Clairvoyance means the ability to see things or events that remain invisible to our normal senses. So it’s fitting that when David Hardee, head of Santa Barbara-based renewable energy developer Clairvoyant Energy, looks at a shuttered Ford Motor Co. factory in Wixom, Mich., he sees the largest renewable energy plant in the United States and 4,000 green manufacturing jobs.

All Hardee needs to make his vision reality is $857 million to transform the 4.7-million-square-foot plant. To that end, Hardee senses hundreds of millions of cash hiding deep in the crevices of the federal bureaucracy and in tax incentives that can be unlocked with enough political acumen. If all goes as planned, redevelopment at the plant could start next year with assembly lines rumbling in 2011.
His powerful supporters suggest Hardee isn’t just seeing things. He joined Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford Motor Co., and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm on a stage in Wixom in mid-September to announce his ambitious plan to team up with a power-storage firm to buy the plant.

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