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Tallahassee, FL – It's been seven years since then-Gov. Bush and the Legislature made the Scripps Research Institute in Palm Beach County possible. Since its creation, Scripps has mostly focused on biomedical research. Tom Flanigan found the facility is now branching out into energy research with the aim of making Florida a leader in the field.
Dr. Roy Periana is considered one of the world's top chemists. His specialty is the mysterious chemistry of the carbon-hydrogen bond. A bond that's critical to the conversion of fuel into energy. An area that now consumes Periana at Scripps Florida.
"I think it would be useful to leverage Scripps and the Scripps name and what we represent outside of just bio-tech."
It's only logical, Periana says. That's because in both bio-tech and energy, so many processes deal with the interactions of five molecules; methane, oxygen, nitrogen, water and carbon dioxide.
"The chemistry of those five molecules is really at the underpinning of energy security and climate change. And that's why it makes sense for us to have a sector in energy because if we solve the chemical transformation challenges related to energy, we also come up with new synthetic pathways to make drugs."
The goal, Periana says, is to increase the efficiency of energy production.
"If you take natural gas and air, you can light it up and make heat, which is a chemical transformation, and you use that heat to spin a turbine or do whatever you want - a steam engine - and you can make electricity that way. So there you're using a heat engine. There's another kind of engine you can use. It's called an electro-chemical engine and that electro-chemical engine runs much more efficiently if it runs at low temperatures."
That means, not only fuel cells that run cooler, but maybe even something that might be described as "cold burning."
"What we'd be able to do is to make cold-temperature engines, instead of combusting everything at a thousand degrees, we'd combust at low temperatures and we'd make energy at much, much higher efficiency."
Besides producing virtually no greenhouse gas emissions or other forms of pollution. Periana says this transformative technology should attract intense commercial attention.
"So as soon as we get to where the science is ready for commercialization - or before that - we will spin it out at Scripps. Scripps will not do what we call developmental work."
But the research from Scripps Energy Labs alone may not be enough to make Florida an alternative energy leader. Josh Kellum heads Citizens for Clean Energy. That's a Florida consortium of public and private leaders and organizations, including Scripps Energy Labs. Kellum doesn't exactly share Periana's optimism.
"We are, I guess I should say, almost closed for business. We have wonderful research institutions; we have wonderful educational institutions, but the business side of the equation is lacking."
Kellum says it's not that there aren't firms interested in Florida.
"You have organizations and you have companies, like the company that I represent outside of Citizens for Clean Energy, as well as Dr. Periana's Scripps Energy Laboratories looking to expand; (the) Simitec organization looking to plant facilities in here and other manufacturers around the state. So what we need is we need policy."
A policy that Kellum says the state came close to adopting earlier this year during the legislative session. It came as a house bill that would have allowed Florida's investor-owned utilities to raise rates by a few percentage points to fund alternative energy activities. Citizens for Clean Energy would like to see lawmakers convene a special session before the end of the year to revisit that concept. That could also qualify the state for a big chunk of federal money that goes away Jan. 1. Even if that doesn't happen, the group is already gearing up for the 2011 session as well as what Kellum calls a public outreach effort.
"Citizens for Clean Energy will be working with educational programs in our public school systems around the state of Florida, working with research institutions, our universities, to enlighten people on why we need renewable energy in the state."
Meanwhile, Dr. Roy Pariana and his team at Scripps Energy Labs will be working to create the research breakthroughs that could power Florida's bid to be the nation's alternative energy hot spot.