One L.A. industry that's booming

Only the Bay Area has more clean-tech activity, according to Clean Edge, a Portland research firm. That covers everything from electric vehicles to eco-friendly buildings to solar energy projects. From the LAT:

More than 40% of all clean-tech venture capital funding worldwide went to firms in California as investments in those companies more than tripled to $2.9 billion in the first half of 2010 compared with a year earlier, according to a study from nonprofit research group Next 10.

There's concern, however, that California may be losing its edge to other states and countries. All bets are off if Proposition 23, the ballot initiative that would suspend the state's greenhouse gas mandates, gets passed next month (recent polls are close). But it's not just the industry-sponsored measure - some clean-tech business owners are grumbling about state red tape.

"I don't see a real benefit to staying here," said Arnold Klann, chief executive of BlueFire Renewables of Irvine. "I'm dead serious -- all the good boils down to the weather." BlueFire ran into "a maelstrom of problems" while trying to build a cellulosic ethanol production plant in Lancaster. Development should have taken less than a year but instead required more than two years, Klann said. Then California raised its sales tax, adding more than a million dollars to the cost of the project and stalling the financing process. The company is preparing to break ground in the next few months on a biofuel refinery in Mississippi. The project, which is four times the size of the Lancaster facility, cost the same amount to develop and permit -- but took just nine months.