0279: Increasing Your Profits Using Clean Energy with Host & CEO of Earthkind Energy Consulting Ron Kamen

Hi, this is Ron Kamen with awesome Earthkind and you're listening to EA interviews.

EA interviews, episode 279, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round seven days a week. Join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority Effect interview. Have you thought about business along with clean energy? How would this look for your business? You know, is it going to cut into profits? Is it going to make you more profit? I'm excited to have Ron Kamen on today's show. He's the CEO of Earthkind Consulting and we're going to be talking about all this and more right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. Visit freebusinessbook publishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, the that's freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Ron Kamen. Ron, how are you feeling today?

Outstanding, Mario. Thank you so much.

I am excited to hear what you have to say about clean energy and green energy. And why do you think there's so many misconceptions about it or people are fighting it?

Well, in terms of the misconceptions, I think there's a long history. We've been relying on fossil fuels for what, a couple hundred years now? So there's this long kind of pent up history and people, people one are hesitant to change. I think we accept change much better than we realize eventually, but in the beginning stages it's kind of painful and I think there's a lot of misinformation that's out there. There's been some bad experiences that people had early on that probably get promulgated onward. But the reality is today that there is so much clean energy around us and we have the technology to capture it and it winds up saving so much money that now it's really an unstoppable for now.

Would you say that this is going to cost companies money or do you think it can even add to their bottom line?

So I've been in this business for 30 years, way before it was kind of popular. And my standard mode of operation is to always identify ways that people could save money. At the same time they reduce their carbon footprint and have a positive impact on the environment that they can be proud of for themselves and their grandchildren. So number one, it's absolutely possible. It's the way that I built my business all for 30 now, but today it's become even more profitable and more possible. And when you take a look at the exponential growth, it's really astonishing. There are now 3.4 million Americans working in clean energy. That's triple the number working in the fossil fuel industry. But because it's dispersed and because it hasn't been as big an advocacy force, people haven't realized that this trend is here. It's happening and it's taken over the world.

Now let's talk about solar, wind, water. Where do you see all three of those going? Do you think one is going to be the most prominent? Do they each have their own use case or are they always going to be working in tandem?

Yeah, so, so part of. I have a podcast that's called the awesome Earth kind podcast. And it's based around the air, water, earth and sun, the four forces of nature that have incredible amounts of power. It's just a thousand times more energy than we need. Right. So if you take a. At last century, last century in the human race's history and in my state of New York, but across the country, we invested in hydropower and water power. And what happened with that is that those hydropower plants you get built and then once you build this infrastructure, the water flows and you get free energy, so you get free electricity. Basically what it means is you just maintain the infrastructure and that's why hydropower is some of the cheapest forms of electricity in the world and has been for a good time 50 years now. So first, in certain instances, hydropower makes a lot of sense. Tidal power is now coming along. So depending upon where you are in the world, near a river, near the ability to do hydro, hydro can be a great solution. There's always challenges in every technology. We could talk about hydro technology issues later and some of the, some of the, the, the things that you have to do to get large hydropower plants, but definitely water power has been there and is a great resource. Then you take a look at the wind resour and what's happening with wind power. And you know, we've been using wind as civilization for years. First to pump water and most recently now to create electricity. And wind is now also an incredible force of energy. And it's a cheaper and cheaper form of energy. And it's next has been overpassed though by the most cost effective source of energy on the planet currently, and that's solar energy. The prices of solar have come down so dramatically over the last 20 years, but even over the last 10 and every year, exponential growth in technology, efficiency and cost reductions. Price of solar has come down 90% in the last five years alone. And it just keeps going in that direction. So every bid that gets put out across the planet now for new generation sources, solar and solar with batteries now, where solar can be delivered on demand. So 24 hours, 24 hours out of the day, you take your solar during the day, you put it in batteries, and now you can deliver that energy anytime. And that is now the single least expensive source of competitive power. And that's why last year, across the world, more than 60% of the world's energy was being created. New energy sources were being created with solar. So solar is a tremendous opportunity as well. And then the last form of that force of nature that we have out there is geothermal or ground source heat pumps. So people take a geothermal out in the west or Hawaii, and in a bunch of states, geothermal drills down towards the magma. That magma then creates steam and creates electricity. And that's what people out in the west and Hawaii think of geothermal power. But everywhere else in the world, it's geothermal heating and cooling. And the reason is that when you go down more than 4 or 5ft, that Earth's temperature is a constant temperature about 50 degrees in the north part of the United states. So that 50 degrees temperature is there constantly because over the last billions of years, the Earth has been capturing more than half the energy that the sun sends. The Earth is captured in the Earth in the ground. And so that 50 degrees is a solid temperature. So you just drill down and you send a fluid down to heat transfer and bring that back up to the surface. And now you have 50 degrees temperature to either start to heat with or cool your building with. And that is the most efficient form of heating and cooling in the world. So the ground source heat pumps or geothermal heat pumps, now you have the forces of the air for wind energy, the water for hydro energy, the earth for ground source heat pumps, creating heating and cooling, and then the sun providing all that massive amount of power that we totally live and depend on. Because without the sun there would be nothing, right? I mean, think about this place would be like without any sun energy. So incredible forces in nature.

Well, I appreciate the breakdown of all four of those because when you mentioned it, I remembered hearing about geothermal. And I want to dive into all of those, to be honest with you. Learn the pros and cons of them, because I know there's a lot of pros. But let's start with the hydro like you were talking about. And I'm really, really curious about the geothermal because I'm in Detroit, Michigan, and it's. It's not always sunny here. And, you know, that's one of the. That's one of the arguments around, you know, the Upper north is it's not always sunny. So what do you do? It's why I love those battery packs. But the geothermal is very interesting and I know very little about it, so can't wait to get there. But let's talk about the pros and cons to the hydro. Obviously, the, you know, the one pro I can think of is the Hoover Dam generates, I don't know the exact stat, but something like 10% to 50% of Las Vegas electricity.

Yeah, it's incredible. So there's no doubt that hydropower is a tremendous resource where it's available in particular when you create a massive dam, like we did with the Hoover Dam or some of the other dams that are around, or even in places like Niagara Falls, where still that water energy in New York State, that hydropower, it's about 18% of all the New York State electricity comes from hydropower. And again, it's because when you build the infrastructure, you then the water flows and you get free energy, right? You're not burning anything, you're not trying to do anything, you're not moving. You're just letting the water flow and turning a turbine and boom, you got clean electricity. So the challenge becomes, if you try to do this on a big scale, as the Canadians have done somewhat and the Chinese have done more recently, and what happens is you're backing up thousands or hundreds of thousands of acres of land and in that process, dislocating people who were living on that land. And that's definitely tricky and not a good thing, especially in certain indigenous areas where people have been living there for centuries. And now you're forcing them to move. So the downside is if you have to build a big dam and make people move, that becomes not such a great technology. Technology's there, but the issues associated with it, the social issues, become problematic. If you have a river, on the other hand, and you could do run of the river hydro, which is more and more prevalent, or you can do water power with tidal power, which is now a technology that's coming into its own. Now there's another way to capture that energy that's there and channel that into electricity. So great promise in a bunch of different places and a bunch of different ways. Just the traditional way of building a dam and backing up the hundreds of acres of land to be able to.

Support that Dam are problematic now with the hydro. And I just love water to begin with. Like I was saying, I enjoy boating and just being on it. It's beautiful without building the dam. And I've actually done it in the sand, get some clay, get some sand, put some twigs, and you start, you know, building it. And it's interesting to see what happens, but water always finds its path. So it sounded like you're saying there's technologies where you don't necessarily have to build the dam, but you can still capture as it's going by. Is that correct?

Yeah. So that's called run of the river hydro. And that's also gotten much more cost effective as our technology has improved. So it used to be to be able to make things cost effective, you would need to build a really big dam or really big, big space. Right. But now with the technology, it's gotten much more decentralized and the ability to capture it on smaller and smaller micro hydro basis is really where things are moving towards. And that does not disrupt everything the way that building a big dam does. So, yeah, that holds a lot of promise. You're absolutely right, Mario.

Excellent. So I the wind turbines, what are the pros and cons to those?

Well, so wind energy has also taken off and it's gotten much more cost effective. Technology has now gotten to the point when I first started dealing with wind energy about a dozen years or so ago of 1.5 megawatt, 1.5 million watt turbine was kind of the standard that was out there. That was the biggest wind turbine that was around. Out of that, you would get like 4 million kilowatt hours a year, which is enough to support a couple of hundred people or a lot of people off of that one wind turbine. But now it's gotten to the point where we're looking at five and six megawatt turbines, much bigger, much higher up, capturing much more the wind and transferring that energy into electricity. The great part is that it's clean, it's green, the wind blows, got free electricity. So you build the infrastructure and just like the hydropower, build the infrastructure. Now the wind blows and you have free electricity. The cons on the other side is that some people don't like to look at it. And I get it. I mean, you know, everybody's artistic autistic tastes are a little bit different. I happen to like Picasso, you might like Rembrandt or some more realistic kind of folks. So I get that. But the funniest part to me is that when you take a look and you really look around our society and you go out and you look on your street, you see all those wires going down that are your electric wires and your cable wires and your phone wires. And you go and you're driving around and you see those big transmission wires that are there from the power plant that's just over the hill that you don't see. That's kind of like what happens with wind is that people who haven't seen it in their viewshed are concerned about now seeing it. But the funniest part is that once it's there, people kind of like oh, never even really I didn't, I forgot it was even there because it's not. Becomes unobtrusive.

You just, you just tune it out.

Yeah, basically it just becomes, you know, part of the, part of the background, you know, so, so humans are kind of funny that way. You know, we're very slow to change, but then when the change happens, we accept it. I mean, you know, just like we all have these little multimillion dollar supercomputers in our pockets now that our kids have that cost a couple hundred bucks. But ten years ago they would fill a whole office room with Manx of computer and cost millions of dollars. And it wasn't that long ago that we now have more power in our pocket than what took our Apollo spacecraft to the moon. Right. And it's a couple hundred bucks compared to all the computer power that was on the whole planet not too long ago. So change happens. Our technology evolves. Humans are really good eventually at accepting it. And that's really. I see the biggest challenge with wind is people just overcoming their initial shock about something going to be different. Realizing that our energy's got to come from somewhere. And if it's clean and it's green and it's going to keep getting cheaper because again, once you build the infrastructure, that's it. When blows the water flows, the sun shines and that's it, free energy. So all you got to do is maintain the infrastructure so it becomes more and more cost effective over time.

And with the wind, I see it working better specifically for the US and the Great Plains states, the Midwest, you know, California's got water around it, Washington, Michigan definitely does, Great Lakes. But not everyone has that water around them in abundance. Enough with enough speed and all of that where hydro might be viable. However, wind best I know that's air is everywhere. Otherwise you got a real problem.

Yeah, I mean so wind is a little bit fickle. You're right. More than water power, there's a little more opportunity. There's definitely significantly more opportunity there, but it's not everywhere either. So in New York state, for instance, or in other parts of the state, if you have any other parts of the country, wherever you are, unless you're right on the top of a mountain, you have to really be really careful about how the wind is moving. And you really have to do detailed studies to make sure that prevailing winds. Because the wind shifts right all the time. So you want to make sure that wherever you're siting this turbine, you have mapped the wind resource effectively year round, because the wind shifts year round. And if you're in make one assumption, you might not get as much out of that wind turbine as you would expect because there's some trees or there's another kill or their patterns kind of shift. So there's always a need for wind with pretty detailed studies to make sure that it's going to be cost effective and work the way you think it is in that particular specific location.

Now, I never researched this, but can you pivot them? Can you, like remote control, say, let's turn it 10 degrees because it's coming this way. Are they.

Yeah, they're smart machines, man. So they do all that internally now with their own internal computers and. And they'll even pivot themselves to shut down if the wind becomes too high and it's going to create too much pressure and break the turbine. So they're. They're smart machines, you know. Okay. As you might have heard, you know, Texas has been having a problem with their wind turbines during this polar vortex down there. And there's a bunch of issues related to it. But the basic issue is that the wind turbines that they did is instead of investing in antifreeze types like they do in Antarctica, where wind turbines work in Antarctica. They could have worked in Texas today, but the owners didn't invest in the antifreeze technology that would have kept them rolling. So that's a longer story about regulation and competitiveness down in Texas and a whole host of things. But just to let folks know, the technology has proven it works, Works everywhere in the world, and it can work in cold climates, and it would have worked in Texas if they had just taken that next step they were urged to do about 12 years ago when a previous polar vortex hit Texas. They would have done the right thing. There would be wind electricity today. And they did the same thing, unfortunately, with the gas and the oil plants. The major part of Texas that they had relied on to produce was not from wind this time of year it was from the fossil fuel plants. And those plants froze again because they didn't invest in the, in the antifreeze technology that would have safeguarded it because they didn't think it was Texas who's going to freeze down in Texas? There's no such thing as climate changing. The climate's not changing. Everything's fine. They'll never be freezing temperatures in Texas. Sorry.

Well, I appreciate you giving us that insight because I was actually very curious about that because I know the technologies are good and there's a lot of good coming from them. But yeah, cold is, you know, even the solar panels, they can ice up. And I, I personally was just thinking, I think I was cooking something. It's usually when I'm coming up with ideas, but I was like, can't they just add a heater or something? I mean, the whole structures are metal. I mean, the cars have them. How hard would it be? They're generating electricity anyway. How hard is. So I, I want to ask how. What is the anti phrase? Do they literally have liquid running through it like in the car, or is there some sort of heater mechanism, A combo of both?

Yeah, there could be a combo of both. So both a little different materials, it's a little different fluids inside, but then it's also a little bit of electric heat going on that just, you know, keeps, lets them, lets them channel that and make sure that they got defrost built into the actual mechanism of it. So, so, yep, you know, it's just. And it's again, yeah, same thing with airplanes.

Oh, we're five minutes behind. We got to defrost the plane. They don't have a problem putting those things. The sky, even when there's ice hanging.

Off of it, you go up 30,000ft, man, it's pretty cold, you know, so, yeah, it's, it's a funny thing, you know, so. And again, if you take a look, you'll see the technology works in Antarctica. So it's not a technology issue. It was. And part of it is really the way the Texas electricity markets work. And it was really, you know, one of those things where you build the cheapest thing possible. All right, well, low bid is not necessarily the best option in the long term. You know, it'll get you some short term gains, but over the long haul, you really want to build value and look at the long term.

So, yeah, I've used that similar example for years in business because I go, you may have gotten a good price, but you did not get the best value.

Yep, exactly.

And there's a big difference from, I mean that, that alone, like you said. Okay, cool, you saved a little bit, but you iced over when it was needed most, so that's not good. Now what about geothermal? Because this is interesting to me because I gotta be honest, I know about volcanoes. Loved them. Love dinosaurs. And the only time I'm thinking of geothermals from games years ago when it was like, you have to build a civilization on a distant planet. And it was cool because it was. And I remember thinking, and I'm going back, geez, 10, 20, 25, 30 years. And I'm just like, why don't we do that now? There's all this heat in the ground. Why don't we tap it? I didn't know it was only four or five feet. And I really thought you needed to be by a volcano or something like producing tons of heat. But you're saying you go six feet down and it's going to be warm enough to start helping you.

Yeah. And you know, here's a couple of very interesting things.

So first, I gotta be honest, I want to go dig a hole in my backyard right now.

Hook it to a battery pack with a solar panel.

It's not the battery, it's heating. So it's a little bit different. That's where people do get a little confused. But we're talking now heating and cooling, right? Not creating electricity. So the geothermal, to create electricity, it is drilling down into the magma. And obviously in Hawaii, in California and elsewhere, you don't have to go that far down to get that magma. And then that creates the steam that spins a turbine that creates electricity. But for you and me, and for most people in the world, especially most people in this country, geothermal is really a heating and cooling technology because you think about it. So here's the way the technology works. You drill down 4, 5, 6ft. And if you want to, if you have a lot of land, you could do it in a field or you can drill straight down. 500ft. In New York is where you can go without any additional permite. So you just go down 500ft, you send a fluid down, the fluid goes down now in a closed loop. And that's where the technology has really evolved. This closed loop, closed loop cooling system.

Like on a Waverunner.

Right. And what happens is you send it down, it comes back up. Now it's got 50 degrees and now you start to heat or cool from 50 degrees. Right. So if you're cooling, hey, you already got 50 degrees. You're just blowing a fan across the some air across the coil, and now you're cooling a place. It's 50 degrees to start with. Pretty nice. During the summer you got 50 degrees that you're starting with. It's great. Or if you're starting to heat instead of heating from whatever the temperature is outside at my house this morning was like 20 degrees. Where I don't know what it is in Detroit, but it's probably a little cooler there today.

If I'm not mistaken, it's actually in the 40s. It popped up, but it was like negative nine the other day.

Great, right. So, okay, sun's out. Yeah, exactly. So you know the fluctuations of temperature and that's the whole thing. It's really crazy. But here's a couple of statistics. One, north of you, and it's actually northeast of you, I guess, is Toronto. Right. So in Toronto, all the high rises now are using geothermal. And the fact is that you can drill down in Toronto or anywhere else in this part of the world. And if you drill down and you send that fluid down and you bring the fluid back up that temperature with heat pumps, and I'll talk about general heat pumps in a second. But the temperature of that ground in a heat pump function can support all the heating, all the cooling and all the hot water up to 30 stories, just under the footprint of your building. So in Toronto, there are third parties that will drill your wells. They'll put in those geothermal wells, they'll put it in with their capital, and then they'll just sell you that energy over time for that heating and cooling over time, because they'll make a little bit of profit on it. But you'll have the cheapest source of heating, cooling and air conditioning that anyone can have. And when you take a look at efficiencies, here's how the efficiencies work. Anything that burns, any fossil fuel, that burns oil, coal, gas, propane, is something less than 100% efficient. Right. Burn the burn up to efficiency. The maximum is 100% efficiency you can get with any burning technology, any fossil fuel technologies. If you have really efficient gas technologies, they'll talk about a 99% efficient furnace or boiler. Great, wonderful. It's always less than 100% when you go to an air source heat pump. And do you know what an air source heat pump is? You do, but you don't realize, you know, furnace? Nope.

Oh, a fan.

No, it's close. Close.

Hold on. Something was steam.

That could be, but the Most common that we all have is a refrigerator. A refrigerator is a heat pump and it's a heat pump.

I think about it more like an air conditioner though.

But you're right, air conditioner is another form of heat pump. There you go. But not everybody has air conditioners. Almost everybody, but not everybody. But that's right, that's. Those are two forms of heat pump.

So because it's sucking out the heat.

And replacing it compresses and expands gas and then takes the heat out of a space and lets it go into the air. Right. And in an air conditioner, good old.

Fashioned RJ 45 I think, or.

Well, there's different types of, yeah, different types of refrigerants and that's something to keep an eye on. So definitely we want to keep an eye on which refrigerant are you using. And that technology has been evolving too. But an air conditioner is an air source heat pump. Except the only difference between a, a full air source heat pump and an air conditioner is that in the winter the valves are switched and instead of dumping heat in the outside, it grabs the heat from outside and brings it inside your building. And actually the technology's advanced. So now cold climate heat pumps can take heat effectively out of the air even down to minus 15. So that's an air source heat pump.

What heat is left in the air at negative 15?

It's still a lot of heat. Man, if there wasn't a lot of heat. You know, you got to think about it this, right? Without the sun, I mean, it's just like really incredible, right? So without the sun, you know how cold this place would be, right? I mean, take a look at probably.

Negative 100 kelvin, right?

It's like so. Yeah. So even if minus 15, even though we don't realize it, there's still a lot of energy and a lot of heat around it. You can actually grab that heat with modern technology now, grab that heat and use it to heat and cool and provide hot water for your spaces. So that's really incredible. But the most incredible piece is if you go down on the ground with geothermal, you bring that 50 degrees freeze temperature up and then you use a heat pump on it. That's the most efficient form of heating, cooling and hot water on the planet. So when you look at efficiencies, fossil fuels, less than 100% air source heat pumps, usually between 2 and 300% efficient, because every unit of electricity put in because you're sucking that heat out of the air and really moving it around, you're getting twice or three times the energy out of the electricity you're putting into it. But when you look at ground source heat pumps or geothermal heat pumps, we're doing 4,500% or more efficiency. So every unit of electricity we put in, we're getting more out of it. Because now you're using that earth constant energy temperature of 50 degrees to then heat or cool more effectively and efficiently. So if you're trying to go up.

To 60 or down to 40, you're saying either way, you're still starting at 50 and you only have to make up the delta of 10 degrees either way, instead of dropping, like when it's 104 here and you're trying to get it to 72, you're maxing out those air conditioners.

Exactly. And if you're starting with 50 degrees, man.

You got it.

Well, I gotta be honest, I'm a little irritated now because I'm like, why don't they make air conditioners that have the heat pumps that we can just reverse them in the winter? Dude, one, do they have them? And two, how do I get one? Because I know they do.

Pretty much every air conditioning manufacturer has a heat pump option or a heat pump division or heat pump model. So just take a look around, you can absolutely get it. And I always tell everybody, if you're going with a, with an air conditioner, look at a heat pump. It's not that much more money. Usually you can get a utility incentive on it. Depending upon where in the country you are, there's a federal tax credit that you can get on it. More of a tax credit actually. If you do geothermal, that's at 26%, but air source heat pumps qualify for a little less. But you can get, get a tax credit on it. You get a utility incentive on it. Now you can heat and cool, and you can either use it as a supplemental piece if your heating system is good, or, you know, in many cases you can just switch out your whole heating and cooling and hot water system, put in these heat pumps, and you're golden and you're saving a pile of money.

Well, I really appreciate all these expert authority insights and I see a lot of application personally. And you got me thinking like, well, why don't you? I have a heat pump. And two, how can we drill a geothermal well? Because that just for no other reason just sounds cool, to be honest. But I'm also thinking, well, one, can you drill on your own property for geothermal, or does it need to be business application, like you said, the third party.

No, lots of people have it across the country. There's hundreds of thousands of people that got geothermal systems and they're becoming more and more prevalent as time goes along because the costs have come down, the technology has improved, the installation practices have improved. There's some incentives to help make it happen, both federal and then local with utilities. So yeah, no, obviously this just sounds.

All kind of good. I think I got a new project coming up.

Yeah, absolutely. So I actually one of my clients is Climate Master and I highly recommend you take a look at them. They have local installers all across the country, a national installer base. They're a high quality American manufacturer and they have tremendous expertise and they can help you leverage all the incentives. And yeah, get a free estimate. I mean just have someone come in your house, get a free estimate. What's going to hurt, right? Then you could decide. But I'll tell you, when you take a look at it, you're looking at energy savings up to 70% depending on your country and what your existing situation is. And if you have duct worked in your house for central air, it's easier. If you don't have ductwork, then you have to put in ductwork because of the way the systems work. But you know, there's a lot of options. And it's amazing, Mario, that most folks don't know about it yet, but they're gonna. Little by little, we're getting there.

Yeah. And I know a lot of people think the solar panels are true, just big giant banks where you need all this field and everything. And I remember years ago when I.

Learned and heard about the battery packs, I was like, well, this is a no brainer. And then they're making the shingles for your roof that are now incorporating with them. I'm like your whole freaking roof. I mean, because I get that you for the aesthetic, especially in a neighborhood versus commercial, okay, commercial building, you put the big fans on top, no one sees them really anyway, unless you're doing Google Earth, photo or whatever. But residential, okay, you want it to look good, but now they're looking good. So I got a few questions and one of them is do you think we'll ever get to the point where all of these are totally replacing fossil fuels 100%? Or do you think there will always be even 5 or 10, maybe 1%? Do you think there will always be some dependence just as a backup and just minimized it?

Great question. I think that systematically we're going to get Close to total overhaul for all our electricity, heating, cooling and transportation. I think the biggest sector where we're going to have the largest challenge is going to be on heavy duty transportation. But even there we're seeing technology evolution. So, you know, it used to be.

A few years ago, Tesla was the only one with an electric vehicle, right? And got to give Tesla credit. They absolutely have transformed the electric vehicle market. But now every single automobile manufacturer is investing in electric vehicles. Ford has a $10 billion investment. GM has their, I think it's 10 or more billion dollars investment. Every manufacturer, whether you're on the top end with Porsche or Mercedes or BMW, or you come on down to the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy bolts and everything in between has electric vehicle models that are out there. The challenge becomes when you're doing heavier stuff, but even in heavier stuff, New York City this week. Yeah, Semi trucks and garbage trucks, right? Haulers. Garbage haulers, which have a lot of power that they need to move all that garbage, et cetera. So those kinds of heavy hauling trucks. And then you have aviation, right? And that's another level beyond when you have these jets. Jets, right, that are taking off and that amount of power. But even in those areas you start, we're starting to see, it's amazing to me seeing garbage trucks, electric garbage trucks. You saw Tesla came out with their long haul truck that they are announcing that they have. But they're not the only ones. There are many manufacturers that have them. Electric buses, actually, China again, leading the world in electric vehicles with cars and trucks and buses. And in California, they have a joint venture going in California with a Chinese company that's having the buses, electric buses that move people around Los Angeles. So these technologies are almost here. They have a ways to go. And I think it's going to be interesting to see the evolution. But in my neck of the woods in New York, there's a pilot project going on with school buses. So think about school buses, right? So let's say you wanted to have an electric school bus. An electric school bus is really batteries on wheels, right? It's massive batteries. It's almost a megawatt of power in these school buses. But think of school buses. Most of the time they're just sitting around, right? They move the kids in the morning, they move the kids in the afternoon. And during the summer, mostly they're just sitting around. So Con Edison, one of the largest utilities in the country in New York, has a pilot project going on with five school buses in the White Plains school district. And what they're doing is during the day they move the kids around during the school season as much as it can be moved around in Covid times. But anyway, we'll get through that in a little bit. But they move kids around. They call them the singing bus because the buses were so quiet. They had to play music because they couldn't hear the buses coming. So they call them the singing buses because they play songs to let the kids know they're coming. Kind of like the Carvel ice cream truck, if you remember those. But those buses, then when they're off duty, they're taking electricity off the grid at night, which in New York we have a lot of excess electricity at night. We use most of it during the day to heat and cool and provide lighting on our office buildings, et cetera. So they take the cheap electricity when there's a lot of spare electricity off the grid. At night, they charge up the bus. And then during the summers they use those buses as batteries to discharge into the electric grid when the grid needs it. That means that the grid gets support when we most need electricity. That's the most expensive electricity. So it also winds up being a source of revenue to the schools for their vehicles. And one of the fascinating things, I think the next evolution that's coming is that when I have a couple of electrical, one of them is a Nissan Leaf. Nissan Leaf right now is the only car in the US that has two way charging and discharging capability. But every Nissan Leaf that's in the US that entire fleet can plug into your house and needs a software and hardware adapter that's coming out this summer. But if you have that software and hardware adapter, you can actually run your house off of a Nissan Leaf. And every electric vehicle is going to do that. Nissan Leaf right now can run an average family house for three to five days as a backup power source.

Well, that's interesting.

Right?

And then the car makes its own energy while it's driving.

It doesn't make energy while it's driving. It does recapture energy when you're going down a hill. It's got regenerative braking. It doesn't, doesn't create it yet.

So not completely like the alternator does, but it does capture it.

So yeah, it recatches. Right. So but you know, the, the other interesting thing that most people don't know about with electric vehicles is when you think about how far do you go an average person goes in a day? 98% of Americans trips are less than 50 miles. Right. So I don't know about you, how far you drive in an average day. But most people, it's about 10 times.

Longer than I was even gonna think. Because I'm like, I used to joke with people, I could go to the grocery store in church. And the reality is the grocery store is such an inconvenience. I've been using the delivery systems for a couple years. I'm like.

Where is it now that my friend's house a few streets over, Something for whatever.

I mean, it's a really great point. So just two quick points. One point on a side tangent for a second. You know who invested in 100,000 electric vans to provide delivery services to your house and everybody else's home and properties? Around a hundred thousand electric vans.

I feel like I know the answer. And I saw the headline. Like Dolly Parton.

No, it's this little company called Amazon.

That was my second guess. I was like, it's one of these two.

I knew you had it in the back of your mind. It was just she did something else.

That was pretty epic. I think it was with books or something.

But 100,000 Rivian electric fans. So the electric fan market is coming and part of it is being driven by folks like Amazon who are ordering a hundred thousand at a time. Time. But in terms of our situation today as just homeowners and you know, not everybody has a home, some people live in multi family buildings, in apartment buildings and they rent different situations for different people. But if you're a single family homeowner and you have one car, two cars, you know, most people have two cars, most families, but let's whatever kilometer cars. But 98% of our trips are less than 50 miles. Which means that you can take a Chevy, bolt, a Nissan Leaf, or a number of other electric vehicles, relatively inexpensive on the market today, and plug it into a regular wall socket overnight. That's it. Just right into a regular socket in your garage. And that'll give you enough power overnight to go 200 miles in a day. So for 98% of our trips, we can just plug it into electric vehicle into a regular wall socket and we don't have to think about a charging station or ever go to a gas station again. Because it's just coming out of our house at night and using electricity to move us around is a half to two thirds cheaper per mile in fuel. Plus you get maintenance savings. No oil changes, no transmission fluids. And instead of 2,000 moving parts, which is what is an internal combustion engine, you got about 20, so less maintenance. So when all these fleets are now looking at what are they doing and where are they going, municipal fleets in particular. So New York City did a study and they found that by far, far the least total cost of ownership was an electric vehicle.

Take a look. Think about it. There's tax credits right now on most electric vehicles that write down the cost of your electric vehicle with an immediate tax credit. There are utility incentives in many parts of the country where the utilities will help you or the state, the government will help you. And when you take a look at the cost of ownership, first on capital costs, your capital costs with the incentives that are out there can be less, less than a comparable internal combustion engine. But when you look at the total cost of ownership of your fuel and maintenance, oil, transmission fluids, etc. Dramatically cheaper and more convenient and no fossil fuels. And no worries about carbon monoxide killing you or your family if somebody leaves the thing running or whatever else, because it's all solid state technology.

Well, that's really inspiring because I like looking into stuff and stay cutting edge with all areas of my life. But I did not know all those details. And I think it's impressive, not just from a residential standpoint, but like you're talking about the fleets. You know, how can you increase the profit to your business? How can you not only save the money, but when you have less repairs, less maintenance, less upkeep, that's just less of a headache to begin with, not to mention the profits. And the other thing I'm hearing is I want to ask about retrofits versus new construction because if you have a home that's 10, 20, 30, whatever years old versus hey, I'm building a new new one, I mean, it's a no. It sounds like a no brainer on new construction, but how hard is it to retrofit existing ones, would you say so?

It varies across the board. Everybody's home and everybody's business is a little bit different. So no doubt about it. But absolutely. First off, if you're in new construction, it is a no brainer. You should be putting solar on your roof to power up all your electricity. Use that solar electricity to also provide heating and cooling and air conditioning by drilling holes under the footprint of your building. If you don't have much of a space around your building, just drill under the footprint. And if you're less than 25 stories, you're in the money with heating and cooling and being able to support all your heated cooling and hot water up to 25 stories with the holes right under your footprint of your building. And Then you just have that solar also supply your electricity for your, for your electric vehicles. And not too far, distant future this summer with the Nissan Leaf, but also later this year with a bunch of other vehicles. You'll be able to use those vehicles as your mobile battery source and use that as backup generation. So when the grid goes down, you just basically power up your cars and use that vehicle as a backup power source for a new construction. Really, it is a no brainer. It's amazing that we haven't caught on yet and we need to and I think we are starting to get there. But the more people find out, the more they realize, wow, yeah, it is a no brainer. I, I could save so much money and I look at a 20 or 30 year mortgage and investment in my property, why wouldn't I want to have free electricity, heating, cooling and my car paid for by the solar panels that I put into a 30 year mortgage. I look at the cash flows, it's like, wow, incredible return on investment. So yeah, new construction, totally on a retrofit basis. You really got to start with where you're at. And one of the things, just FYI, on a commercial basis for any of your listeners, we have a partnership program for folks who do referrals to commercial properties that have more than 20,000 square feet where we can come in, in, take a look at what's going on and figure out ways of putting together some of these clean energy packages and structure clean energy transformations, whether it's efficiency or solar or heat pumps or electrification of their fleets. And the people who give us the referrals, as a partner, they get a substantial commission, 20% of what we make actually, which is not a bad commission, and it winds up being thousands of dollars on even a relatively small project of 20,000 square feet. So in a commercial basis, maybe keep that in mind for yourself and your, your listeners, but on a home basis, look, it depends on how tight your home was built with, how old it was to begin with, what's in there to start with. You always want to tighten it up with efficiency with insulation in your attic and tighten up your windows so you're not leaking in, leaking, heating and cooling out. And then you take a look at, okay, what's your heating system, how old is it, when are you going to replace it, what are you using? If you're using oil today, oil appropriate, absolutely. Geothermal or air source heat pumps are very cost effective and you can structure your financing so that you save money from day one. So that retrofit is pretty simple, you look at electric vehicles. Again, take a look at whatever electric vehicle you're using, how many miles you're traveling, how much you're paying for gasoline. Compare that to your cost of electricity. Realize it's so much more efficient because it's all torque in those electric motors. So you're getting the same distance per mile, the same distance with much less energy, a third to two thirds less energy than gasoline. And it's so much cheaper. Take a look at your total cost. And you could save money there too. So that retrofit is relatively easy. If you want to put solar. Solar is somewhat dependent upon how much sun you have, how much roof space you have. If you have to replace your roof, if it's going to be replacing, you should do that sooner than later. But pretty much, you know, again, solar is working in Antarctica as well as everywhere else in the world, right. So you can make things work depending upon where you are. And it just depends if you're in a really cheap utility territory. So I'm in New York, our utility rates, Detroit is pretty high. You know, the coders are almost nothing. So depending upon where you are and the cost that you're currently paying, you may or may not be able to make a good solid economic deal out of it. But again, with new construction, it's really a no brainer. With retrofits you got to take a look and just do the work, do the analysis to really figure it out.

Wow. Well, I appreciate all the info and I want to ask one last thing before we go to thanking our sponsor. It's with the wind turbines, are those only available with a big amount of space or do they have any like the size of a satellite dish you could throw on your roof?

So the, the more distributed wind turbines are there, they're becoming more and more cost effective and opportunistic. So there are opportunities to do smaller ones. But again, you should really do a wind study to make sure that you have enough wind wherever you're thinking of putting it. Because unfortunately a lot of people did some kind of mid sized ones a few years back and they wound up with a very expensive lawn ornament that was supposed to produce electricity. It didn't. And me, look, I have a little make believe wind turbine. It doesn't produce any energy, but I love looking at it because I like those wind ornaments, right? So that's fine if that's what you want, but if you want to produce energy, make sure you to get, get a study done and really figure it out. And, and if folks want to contact me, is that okay to, to list the website that they could go.

Oh, absolutely. I was going to ask you when in the second half anyway, please.

Oh, we're not in the second half yet. I'm sorry. Oh wait. Sorry about that. Didn't mean to jump.

No, but go, go for it.

I mean, so, so it's awesome. Earth kind awe s o m e so awesome. And then Earth kind e a r t h k I n d.com we're going to create, create a special webpage. Mario. Is that good?

That's good.

Great, Mario. And if you go to awesomeearthkind.com Mario there'll be some free energy saving tips. There'll be the opportunity to enter a sweepstakes for a free led, very high efficient light fixture. And then there's also this referral program. So if you know somebody who's got 20,000 square foot of space, a building owner and you happen to refer us and we get a job out of it, then you'll get a commission on that as well. Well, and we're also setting in place a training program for people. This is now a $7 trillion industry. Energy across the world. There is going to be somewhere estimates go from $20 trillion worth of investment to $100 trillion worth of investment across the world. As the world now comes to make this transition to these clean energy technologies, it's a massively growing, fast growing field. Again, three times as many Americans already employed in clean energy than the fossil fuel industry. And if people want to get into the, into the business as a clean energy consultant, we have a program that was starting in May that you can find out about. And if you're interested, hop on a free web class, we'll tell you all about it. And if you want to become a clean energy consultant, we'll then work with you, train you and give you a program that you could take out and earn some money while you're doing it.

Excellent. Well, that all sounds good. And I'm excited to see where this is going. And it's actually leads us right into this. This is the wheel of whatever.

We're gonna see what question you get.

It's spinning like a turbine.

It's great, man. I love it. Psychedelic.

You want yellow or black?

Any recommendations?

The questions are, as you can see, all listed there. So.

Aha. Aha. Now let's take it. Do I get two? Later? Do I get one and one, or do I only just get one?

I'll take the sun yellow one for today.

There we Go yellow. Oh, look at that. It just happened to land right where you wanted it to.

Oh, there you go. Perfect.

So I have a question for you and it's where do you see this going the next 50 years?

Great.

Globally.

Globally, yeah, look, the whole world, the whole world is moving in this direction. And.

I'm a science based person, right? So I'm science and economics, that's my kind of forte. I had an accounting background, a financial background. I did that undergraduate. I moved into system science on my graduate degree. So I look at things from an economic perspective and from a science perspective and from both perspectives, there is no doubt that the world is moving to clean energy. And if you add in the political piece, it's absolutely. The whole world is there. The whole world signed up four years ago in the Paris Treaty to make the whole transition. So it's happening politically, it's happening economically, it's happening environmentally and scientifically. And it's happening. You know what will really drive it is the economics. And the fascinating part again is that the economics have gotten to the point where all these technologies are much better financially than their prior fossil fuel alternatives. And so when you look at the economics, you know, it's one thing to want to be clean and green. That's all great. I love it. I think people should do it, but you can't pay extra for it. That's not sustainable. The only way it becomes sustainable is when you're saving money doing it. And when people save money doing stuff or they're making money doing it, that's when everyone wants to do it. And that's exactly where we are. Mario, everyone is realizing now that in almost every situation you can structure deals that save or make you money. And so who wouldn't want to do that, right? I mean, it's like it's cleaner, it's healthier, it's more efficient, it's making money, saving money. So hey, you know, it's good all the way around. And oh, by the way, maybe we have a clean air future and possibilities of civilization surviving for our children and grandchildren. So nice added benefit. But you know what? We're going to do it because economically, people, that's what drives people, right? It's the economics.

Well, excellent. And that is inspiring. So thank you for that. We're going to thank our sponsor and come back for the impromptu Perfect Action run. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours, and it's true. And that's why you should visit free businessbook publishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori I went from having.

An idea and a possibility to actually getting my book published.

Or Catherine, thank you for making my.

Mom number one best selling author.

Or Mary Alice what he got done for me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable. John Cody I've worked with Mario over the phone and online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books. Rocio there's no way in the world.

I would have been been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past, it didn't serve me. As a matter of fact I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. Adele if you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficini or Bill Benner.

I can't make a higher recommendation than to work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody.

Else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit freebusinessbook publishingcourse.com to get started now and I look forward to hearing your transformation as the next video success story. Once again, that's free businessbook publishingcourse.com and we are back with the imperfect action round. Ron, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Is there any other kind?

I love that answer. So these are 60 second or less answers. The first one is is what is the fastest path to the cash.

So the cheapest form of energy is the one that we don't use. So energy efficiency is always the best place to start and whether it's an LED light bulb to looking at the difference between an incandescent which is 100 watts versus an LED which produces the same amount of light but only uses 20 watts or less. So you get an 80 to 90% reduction. Efficiency is always the fastest, most effective form.

Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

Biggest problem is unawareness and or reluctance to adopt change and to take a look at these technologies and realize that they could save money. So it's just doing the same old same old in the same way they've done it and not realizing that there are better ways out there that they can make a difference and save themselves a lot lot of money.

Excellent. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value.

So I like to take a holistic approach and everyone's a little bit different, right? So some, you know, places of business or some homes have more people, less people, bigger intensity on electricity, bigger intensity on lighting or manufacturing or different processes, heating, cooling, other ones are more fleet or so first you really got to take a look and everyone's got to develop a customized program that meets their current situation. And what I always ask my customers first thing is where are your pain points? How much are you spending on energy? How much are you spending specifically on electricity, heating, cooling and transportation? And then take each of those and look at how you can get synergies out of bringing technologies and financing and incentives together so that you maximize the value you so it's really a custom analysis for every individual or every situation.

Excellent. Well, I appreciate everything you've shared. I want to ask you just a couple more things. One of them is what books would you recommend to Expert Authority world that have made a difference in your life?

One of the most recent one is the Future is faster than you think and it's an incredible book put out by.

A really wealthy and cutting edge multi millionaire. I'm not sure if he's a billionaire just yet, but basically the future is faster than you think. And it's about how all these technologies now have convergence. So it's not just the clean energy technologies, although those are coming, but it's also artificial intelligence and what we're doing with that. And it's the convergence with advanced forms of transportation and advanced technologies in all different fields and are now coming together to exponentially increase changes and how we're going to see the world evolving. So the future is faster than you think. Peter Diamantis yes.

Excellent, excellent recommendation. He is awesome.

Where would you like people to learn more?

So the best place for everyone is awesomeearthkind.com Mario if you want to find out and get some extra special incentives and bonuses, you can also look at my consulting company with his just earthkindenergy.com where I have a lot of my business case studies working with various different governments, nonprofits, some larger institutions like the World bank as well as some smaller, smaller different businesses of all different sizes, nonprofit schools, etc. So earthkindenergy.com if you're just looking to find out who and why my consulting practice or if you want to look@awesome earthkind.com you'll hear a whole range of podcasts with some world renowned leaders in clean energy and individual homeowners who are doing this from a solar perspective or geothermal or an air source heating perspective or an electric vehicle perspective. You'll hear a whole host of different clean energy insights that you might not have known before. And if you go to awesomeearthkind.com Mario, you'll get some added little benefits and features of some clean energy tips and the opportunity to win an LED light fixture as well as the opportunity to do some some commission based and or learn how to have a clean energy business. If you want to go into consulting, excellent.

Well thank you for that. Thank you for all sharing all your expertise. It was incredible. Thank you again.

Such a pleasure being here Mario. Keep up the awesome work man. You're fantastic. Really love this show, love what you're doing and thank you so much for the opportunity.

Well, I appreciate it. The pleasure was mine. Expert Authority World we have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Tomorrow, have a great day and God bless. You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate and qualify leads while increasing profit for you 24 7? And if so, how well are you promoting it? With the Expert Authority Effect publishing method, it's easier and faster than ever. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started. Now once again, that's freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.Com hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.