Meet Mark Curtis. Mark is a traditional man, dwelling the American dream. He married his school sweetheart, Becky, who he met at a keg social gathering as a freshman at Michigan State. He and Becky began an organization in customized software program and consulting, and ran the corporate for 30 years earlier than retiring lately.

Mark is a local weather warrior. He began driving an EV 12 years in the past, a Nissan Leaf with 75 miles of vary, and has pushed electrical solely since then. He now drives a 2016 Tesla Mannequin S, which has 110,000 miles on it. In response to Mark, “I’m lucky to have free supercharging for the lifetime of that automotive and make the most of that for Tesla Street journeys. In April we loved a 3,000 mile street journey to hike within the Nationwide Parks in Utah (free electrons!).”

The workplace constructing, with free EV charging for workers, which resulted in lots of workers shopping for EVs!

Mark and Becky owned a 7,000 sq. foot workplace constructing for 16 years, promoting it lately. They used the workplace to advertise clear power and electrical automobiles. The workplace constructing is 100% electrical. In early 2012, Mark and Becky added an 8.4 kW photo voltaic array to the roof which tremendously diminished their month-to-month electrical energy payments, resulting in an 8 12 months payback interval. In response to Mark, “It has been ‘free photo voltaic electrical energy’ since 2020.”

Mark mentioned, “Over a lunch with my workforce in late 2011, I went to the white board and diagrammed the associated fee benefits of proudly owning an electrical automotive. I supplied so as to add automotive chargers to our constructing and supply free electrical energy to the staff. Over the subsequent few years, a dozen of the workforce members purchased or leased electrical vehicles! We added 4 Clipper Creek stage 2 chargers, that are nonetheless in use. For a few of the workers their EV was primarily ‘free’ when in comparison with their earlier ICE automotive prices which had been averted (gasoline being the most important of the prices averted).”

Mark then showcased this success to pals, who he says nearly all drive EVs now.

Defender of democracy

The Washington Put up has a tagline that “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” That is an homage to the significance of an impartial media ecosystem that may expose corruption and maintain society working by and for the folks. If you consider it, there are few different industries or establishments which have this functionality, and plenty of of them are governmental, and subsequently topic to inside corruption and defunding at a dictator’s whim.

Just lately, I wrote a chunk concerning the media business, which is in hassle. Noteworthy is the shuttering of stories divisions together with Buzzfeed, MTV Information, VICE, and extra, in addition to the layoffs throughout many media corporations, together with the LA Occasions, which laid off 15% of its workers a month after profitable a few Pulitzers.

The pool of promoting cash is drying up, because it has began to movement towards influencers on social media. Faux information and AI to generate it’s ubiquitous now. And typically, there are a lot, rather more worthwhile companies than media shops, so normally, the brightest minds in entrepreneurship steer clear … I’d prefer to assume Zach and I are shiny minds, however possibly we’re not so shiny in spite of everything…? I’m after all kidding — Zach is a whiz, as you already know. However the problem of doing good journalism and monetizing it’s not to be underestimated.

Our objective right here at CleanTechnica is to speed up the cleantech revolution. However the objective of different media shops is precisely the other. I inform the story typically of how Tucker Carlson obtained a $3 million test from a coal baron to fund his media startup, which, not surprisingly, did nothing however solid doubt on local weather science and scare folks about local weather options like photo voltaic, EVs, and extra.

Mark wrote in after studying my article, suggesting a number of issues we might do, and providing to pitch in a couple of bucks a month if we might transfer away from the clunky system we had been utilizing with PayPal and get to one thing that was simple to make use of a bank card with. We discovered one, thanks to a different reader who wrote in, named Ryder. It’s appropriately referred to as “Fund Journalism,” and one way or the other, it had by no means crossed my desk previous to Ryder’s suggestion. It’s a lot simpler than what we had beforehand for our month-to-month contributors, which was clunky and unreliable.

So now, because of Ryder, we’re off and operating with a brand new contribution web page, the place readers (like Mark) who wish to assist us speed up the cleantech revolution can achieve this with only a bank card and arrange a month-to-month contribution of any quantity they select, and cancel with a click on or two at any time. Mark pitched in $10 a month to our publication, and we admire it a ton!

Try our month-to-month contributor web page, and in case you can, chip in a couple of bucks.

Reader feedback are tremendous useful to us! Extra on the backside about that.

So, what’s up for Mark, the traditional local weather champ and defender of democracy, now that he’s retired?

It’s time to spend time in his off-grid log dwelling. The couple constructed the house in 1994, however had to determine find out how to energy the 5 bed room dwelling and outbuildings, on the time, utilizing a ten kW propane-fired generator, a 4,000 watt inverter, and a couple of,200 kilos of lead-acid batteries.

Later, as cleantech superior, they greened it up. “In 2017 we added a 7.4 kW photo voltaic array positioned in a sunny spot 650 toes from the house,” mentioned Mark. “The 24 panel array is mounted on 2 poles to maintain them away from the deep winter snows. The snow slides off the panels when the temperature is 32 levels or increased, so we by no means need to clear the panels ourselves. The solar energy diminished our generator use from 1,200 hours a 12 months to 200 hours a 12 months. The photo voltaic addition has an 8 12 months payback.”

Thanks, Mark! You’re the change we wish to see on the earth. Thanks for being a pacesetter, and a reader of CleanTechnica.

And, take a cue from Mark — in case you see one thing that may assist CleanTechnica thrive and proceed to develop in a troublesome media business, hit us up!

Photographs courtesy of Mark Curtis

I do not like paywalls. You do not like paywalls. Who likes paywalls? Right here at CleanTechnica, we carried out a restricted paywall for some time, nevertheless it all the time felt unsuitable — and it was all the time robust to resolve what we must always put behind there. In idea, your most unique and greatest content material goes behind a paywall. However then fewer folks learn it! We simply do not like paywalls, and so we have determined to ditch ours.

Sadly, the media enterprise continues to be a troublesome, cut-throat enterprise with tiny margins. It is a unending Olympic problem to remain above water and even maybe — gasp — develop. So …