Amidst the protests of residents in the Pleasant Hill and Reaves Road community, a foreign green energy company looking to purchase land where the county had already agreed to build a regional park said it will not include hydrogen production operations in its campus.
In a letter to Osceola County government, CMG Clean Teach SA and U.S. partner Panacea Global Energy Inc. Chairman John Darling noted the company had, “Very carefully considered the opposition and protests from the local community on the erection of our electrolysis green hydrogen plant within the green garden village.”
“It is always our intention to work with communities and build long-lasting relationships … considering the language and type of inquiries around our green hydrogen facility, we have decided not to pursue this element of our green garden village and instead concentrate on the approved zoning for the site to construct out net zero building and campus, in order to rank the facility as the No. 1 green energy park in the U.S.,” the letter noted.
“We chose the site initially because of the abundance of nature and rewilding we can provide the environment and access is perfect to deliver the next generation buildings and headquarters for our business. We do have logistics plans and several energy saving proposals to provide transport for our employees within a new working hour structure and …. Allow us to provide the best training to our workforce whilst still maintaining good 060123.ONG relationships with the local community.”
A group of residents came out to the April and May public comment meetings the County Commission holds on the second Monday evening of each month and provided unanimous, hearty opposition to, and fear of, the facility’s hydrogen and lithium ion battery manufacturing units’ potential for environmentalharming accidents.
On March 20, the county produced a release that CMG Clean Tech, a French green energy technology firm, announced an expansion of its operations to North America and plans to build a U.S. flagship facility, Green Garden Village, near where the county has, for nearly two decades, proposed a regional park on land the Mac Overstreet family sold.
That day, the county said it approved a plan for CMG Clean Tech to purchase all but 42 of the 389 acres — northeast of the Reaves-Pleasant Hill intersection and near Valencia College’s Poinciana campus — in phases, leaving land for the park. After the April public comment meeting, the county put out a new release, noting that these plans are in a very early, exploratory stage of negotiations, and the March action merely authorized talks to begin.
In the weeks since, the residents created a website, NoFactoryZone.com, and the No Factory Zone on Toho, where public notices and information about meetings and protests are published.
