Renewables & Biofuels & Oil

The Florida Green News Blog returns after a bit of a hiatus with a look at the future of biofuels and renewable energy in Florida.

The dark and dramatic graffiti on the wall is suggestive and obvious and does not bode well. But you can read it.

After nearly four years of trying, the renewable energy and biofuels markets are as weak and diminutive as, well, a green shoot, or a kitten, or the cell tower signal you might expect at the business end of your Blackberry while standing waist deep in the boa constrictor infested waters gurgling around you in the heart of the Florida Everglades.

The debate over the future of our energy resources in Florida has again shifted.

Just at the moment when federal and state elected officials expected to at last hammer out these policies, the expected happened. Powerful oil, coal and utility interests gave the beltway bump to legislation from Washington to Tallahassee that would create incentives for investments in renewable energy.

Now that legislation may be in danger of jumping the tracks, or growing wings to become an entirely different animal.

What had been a fairly straightforward matter of energy businesses, investors, economists and environmental groups selling lawmakers on a new economy filled with new employment opportunities and the promise of lessening our dependence on foreign crude now appears not nearly so simple.

And all of the talk about Florida using its natural resources to become a leader in an energy revolution is sounding more and more like the vanishing, distant strains of a fife and drum corps marching deeper and deeper into the Everglades.

The battle lines are drawn and the signals could not be stronger on this one.

It even dominated much of last week’s Farm to Fuel summit in Orlando (July 29-31) where signs were abundant that there’s a lack of coherence and, well, energy, to the biofuels movement.

There was a distinctly defensive tone (never a good thing) to this year’s event and many participants seemed to be looking for a bright spot amid the swirl of conflicting interests scudding like thick summer storm clouds through the palatial rooms of Rosen Shingle Creek.

On the eve of his own summit promoting biofuels as the wave of the future, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson said in a Florida Public Radio piece by Trimmel Gomes that he supports drilling for oil off the Florida coast in the Gulf of Mexico.

This struck many at the conference as peculiar, certainly poorly timed, and maybe it even sent conflicting signals. Because you’d think the commissioner might instead be touting how biofuels will help reduce our reliance on oil and make such drilling ultimately unnecessary, they said.

Bronson’s little radio bombshell helped to sharpen the message of others at the conference. Eric Draper of Florida Audubon, who also happens to be a candidate for state agriculture commissioner, was included in the same radio news story. Draper is urging all candidates for state office to join him in opposing oil drilling and supporting clean and renewable energy.

Wherever one turned at the summit oil drilling and renewable energy were being coupled, thanks in large part to the efforts of a person encountered in the Rosen Shingle Creek lobby. Uber lobbyist David Rancourt, a chief strategist behind the pro-oil drilling campaign, was busily meeting with all the top dogs: Gov. Charlie Crist, Bronson, members of the Florida House. To say he is passionate about winning approval for drilling is an understatement.

Meanwhile, a filmmaker named Josh Tickell presented the “educational” version of a new feature length film titled “FUEL.” Tickell’s best selling book, “From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank -- the Complete Guide to Using Vegetable Oil as an Alternative Fuel” is credited with helping to ramp up the US biodiesel movement.

But here was an unexpected takeaway from Tickell’s talk: He seemed demoralized by what he perceives as a sudden lack of momentum in the previous rush to develop a robust biofuels industry.

Tickell pegs the moment the movement lost momentum to a shift in public attention from excitement over using sustainable crops to meet our fuel needs to worries that biofuels will drive up the cost of food and compete for the same growing space -- which he said, is not the case.

Tickell’s Q & A with the audience following the movie was grimly mired in what to do with edits of the movie to counter the now established public perception that food crops and biofuel crops compete.

The sense that policy-making ground is being lost on the biofuels front was further accentuated by the welcome message Bronson penned for the summit program. He acknowledges he is unlikely to reach his goal of having “six biofuel plants operating in the State before I leave office in 2011.”

To the biofuel, biomass and renewable energy players in Florida it’s still about leveling the playing field and creating government incentives that will spur the growth of new energy markets.

It’s clear to most that there really is a lack of fairness to the current rules and too few incentives for companies to expand. One utility, for instance, is permitted to buy electricity generated by one biomass plant in Florida for something like 3 cents per kilowatt and sell it to you and me for 8 cents. The biomass plant is not profitable at that rate and cannot justify expanding.

To the utilities and oil and natural gas interests its about ensuring the survival of the existing business model, or changing it at a prudent pace. They rarely have to remind us that they also keep everybody’s lights on and oil the global transportation system’s gears.

Both sides say they are chiefly concerned with reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Whether they move forward together on energy’s revolutionary, and evolutionary, road is the question.

Recall that only this past May the Florida House blocked a critical piece of legislation that would have created incentives for solar and biomass companies to enter the electricity market. Despite Senate approval, House leaders snuffed the renewable energy bill and signaled that they will block the measure again in 2010 -- unless.

Unless everyone accepts a change in state law to allow drilling for oil in state waters, possibly as near as three miles off the Florida coast.

In a further sign that Florida may not be able to muster a sustaining vision for renewable energy, Florida’s US House members in June nailed the state solidly in the “no” vote column on cap and trade, though the measure managed to pass anyway 219-212. It now awaits uncertain action in the Senate.

Two powerful congressmen from Alaska and Louisiana then filed legislation to life the ban on drilling in federal waters off the Florida coast.

Expect the Florida House in 2010, meanwhile, to again link approval of oil drilling to approval for renewable energy and to sweeten the new proposal.

The House is expected to promise that a portion of the revenues from oil drilling could be dedicated to creating the long-sought market for renewable energy and biofuels.

Renewable energy advocates may split on whether that is something tangible and desirable, or merely a breathy promise made in the heat of a last dance. Either way, for deals on oil drilling -- and renewable energy -- it’s near closing time.