Gov. Patrick gets his earth on.

Governor Deval Patrick will call on business leaders today to embrace his vision for the state's emerging clean energy industry, both to reduce their own costs and to boost the state's economy, according to administration officials briefed on the speech.

Convinced that the age of fossil fuels is coming to a close, the governor hopes to seize on the imagination of business leaders to make Massachusetts the center of the clean energy industry through incentives that would eliminate the gas tax on certain biofuels and recruit innovative renewable energy firms to develop their technologies in the Bay State.

In a speech before the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce this morning, Patrick will also outline his vision for a regional pact to limit the carbon content of fuels, similar to the pact aimed at reducing power plant emissions that contribute to global warming.

The speech, which the governor was still working on yesterday, underscores how seriously Patrick is looking at clean energy to advance his economic hopes for the Commonwealth. Last summer, the administration concluded that the clean energy sector was poised to overtake textiles as the 10th largest industry in the Commonwealth. The sector - including consultants, energy efficiency specialists, and university researchers working on clean energy - now employs some 556 firms and 14,400 people in the Bay State, according to a survey prepared for the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative's Renewable Energy Trust.

One administration official told the Globe that the governor will make his case by pointing to historically high gasoline prices, the threat of global climate change, as well as the quarter of a billion dollars in private capital already invested in clean energy technologies in Massachusetts.

"In light of all that, we have really an economic imperative to take action to arm ourselves for rising fuel prices, but we also have an economic opportunity in the rising clean energy sector," said one senior administration official. "We're saying clean energy should take its place in the top echelon of economic priorities for the Commonwealth."

UPDATE: More from the Boston Herald and Mass Roots GOP.