Melissa Ross
Even as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry condemns the Rick Scott administration for its alleged refusal to use the term “climate change,” a globally recognized advocate on emerging green technologies says it’s important here in Florida to look at the bright side.
“We try to look at this as the glass half-full,” says Hazel Henderson, renowned futurist, consultant, author, and creator of Ethical Markets Media, which creates streaming content and shows for public television around the subject of clean and renewable energy. Henderson is based in St. Augustine.
“The situation with Scott was embarrassing,” she said. “I mean, we have a global audience of green investors. We were getting messages saying ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ from all over: Europe, Asia, Latin America.”
Henderson, though, says it’s a waste of time to shake heads over governments “beholden to special interests.” They’re lagging behind the private sector, which is racing to invest in renewables, she contends.
“The hidden story really, is that all of these new renewable energy technologies really fitting in with the way nature works are going mainstream — all over the world.”
To that end, Henderson has created the Green Transition Scoreboard, which measures the value of dollars invested in the green economy.
“The first two quarters of 2014 show the Green Transition Scoreboard® (GTS) at $5.7 trillion in private investments and commitments since 2007,” she says. “This confirms the green economy is on track to reach $10 trillion in investments by 2020 to effectively scale innovations and reduce costs in green technologies as the world transitions to the Solar Age.”
Henderson says it’s imperative for Florida to encourage the state’s public utilities to allow net metering, which makes it possible for homeowners to install solar panels and sell their excess units back to power companies.
“All of these technologies going onto people’s rooftops are 50 years old. But it’s only now that we’ve begun to realize that these free photons from the sun are the lowest-hanging fruit and the cheapest. Solar and wind power are now competitive or even cheaper all over the world than fossil fuels.”
Such arguments could soon gain currency in Tallahassee, where the bipartisan group Floridians for Solar Choice is lobbying for a constitutional amendment giving residents of, yes, the Sunshine State the opportunity to install rooftop solar energy on their homes.
“Remember,” Henderson says, “90% of all subsidies go to nuclear and fossil fuels. Only 5% goes to solar. But we are now at the point in many cases where solar doesn’t need them any more. So what we have to do in Florida is to allow the utilities to allow net metering.”
Although the politics around climate change remain thorny, tech entrepreneurs see opportunity. For example, the Knight Foundation and Singularity University have just launched Global Impact Competition-Miami by asking the question: “How would you solve South Florida’s sea level rise challenge and improve the lives of millions of people in three to five years by using technology?” The two winners with the best ideas will receive full tuition to Singularity University’s 10-week Graduate Studies Program in Silicon Valley. The competition is open to all U.S. residents.
Henderson points to the Knight competition as just one example of the big opportunities ahead.
“I realized long ago that we would be in this tug of war between the 20th century energy industries and this new one. That struggle is still going on. That’s why we do the Green Transition Scoreboard. Even though governments might be captured by old special interests, private investors are perfectly free to get in on the ground floor of these new technologies.”
