Florida's place in the energy delimma

I recently read an article I ran across written back in 2007 about Florida and the energy/global warming issue. You can find it here (http://www.climatebiz.com/column/2007/08/24/florida-dark-horse-alternative-energy-race) This was the comment I posted there and think is worth posting here too.

I don't understand where the writer gets the information to base the comment "neither large-scale wind projects (no wind) nor large-scale solar projects (too much cloud cover) are viable here". I recently did a little research on wind here in Florida and understand that the Atlantic coastline from Georgia down to the Cape is a "prime" location for "wind harvesting". And although we may have more than our share of cloud cover, if solar tech was implemented throughout both the residential AND business markets and then combined with both large and small scale wind power, we could reduce our dependence upon 'dirty' fuels dramatically. And speaking of large scale projects... why is it that everything has got to be large scale to be worthwhile or worthy of government/corporate sponsorship? If the goal is truly to make important and sweeping changes to the way we generate power throughout the state, why not fund small-scale projects and concentrate on a distributed power network approach to energy production? Consider this: During the recent gasoline price crisis, we've been told to drive a few miles less, inflate our tires and carpool to force the price of fuel down. So, by the same logic, distributed power production (i.e., residential solar and wind installations, community based wind farms, small business incentives to do the same, etc.) should be what we're being encouraged to implement. Yet most of the 'solutions' I hear about more often are either large-scale projects like new nuclear plants and 'clean coal' conversions or new and mostly unproven biofuel tech and the like that won't even be viable options for years to come and may not actually reduce GHG problems anyway. I liken it to the recent talk about allowing off-shore drilling for oil. That is to say, that it may very well increase supply and theoretically reduce fuel prices, but it obviously won't make any difference in our near future since it is estimated that it will take at least 10-15 years for any new wells to come online and affect supply, and again won't help reduce GHG at all.