Did you know Pasco County is on its way to becoming a national leader in alternative fuel production? That’s sort of exciting when you stop to think about potential growth in global demand for alternative energy supplies over the next 20 or 30 years.
As long as it’s almost New Year’s Eve and we’re all officially licensed for a few days to dream about fresh starts and better times to come, we’re imagining what Pasco and the rest of central Florida might look like as a globally recognized center of an as yet unborn alternative-energy boom.
Think Silicon Valley for alternative energy.
Why not here? We might be on the cusp of a global revolution in alternative-energy innovation not unlike the revolution in computer technology of the past three decades. If so, we’re bound to see some big winners emerge on a scale comparable to Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, et al.
So, we ask, again, why not here? Hell, no one knew the way to San Jose before 1980. Do you know the way to Dade City?
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services announced the other day that they received 215 grant proposals this fall for renewable energy technologies under the DEP’s Renewable Energy Technologies Grant Program and the DACS’ Farm-to-Fuel Grant Program. Both programs are designed to stimulate capital investment in and promote statewide utilization of renewable energy technologies.
The DEP received 139 grant proposals seeking more than $200 million in grant funding to go along with almost $700 million in private money for renewable energy projects. The proposals include technologies that use biomass, solar and hydrogen energy. The state has just $12 million to award but it’s not really up to the state to pick winners and losers. The market will do that through private capital once the ball gets rolling. The point is to get the ball rolling here in Florida.
And it just might be happening.
For example, Dade City is on its way becoming America’s biodiesel fuel capital after Agri-Source Fuels, LLC converted an old juice plant there into a big biodiesel production facility capable of producing 120-million gallons per year. Reported in typical manic-depressive fashion, traditional media whipsawed us first with ebullient headlines followed by the blues.
New businesses rarely go as well as their builders predict from the start. Incurable, effusive optimism is one reason why some entrepreneurs overcome long odds to survive and thrive. They learn as they go, as we all do, and they figure out how to succeed. Read past the headlines and you can see that’s true for Agri-Source. It was cranking out 40,000 gallons a day in November. More important, it was selling every drop.
All Florida needs to do is stay friendly and nurturing to this breed of innovative capitalist, help it overcome as many obstacles as possible, and before long we might just have ourselves a cluster of up and coming alternative-energy companies capable of incubating even more innovation and investment around it.
Forget all the partisan pissing and moaning about whether global warming is real. To heck with status-quo preservationists in Washington and their self-dealing politics. We’ve got the makings of a promising new industry putting down roots right in our own back yard. Its market could be huge one day. All that would mean is big profits, enviable public revenue and general prosperity from a clean and sustainable industry.
Cheers and Happy New Year.