CleanTechnica Evangelist Report Card – CleanTechnica

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This is my 194^th article for CleanTechnica. I think you might say that I am a CleanTechnica (e.g. clean energy) evangelist. I also have taken my electric cars to car shows and driven them in 4^th of July parades for 10 years. I also promote EVs and green lifestyles whenever I get the chance.

To what extent am I walking the walk, putting my money where my mouth is in my own life? I’m no paragon of green virtue, but I’ve made green choices when they’ve made economic sense and didn’t stretch my limited budget too much. See my report card below.

For 30 years from 1974 to 2024, I was a “public servant,” a NASA research scientist, at the Goddard Space Flight Center. There I learned that the north polar ocean ice pack has been shrinking over the last ~30+ years and virtually all the mountain glaciers in the world are retreating. Strong enough evidence for me to be convinced that we are in the middle of a strong global warming event. I am also convinced that this global warming is caused by the CO2 produced by the burning of fossil fuels.

I may have contributed to the impression that we are all in this tiny blue marble floating in space together with my image, the first “Blue Marble” image (see lead photo) of the Western Hemisphere in 1992. It rivaled the impact of the Eastern Hemisphere Blue Marble image taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts in December of 1972. The lab I directed at NASA also produced several additional Blue Marble images.

What am I doing to reduce my personal CO2 emissions, and where have I fallen short? Here’s my report card.

My most significant effort has been switching from driving gas vehicles to driving electric vehicles. I purchased my first electric vehicle, a Nissan Leaf, in 2012 and have continued with 4 additional EVs, driving a Tesla Model 3 and Model Y for the last 7 years for 180,000+ miles. These were about 95% of my vehicle miles over that period. See my latest EV, a Model Y, in the image below.

Complementing my EV are my three mountain ebikes, of which two are shown in the photo below. Our EV is our only car in Utah. The ebikes give an alternative to the EV when it is in use by my wife. In the photo below the bikes were used with my brother in conjunction with Utah Transit Authority Streetcars (TRAX) and heavy commuter rail (Frontrunner) to attend medical appointments.

In the image below, you see my house with solar panels. To a significant extent, I have been propelled by a 90% efficient battery/electric motor combination using 100% clean solar energy.

What about other aspects of my life? Our daughter had a golf cart that she used to drive from her nearby home to our cabin on the water in Three Lakes, Wisconsin. When she moved to her own house on the water, my wife decided we needed one for short rides with our extended family. Below, you see her with our eldest daughter and all 5 of our great grandchildren.

Of course, in our family, that golf cart had to be electric. As a used classic golf cart, it is powered by lead-acid batteries that need to be maintained on trickle charge over the cold Wisconsin winters.

A minor contribution to switching from gas burning to battery/electric propulsion has been with my electric lawnmower that I have been using for the last two years.

I’ve always laughed at the powerful gas-powered leaf blowers commonly used these days for tasks formerly conducted by rakes. My wife decided we couldn’t live without one, so in our family, it had to be a battery powered electric. It’s not very powerful, but it keeps my wife happy (see it in the photo below).

I also smash all my aluminum cans and sell them to a metal recycling firm. I got $9.33 for the last five bags I sold.

What about the rest of my life where my historical choices are not green but are now only rarely used?

A biggie is our 250 HP V8 gas-powered professional waterski boat. I had a long career where I skied in 40 National Water Ski tournaments. I won several medals including the 2000 National Championship in age group trick water skiing. At 86, I do very little water skiing. As you can see, my boat has also been used for teaching grandchildren skiing. The youngest was only 28 months old. You see my 5-year-old grandson being pulled on skis in the photo below. This boat is used for less than 50 hours per year these days, so it is not a big family source of CO2 emissions.

I am not financially able to replace my gas ski boat with an electric equivalent. I bought mine used 20 years ago for $20,000. A new one now goes for $150,000. The GS22E Correct Craft electric ski boat shown below has an MSRP of $315,000. It would be superior in performance to any gas boat except for a relatively short runtime of fewer than 3 hours. You would also need to set up an L2 charging station at your dock.

Another family gas burner is the 15 hp gas outboard motor seen in the photo below. I recently upgraded from a 2-stroke to a new 4-stroke motor which emits much less CO2. It is used less than 10 hours/year now, so it is a very small family source of CO2. There are now equivalent electric outboard motors which I considered, but they are much more expensive.

Unfortunately, it was not practical for us to purchase an electric equivalent to a gas outboard motor. We paid about $3,155 for our 15 hp Mercury outboard motor. It would take a Mercury Avatar 110e (see photo below) to give the same hp as our 15 hp gas motor. The 110e has an MSRP of $6,120 and would only run about 1 hour at full throttle on a 5,400 Wh battery with a price of $650.

What are the other family sources of CO2 emissions? A big one would be airline travel. In the past year, my wife and I traveled to Paris, France, nonstop on an Airbus 320 jetliner, which used a significant amount of jet fuel for the journey. Over the years, we have traveled to Europe many times, sometimes with children and grandchildren by jetliner. My wife and I also visited our daughter twice in Bangkok, Thailand, and three times in Sydney, Australia, also by jetliner. My wife and I flew to Boston and New York in the last few years, and we have also flown our son and grandchildren from Utah to Wisconsin. Flying was the only alternative. There is no reasonable alternative to jetliner for transoceanic trips. Should we stop doing this travel?

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