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The Sunflower solar array in Algodones provides a small amount of electricity for Public Service Company of New Mexico. Gov. Bill Richardson wants to increase the amount of renewable power major utilities like PNM are required to produce, and perhaps eventually to start exporting power to California and other markets.

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Turn on a light in your house, and on the other end of the electric line, more often than not, coal is burning.

While not as obvious as smoke spewing from an old car or bus, electric power generation is one of the major contributors to America's carbon emissions, and hence to global warming.

That's the motivation for a new trend in energy policy across the country: requiring electric utilities to sell "clean power" - power derived from renewable resources such as wind or sunlight - to their customers.

New Mexico is already on the bandwagon, requiring such big utilities as Public Service Company of New Mexico to sell 5 percent renewable power starting last year. The amount rises to 10 percent by 2011.

Gov. Bill Richardson, however, wants more. A bill he's hoping to get through the Legislature calls for the number to rise steadily before topping out at 25 percent in 2021. Smaller utilities and rural electric cooperatives are also included in the legislation, with their quota jumping to 5 percent by 2015 to 10 percent by 2020.

"The governor has made making New Mexico the clean-energy state a cornerstone of his actions as governor," said Richardson spokesman Jon Goldstein.

Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have renewable energy standards, with California leading the way. The Golden State is scheduled to have 33 percent of its power coming from renewable sources by 2020.

Such quotas are meant to unleash the free market, as entrepreneurs looking to develop a wind farm or a solar array suddenly have customers.

Power companies can also do their own projects. One solar array built by PNM as a demonstration project sits next to I-25 in Algodones, north of Albuquerque. It generates about 40,000 kilowatt hours per year, enough to power several homes.

For all the regulation, the idea of imposing percentages on electric companies doesn't seem to have generated any organized opposition.

"We're in support of it," said Keven Groenewold, the general manager of New Mexico Rural Electric Cooperatives, an association of small power companies around the state.

Larger utilities seem supportive as well. PNM declined to comment at length for this story, citing a need to wait and see a more final version of the legislation. But spokeswoman Susan Sponar said that, in general, "PNM does support legislation that encourages the development and use of renewable energy sources, clean energy and energy efficiency."

Besides clamping down on global warming, communities around the state could get jobs out of the deal, as solar panels and biomass plants are constructed and maintained, said Luis Reyes, the CEO of Kit Carson Electric in Taos.

Ratepayers may not even notice the increase, Reyes said. The laws would allow him to boost rates by 1 percent to pay for the extra renewable capacity, but last year his regular power supplier raised rates by 13 percent.

Especially in the long term, Reyes said, renewable power may be as cost-effective as it is environmentally friendly.

"As you gain economies of scale and the technology starts to catch up, I think renewable resources are going to be very competitive with fossil fuels," he said.

Wind may already be there. While solar power currently hovers at about 18 cents per kilowatt hour, wind power can break even at four to six cents, said Andrew Rosenthal, a researcher at New Mexico State University's Technology Development Institute.

"Wind is a technology that can compete head-to-head with fossil fuels right now," he said.

New Mexico is in a good position to capitalize on both. Sun is in plentiful supply, and wind is a constant fact of life on the eastern plains.

Richardson is so confident in New Mexico's potential to generate renewable power that he's pushing a companion proposal that would encourage the development of a clean-power export business.

Under the plan, the state would create a power transmission authority to act as a sort of coordinator and possibly builder of new power lines. Joanna Prukop, secretary of the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, said the effort would aim primarily at one mammoth western state: California.

The state authority would, in theory, connect to wind turbines or solar arrays in New Mexico and break even by charging the companies for using the lines. The lines would deliver the juice to the West Coast and create industry here.

"Their power generation needs are (an additional) 2,000 megawatts a year for the foreseeable future," enough for something like 2 million homes, Prukop said.

"That is a huge market opportunity for us," she said.