The rate is higher because utility companies function as monopolies in most states, and the institutions charged with protecting the rate payers (the public utilities commissions) have strayed from their original purpose of protecting the rate payer and instead started operating as governing bodies advancing the environmental agendi of predominantly democratically controlled state governments.
The really ironic thing on the renewable side of the equation is that research into these renewable energy programs has shown that 20-50% of the premium that rate payers get charged goes into marketing the renewables to the consumer and not into actual generation of electricity. Additionally, the renewable premium on large scale wind projects actually goes into increasing the rate of return for the generator from about 12% to 18% to encourage them to build these projects as large scale wind is pretty economical, just unreliable since the wind isn't always blowing.
On the whole you as a consumer are getting screwed because you have no choice where your power comes from, the power company doesn't have to be competitive, they just have to keep the beaurocrats that over see them happy and the government is into advancing an environmental agenda that is not as cost effective as they promote it to be (since they take a lot of money from the renewable lobby) and will likely result in more and more corporations locating their facilities in countries with less strict environmental regulations (and you guessed it, creating more pollution not only in the processes themselves, but in the fact that the products that we consume will now have to be shipped from overseas).
Ideally, we would have choice over which utility provides our power, where those who need their carbon conscience cleansed can purchase from a renewable provider, and everyone else can purchase from those that are most cost competitive. Then we can let the EPA set standards that attempt to internalize the external costs created by the pollutants from the non-renewable side of the equation and let everyone compete for the rate payer's business.