that Pennsylvania “artificially strangled the supply side of the energy credit market by locking out interstate competition.” According to the suit, the cost of meeting Pennsylvania’s renewable energy requirements increased from $112.5 million in 2020 to more than $700 million in 2025.
And there is something particularly backward about what happens next.
D.C. already operates programs specifically intended to help lower-income residents afford their utility bills.
Think about that. The District uses one government program to help lower-income residents pay their electric bills while another government policy is making those same bills more expensive.
This cost shift deserves more scrutiny. Mayor Bowser points to another one. She noted that D.C.’s energy laws require all electricity ratepayers to subsidize solar panels installed by a relatively small portion of residents, regardless of their income.
That raises a basic question of fairness. Who is paying, who is benefiting and can the District achieve its renewable energy goals without placing an unnecessary burden on residents who can least afford it?
When the District enacted its original RPS in 2004, its stated goals included reducing emissions and creating a healthier environment. It was also intended to lower the overall cost of renewable electricity. More than two decades later, the Mayor and Council should ask whether the policy is still delivering on its original purpose.
And the problem extends beyond D.C. Across the region served by PJM, the cost of complying with state renewable portfolio standards increased from about $677 million in 2014 to nearly $2.9 billion in 2023.
Electricity demand is growing again. Families and businesses are concerned about rising bills. Governors and lawmakers across the country are searching for ways to keep electricity affordable.
Not every part of an electric bill is within the control of elected officials. This one is.
Mayor Bowser deserves credit for recognizing the problem. Now the D.C. Council should take her warning seriously and ask whether the District can pursue its renewable energy goals without unnecessarily increasing the cost of an essential service.
Perhaps that same concern for affordability should apply when residents turn on the lights.
