Long after Ken Lay steered what I like to picture as a Bayliner yacht filled with Somali pirates through the brackish waters of Texas politics, Enron left the state with at least one unexpected benefit in its wake.

The eco-conscious electric customer can now put his money where his mouth is. After Enron’s patrons pushed deregulation through the Legislature, a subsequent measure created targets for renewable energy use and gave people the chance to purchase some or all of their electricity from renewable sources.

Originally, the bill set a target of generating 2,880 megawatts from sustainable sources by 2009. When highly subsidized wind farmers met that goal three years early, legislators bumped the target up to 10,000 megawatts by 2025, equal to about 14 percent of all the electricity currently generated in the state.

Should you chip in part of your household budget to help meet that goal? Maybe. Here are a few points to consider:

Price: Electric plans marketed as 100 percent renewable energy in my zip code average 11.5 cents per kilowatt hour, about 6.5 percent more than the average cost of other plans. (Keep in mind, your federal taxes already subsidize a 2.1 cents per kwh tax break for renewable power companies).

It won’t improve the air you actually breathe: In our state, 90 percent of renewable power comes from wind farms scattered across the lonesome expanses of central and west Texas. A renewable energy plan simply obliges your utility to pay a wind farm operator to put the same amount of power you use into the state’s grid. The electrons that actually open your garage door in Houston probably come from one of the area’s many natural gas power plants, regardless of your electric plan.

Put another way, an electricity provider in a deregulated market is about as likely to generate the power it sells as a commodities trader is to show up at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange pushing a wheelbarrow full of soybeans.

The renewable option does promote renewable energy in the state: For the moment at least, Texas is the only state that operates an electric grid free from federal regulation or any significant connections to the rest of the country. Money spent on renewable energy in Texas stays in Texas.

The state generates more electricity from wind than any other, and it could lead the way in developing technology that will make wind energy an economically viable power source in the future. Whether you want to help bankroll that development with a higher utility bill is up to you.