So much of Floridas notoriety in recent years is limited to two negative events: a historic crash in real estate values and a massive offshore oil spill.
That these challenges have received so much publicity makes it all the more curious that meaningful solutions for Floridas related real estate, environmental and energy problems have not developed.
What we need is recognition that these issues are particularly interrelated in Florida and an understanding of how a state policy supporting renewable energy production would benefit all of these sectors.
Floridas short-term economic problems render many current leaders tone deaf to any argument that proactive energy policy is important. But even when viewed solely as a near-term economic issue, the continuing platitude of no renewables requirements if any increase in electrical rates is tremendously superficial.
While numbers can be argued, it is projected that rates have risen an average of less than 1 percent in states with renewables requirements. Regardless, looking myopically at rate increases rather than overall impacts on economic development is quite punitive when the current practice is to direct taxpayer dollars to any company that will locate any minimal number of jobs here.
Renewable energy production will benefit Floridas real estate problems by creating new alternative land uses such as dedicated energy crop production for electrical production and biofuels. This is a tremendous benefit for Florida, a state that currently imports virtually all of its electrical fuel -- coal, natural gas and uranium. And the need for a new economic land use in Florida is more necessary than ever.
Residential and commercial real estate woes are well-documented. Less publicized is the complete land crash in Floridas agricultural sector. According to the University of Floridas recent 2010 Florida Farmland Value Survey, Florida agricultural land values plummeted again last year. Just over 2009-2010, Florida values for southern region pastureland were down over 40 percent and forest farmland over 50 percent. Even more noteworthy, orange groves in the region were down 33.9 percent last year.
Residential and commercial real estate problems can be dismissed as simply worse than most in a universally bad market. Floridas agricultural land, however, is collapsing at the very time that productive agricultural land has been significantly appreciating in much of the U.S.
While comparing land types and values is complex, it is obvious that Florida agricultural land is in trouble and is not otherwise transitioning over to alternative economic uses. According to the USDA, citrus production has been abandoned on more than 140,000 acres of Florida citrus groves as of September 2010. That is not land converted -- it is groves left abandoned and in many cases left standing with unsightly diseased trees hauntingly depicting the state of Floridas signature crop.
Abandonment increased 3 percent from 2009 to 2010, long after the end of real estate development speculation and despite high current citrus prices, due to continuing problems such as citrus disease.
With the right policies in place, the high average annual rainfall and long growing season could spawn an era of energy crop development that caters to
Floridas natural advantages. Several independent studies confirm that Floridas land and climate is well-suited for new crops to support biofuels and bioenergy production.
Floridas sunshine also creates obvious advantages for the increasingly competitive solar industry. A comprehensive approach to these related issues could create new alternative land uses for agricultural land with direct impacts on land values and related job creation. It would further act to directly offset coal, natural gas and petroleum fuels currently imported into Florida and create the potential to export these new economy products to other states and countries.
We need the vision to look beyond minimal potential impacts to electrical rates. This governor wants to replicate job gains realized in business-friendly Texas. I suggest that he look at the connection between land values, agriculture and Floridas advantages in renewable energy production and emulate what Texas did more than a decade ago: enact a state renewable energy standard.
That decision made Texas home to the largest amount of wind energy production in the U.S. Beyond jobs, which are of obvious importance, a similar decision in Florida would help real estate, agriculture, the broader state economy and, oh, by the way, the environment.
Mark R. Mohler is a business lawyer at Baker Hostetler LLP focusing on cleantech business and finance, and a founder and managing director of Rotation Renewables LLC, a renewable energy company located in Florida.
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