Meet Mark Curtis. Mark is a regular man, living the American dream. He wed his college sweetie, Becky, who he satisfied at a keg celebration as a freshman at Michigan State. He and Becky began a business in custom-made software application and consulting, and ran the business for thirty years prior to retiring just recently.
Mark is an environment warrior. He began driving an EV 12 years earlier, a Nissan Leaf with 75 miles of variety, and has actually driven electrical solely ever since. He now drives a 2016 Tesla Design S, which has 110,000 miles on it. According to Mark, “I am lucky to have complimentary turbo charging for the life of that vehicle and benefit from that for Tesla Journey. In April we delighted in a 3,000 mile journey to trek in the National Parks in Utah (complimentary electrons!).”
The office complex, with complimentary EV charging for workers, which led to a great deal of workers purchasing EVs!
Mark and Becky owned a 7,000 square foot office complex for 16 years, offering it just recently. They utilized the workplace to promote tidy energy and electrical lorries. The office complex is 100% electrical. In early 2012, Mark and Becky included an 8.4 kW solar range to the roofing system which considerably decreased their month-to-month electrical energy expenses, causing an 8 year repayment duration. According to Mark, “It has actually been ‘complimentary solar electrical energy’ given that 2020.”
Mark stated, “Over a lunch with my group in late 2011, I went to the white board and diagrammed the expense benefits of owning an electrical vehicle. I provided to include vehicle battery chargers to our structure and offer complimentary electrical energy to the workers. Over the next couple of years, a lots of the staff member purchased or rented electrical cars and trucks! We included 4 Clipper Creek level 2 battery chargers, which are still in usage. For a few of the workers their EV was basically ‘complimentary’ when compared to their previous ICE vehicle expenses which were prevented (fuel being the biggest of the expenses prevented).”
Mark then showcased this success to good friends, who he states practically all drive EVs now.
Protector of democracy
The Washington Post has a tagline that “Democracy Passes Away in Darkness.” This is a tribute to the value of an independent media environment that can expose corruption and keep society working by and for individuals. If you consider it, there are couple of other markets or organizations that have this ability, and much of them are governmental, and for that reason based on internal corruption and defunding at a totalitarian’s impulse.
Just Recently, I composed a piece about the media market, which remains in difficulty. Noteworthy is the shuttering of news departments consisting of Buzzfeed, MTV News, VICE, and more, in addition to the layoffs throughout numerous media business, consisting of the LA Times, which laid off 15% of its personnel a month after winning a number of Pulitzers.
The swimming pool of marketing cash is drying up, as it has actually begun to stream towards influencers on social networks. Phony news and AI to produce it is common now. And in basic, there are much, a lot more successful companies than media outlets, so normally, the brightest minds in entrepreneurship avoid … I want to believe Zach and I are intense minds, however perhaps we’re not so intense after all …? I am naturally joking– Zach is a whiz, as you understand. However the difficulty of doing great journalism and monetizing it is not to be undervalued.
Our objective here at CleanTechnica is to speed up the cleantech transformation. However the objective of other media outlets is precisely the opposite. I inform the story frequently of how Tucker Carlson got a $3 million check from a coal baron to money his media start-up, which, not remarkably, not did anything however called into question environment science and scare individuals about environment options like solar, EVs, and more.
Mark composed in after reading my post, recommending a couple of things we might do, and using to pitch in a couple of dollars a month if we might move far from the cumbersome system we were utilizing with PayPal and get to something that was simple to utilize a charge card with. We discovered one, thanks to another reader who composed in, called Ryder. It’s properly called “Fund Journalism,” and in some way, it had actually never ever crossed my desk prior to Ryder’s tip. It’s a lot simpler than what we had formerly for our month-to-month factors, which was cumbersome and undependable.
So now, thanks to Ryder, we’re off and keeping up a brand-new contribution page, where readers (like Mark) who wish to assist us speed up the cleantech transformation can do so with simply a charge card and established a month-to-month contribution of any quantity they pick, and cancel with a click or 2 at any time. Mark pitched in $10 a month to our publication, and we value it a lot!
Take a look at our month-to-month factor page, and if you can, chip in a couple of dollars
Reader remarks are very handy to us! More at the bottom about that.
So, what’s up for Mark, the regular environment champ and protector of democracy, now that he’s retired?
It’s time to hang around in his off-grid log house. The couple developed the house in 1994, however needed to determine how to power the 5 bed room house and sheds, at the time, utilizing a 10 kW propane-fired generator, a 4,000 watt inverter, and 2,200 pounds of lead-acid batteries.
Later on, as cleantech sophisticated, they greened it up. “In 2017 we included a 7.4 kW solar range situated in a warm area 650 feet from the house,” stated Mark. “The 24 panel range is installed on 2 poles to keep them clear of the deep winter season snows. The snow moves off the panels when the temperature level is 32 degrees or greater, so we never ever need to clear the panels ourselves. The solar energy decreased our generator usage from 1,200 hours a year to 200 hours a year. The solar addition has an 8 year repayment.”
Thank you, Mark! You are the modification we wish to see worldwide. Thank you for being a leader, and a reader of CleanTechnica
And, take a hint from Mark– if you see something that can assist CleanTechnica prosper and continue to grow in a difficult media market, struck us up!
Images thanks to Mark Curtis
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. I do not like paywalls. You do not like paywalls. Who likes paywalls? Here at CleanTechnica, we executed a minimal paywall for a while, however it constantly felt incorrect– and it was constantly difficult to choose what we ought to put behind there. In theory, your most unique and finest material goes behind a paywall. However then less individuals read it! We simply do not like paywalls, therefore we have actually chosen to ditch ours.
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. Regrettably, the media service is still a difficult, cut-throat service with small margins. It’s a nonstop Olympic difficulty to remain above water and even possibly– gasp— grow. So …
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