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

Ron Kamen [0:00]
Hi, this is Ron Kamen with Awesome EarthKind and you’re listening to EA Interviews.

Intro [0:07]
EA interviews, Episode 279, inspiration, transformation success stories and the Imperfect Action Round seven days a week. Join Mario Fachini for today’s Expert Authority Effect Interview.

Mario Fachini [0:20]
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 Kaman 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.

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Mario Fachini [0:55]
Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Ron Kaman. Ron, how are you feeling today?

Ron Kamen [0:59]
Outstanding. Mario, thank you so much.

Mario Fachini [1:02]
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?

Ron Kamen [1:13]
Well, in terms of the misconceptions, I think there’s a long history. We’ve been relying on fossil fuels for a couple 100 years now. So there’s this long kind of pent up history and people 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 some bad experiences that people had early on that probably get propagated 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 force.

Mario Fachini [1:57]
Now, would you say that this is going to cost companies money or do you think it can even add to their bottom line.

Ron Kamen [2:03]
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 can be proud of themselves and their grandchildren. So number one, it’s absolutely possible. That’s the way that I built my business all for 30 years 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 tripled 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.

Mario Fachini [2:56]
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? Are they always going to be working in tandem?

Ron Kamen [3:10]
Yeah, so part of me has a podcast that’s called the Awesome EartKind 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 1000 times more energy than we need, right. So if you take a look at last century, last century, in the human races history, and my state of New York, but of course, the country, we invested in hydro power and water power, and what happened with that is that those hydro power 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 50 years now. So first, in certain instances, hydro power 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’s technology issues later and some of the things that you have to do to get large hydro power plants. But definitely water power has been there, and it’s a great resource. Then you take a look at the wind resources and what’s happening with wind power. And 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 its next has been overpass 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, the price of solar has come down 90% in the last five years alone, and it just keeps going in that direction. So every bit 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 any time. 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 with new energy sources. 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 in 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 four or five feet, 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 in depend on because without the sun, there would be nothing, right any think of what this place would be like, without any sun energy. So it’s a credible force in nature.

Mario Fachini [7:31]
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 and 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 curious about geothermal because I’m in Detroit, Michigan, and it’s not always sunny here. And 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 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 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.

Ron Kamen [8:29]
Yeah, it’s incredible. So there’s no doubt that hydro power is a tremendous resource where it’s available. And particularly 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 with still that water energy in New York state that hydro power, it’s about 18% of all in 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 some wide and the Chinese have done, we’ve more recently, and what happens is you’re backing up 1000s or hundreds of 1000s of acres of land, and in that process, dislocating people who are 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. You have a river, on the other hand, and you could run off 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 and energy that’s there and channeled 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.

Mario Fachini [10:17]
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 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?

Ron Kamen [10:49]
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 a 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 builds a lot of promise. You’re absolutely right, Mario.

Mario Fachini [11:22]
Excellent. So if wind turbines, what are the pros and cons to those? Well, so…

Ron Kamen [11:30]
Wind energy has also taken off and just 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 or 1.5 million wind 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 was enough to support a couple of 100 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 of the wind and transferring that energy into electricity. The great part is that it’s clean, it’s green, the wind blows, and it has free electricity. So you build the infrastructure, and just like the hydro power, 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. Artistic 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 road, 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, but you don’t see. That’s kind of like what happens with wind is that people who haven’t seen it, in their view shed 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 even then I forgot it was even there because it’s not becomes unobtrusive.

Mario Fachini [13:27]
You just tune it out.

Ron Kamen [13:30]
Yeah, basically, it just becomes part of the background, so humans are kind of funny that way, we’re very slow to change. But then when the change happens, we accepted I mean just like, we all have these little multimillion dollar supercomputers in our pockets now that our kids have that cost a couple 100 bucks, but 10 years ago, they would fill a whole office room with mancs of computer and costs 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 100 bucks compared to all the computer power that was on the whole planet not too long ago. So change happens or technology evolves, humans are really good eventually at accepting it. And that’s really I see that 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, the wind blows, the water flows, the sun shines, and that’s it free energy, so all you gotta do is maintain the infrastructure so it becomes more and more cost effective over time.

Mario Fachini [14:51]
And with the wind, I see it working better, less but specifically for the US in the great plains states, the Midwest. California’s got water round at 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 everywhere. Otherwise you have a real problem?

Ron Kamen [15:19]
Yeah, I mean, so when there’s a little bit fickle, and you’re right, more than waterpower, 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 of prevailing winds because the wind shifts right all the time. So you want to make sure that wherever you’re citing this turbine, you have mapped the wind resource effectively year round, because the wind shifts year round. And if you’re making 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 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.

Mario Fachini [16:22]
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, or they

Ron Kamen [16:31]
Smart machines, man, so they do all that internally now with their own computers. And they leave and pivot themselves to shut down if the wind becomes too high, and it’s going to create too much pressure and break the turbines. So they’re smart machines, you know, as you’re buying 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, instead of investing in antifreeze types, like they do in Antarctica, wind turbines work in Antarctica. They could have worked in Texas today. But their 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 is proven it 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 that 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 antifreeze technology that would have safeguarded it because they didn’t think it was Texas, who’s gonna freeze down in Texas, there’s no such thing as climate changing. The climate is not changing. Everything’s fine. They’ll never be freezing temperatures in Texas. Yeah, sorry.

Mario Fachini [18:19]
Well, I appreciate you. givin us that insight, because I was actually very curious about that. Because I know that technologies are good, and there’s a lot of good coming from them. But yeah, even the solar panels, they can ice up at night, 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 want to ask, what is the antifreeze? Do they literally have liquid running through it like in the car? Or is there some sort of a heater mechanism or a combo of both?

Ron Kamen [19:00]
It can be a combo of both. So both are 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 keeps less than 10 channel that and make sure that they got the frost built into the actual mechanism of it. So yep it’s just…

Mario Fachini [19:21]
Same thing with airplanes five minutes behind, we got to defrost the plane, they don’t have a problem put those things in the sky, even when there’s ice hanging off of it

Ron Kamen [19:29]
You go up 30,000 feet, man, it’s cold,So yeah, it’s a funny thing. So and again, if you take a look, you’ll see the technology works in Antarctica. So it’s not a technology issue and part of it is really the way that Texas electricity markets work. And it was really, one of those things where you build the cheapest thing possible. Alright, well, low bid is not necessarily the best option in the long term, it’ll get you some short term gains, but over the long haul, we really want to build value and look at the long term.

Mario Fachini [20:01]
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.

Ron Kamen [20:10]
Yep, exactly.

Mario Fachini [20:12]
And there’s a big difference from I mean that alone, like you said, okay, cool. You saved a little bit. But yeah, I stove 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 and I love dinosaurs. And the only time I’m thinking of geothermal is from games years ago, when it was like you have to build a civilization on a distant planet. And it was cool, because I remember thinking, and I’m going back, jeez, 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.

Ron Kamen [21:06]
Yeah. And here’s a couple of very interesting things…

Mario Fachini [21:10]
I gotta be honest, I won’t go dig a hole in my backyard right now. It’s right to a battery pack with a solar panel.

Ron Kamen [21:16]
It’s that the battery is heating. So it’s a little bit different. And that’s where people do get a little confused. But now the heating and cooling are right, not creating electricity. So the geothermal to create electricity, it is drilling down into the magma. And obviously, in Hawaii and 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 your technology works, you drill down four or five, six feet. And if you have a lot of land, you could do it in a field, or you can drill straight down 500 feet in New York is where you can go without any additional permits. So you just go down 500 feet, you send a fluid down, the fluid goes down now in a closed loop. And that’s where technology has really evolved this closed loop.

Mario Fachini [22:11]
Cooling system, like on a wave runner.

Ron Kamen [22:13]
Right. And what happens is down, 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, some air across a 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 started with, it’s great. Or if you’re starting to heat, instead of heating from whatever the temperature is outside of my house this morning was like 20 degrees where and on the way it is in Detroit, but it’s probably a little cooler than today, if I’m not mistaken.

Mario Fachini [22:46]
It’s actually in the 40s. But it was like negative nine the other day.

Ron Kamen [22:51]
Great, right? So okay. 40s Yeah, exactly. So the fluctuations of temperature. And, 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 north east 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 hold 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 it 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 on oil, coal gas, propane is something less than 100% efficient, right? Bring 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 and a boiler, great, wonderful. It’s always less than 100%. When you go to an air source heat pump and you know what an air source heat pump is you do but you don’t realize.

Mario Fachini [24:42]
Furnace?

Ron Kamen [24:43]
Nope.

Mario Fachini [24:44]
Oh a fan.

Ron Kamen [24:45]
It’s close, close, close.

Mario Fachini [24:48]
Something with steam.

Ron Kamen [24:50]
That could be but the most common that we all have is a refrigerator. A refrigerator is a heat pump.

Mario Fachini [24:59]
I think more like an air conditioner, though. But your right.

Ron Kamen [25:01]
Air conditioner is another form of heat pump. There you go, but not everybody. This is almost everybody, but not everybody. But that’s right. Those are two forms of heat pumps.

Mario Fachini [25:06]
They sucking up the heat and replace it.

Ron Kamen [25:12]
Compressors and expands a gas and then takes the heat out of a space and lets it go into the air. Right. And in the air…

Mario Fachini [25:21]
Good old fashioned, rj 45, I think.

Ron Kamen [25:24]
Well there’s different types of refrigerants. And that’s something to keep an eye on. So definitely want to keep an eye on which refrigerant you’re using, and that technology has been evolving, too. But an air conditioner is an air source heat pump, except the only difference between a full air source heat pump and an air conditioner is that in the winter, the valves have switched. And instead of dumping heat in the outside, it grabs the heat from outside and brings it inside your building. And actually technologies have 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.

Mario Fachini [26:04]
What heat is left in the air at negative 15?

Ron Kamen [26:07]
It’s still a lot of heat, if there wasn’t a lot of heat. Yeah, you got to think about this right? Without the sun. I mean, it’s just really incredible, right? So without the sun, you know how cold this place would be? Right? I mean, take a look at it.

Mario Fachini [26:18]
Probably, negative 100 Kelvin.

Ron Kamen [26:20]
200 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. And 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 15 degrees 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 two 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’re looking at ground source heat pumps with geothermal heat pumps, we’re doing four or 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.

Mario Fachini [27:28]
So yeah, 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.

Ron Kamen [27:44]
Exactly. And if you’re starting with 50 degrees, man, you got it?

Mario Fachini [27:49]
Well, I gotta be honest, I’m a little irritated now. Cuz I’m like, Why don’t they make air conditioners that have heat pumps that we can just reverse them in the winter? One, do they have them and two, how do I get one because I know mine is…

Ron Kamen [28:01]
They do pretty much every air conditioner manufacturer has a heat pump option or heat pump division or heat pump models. So just take a look around, you can absolutely get it and I always tell everybody, if you’re going with an air conditioner, look at the 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 26%. But air source heat pumps qualify for a little less, but you can 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 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.

Mario Fachini [28:52]
Well, I really appreciate all these experts of authority insights, and I see a lot of applications personally. And you got me thinking like well, why don’t 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, I’m also thinking, well, one, can you drill on your own property for geothermal? Or does it need to be a business application? Like you said, the third party?

Ron Kamen [29:17]
No, lots of people have it. across the country. There’s hundreds of 1000s 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 local with utilities. So yeah, now…

Mario Fachini [29:35]
Those sounds kind of good.

Ron Kamen [29:38]
Yeah.

Mario Fachini [29:38]
New project coming up.

Ron Kamen [29:39]
Yeah, absolutely. So, actually one of my clients is a climate master and I highly recommend you take a look at them. They have local installers all across the country and 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 hey, get a free estimate. I mean, just have someone come into your house, get a free estimate. What’s gonna hurt, right? And 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 duck working a half, so central air, it’s easier, you don’t have duct work and you have to put in duct work because of the way the systems work. But there’s a lot of options and it’s amazing Mario, that most folks don’t know about yet, but they’re gonna get there little by little we are getting there.

Mario Fachini [30:26]
Yeah, and I know a lot of people think the solar panels are 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 is like, well, this is a no brainer. And then they’re making the shingles for your roof that are now incorporated with them. I’m like your whole freakin roof. I mean, because I get that you for the aesthetic, especially in the neighborhood versus commercial. Okay, commercial building, you put the big fans on top, no one sees them really anyway, unless you’re doing a Google Earth photo or whatever. But residential, okay, you want it to look good, but now they’re looking good. So I have 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 five or 10? Maybe 1%? Do you think there will always be some dependence just as a backup? And just minimize that?

Ron Kamen [31:29]
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 heavy duty transportation. But even there, we’re seeing technology evolution. So it used to be, a few years ago, Tesla was the only one with an electric vehicle, right and gotta 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 the the dare, 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 way…

Mario Fachini [32:31]
Semi truck.

Ron Kamen [32:32]
Yeah, it’s semi trucks and garbage trucks, right,which have a lot of power that they need to move all that garbage, etc. So those kinds of heavy hauling trucks, and then you have aviation, right. And that’s another level beyond when you have these jets, right that are taking off in that amount of power. But even in those areas, you start to see it’s amazing to me seeing garbage trucks, electric garbage trucks, you saw a 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, the 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 gonna 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 a battery on wheels, right? It’s a massive battery. It’s almost a megawatt of power in the school buses. But school buses most of the time, they’re just sitting around right to move the kids in the morning and 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 they can be moved around in COVID times but anyway, we’ll get to that in a little bit. But they moved kids around on a call on 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 come and 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 office buildings, etc. So I take the cheap electricity when there’s a lot of spare electricity off the grid at night, they charge up the buses. 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 the vehicles. And one of the fascinating things I think the next evolution that’s coming is that when I have a couple of electric cars, one of them is in 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 the Nissan LEAF. And every electric vehicle is going to do that. The Nissan LEAF right now can run an average family’s house for three to five days as a backup power source.

Mario Fachini [35:51]
Well, that’s interesting, right? And then the car makes its own energy while it’s driving.

Ron Kamen [35:58]
It doesn’t make energy while it’s driving, it does capture energy when you’re going down a hill it’s got a regenerative brake on it doesn’t create it yet.

Mario Fachini [36:06]
Like the alternator does, but it does capture it. So

Ron Kamen [36:09]
Yeah, we can recapture. Right. But the other interesting thing that most people don’t know about electric vehicles is when you think about how far you go and what the average person goes in a day. 98% of Americans’ trips are less than 50 miles, right? So I don’t know how far you drive on an average day but most people.

Mario Fachini [36:27]
That’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, grocery stores are 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 is a few streets over something for whatever.

Ron Kamen [36:53]
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 100,000 Electric vans.

Mario Fachini [37:12]
I feel like I know the answer. And I saw the headline. I like Dolly Parton.

Ron Kamen [37:18]
No, it’s this little company called Amazon.

Mario Fachini [37:22]
That was my second guest. I was like it’s one of these two.

Ron Kamen [37:24]
I know you had it in the back of your mind. It was just…

Mario Fachini [37:26]
She did something else that was pretty epic, I think was with books or something but…

Ron Kamen [37:30]
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 100,000 at a time. But in terms of our situation today we are just homeowners and you know not everybody has a home. Some people live in multifamily 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 have whatever common cause, but 98% of our trips are less than 50 miles, which means that you can take a Chevy Bolt and 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 an 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 2000 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 they are doing and where they go and municipal fleets in particular. So New York City did a study and they found that by 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 and 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 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.

Mario Fachini [39:56]
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 talking about the fleet’s. You know, how can you increase the profit of 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 one. I mean, it sounds like a no brainer on new construction. But how hard is it to retrofit existing ones? Would you say?

Ron Kamen [40:43]
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 space around your building, just drill under the footprint. And if you’re less than 25 storeys, you’re in the money with heating and cooling, and being able to support all your heating, cooling and hot water up to 25 storeys with the holes right under your footprint of the building. And then you just have that solar also supply your electricity for your electric vehicles, and not too far distant future this summer with a 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 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, no 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, 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 key pumps, or electrification of their fleets. And the people who give us the referrals as a partner, they get a substantial commission of 20% of what we make, actually, which is not a bad commission, and it winds up being 1000s of dollars on even a relatively small project of 20,000 square feet. So on a commercial basis, maybe keep that in mind for yourself and 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, 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 or propane? 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 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 and 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 to 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, you have to replace your roof, if it’s going to be replaced, you should do that sooner than later. By 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 costs 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.

Mario Fachini [44:57]
Wow, well, I appreciate all the info. And I want to ask one last thing before we go to thank 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.

Ron Kamen [45:14]
So 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 in, 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 me like 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 get a study done and really figure it out. And if folks want to contact me, I decide okay to list the website that they can go to.

Mario Fachini [46:00]
Absolutely. I was gonna ask you when in the second half anyway, please,

Ron Kamen [46:03]
Oh, we’re not in the second half yet. I’m sorry. Oh, wait, sorry about that didn’t mean to jump in.

Mario Fachini [46:07]
Go for it.

Ron Kamen [46:09]
It’s AwesomeEarthKind. A-W-E-S-O-M-E so, awesome. And then earthkind E-A-R-T-H-K-I-N-D AwesomeEarthKind.com, and we’re gonna create a special web page AwesomeEarthKind.com/Mario. Is that good?

Mario Fachini [46:22]
That’s good.

Ron Kamen [46:23]
Great. We slash 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. And we’re also setting in place a training program for people, this is now a $7 trillion industry energy across the world, there’s 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 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 that will tell you all about it. And if you want to become a clean energy consultant will then work with you, train you and give you a program that you can take out and earn some money while you’re doing it.

Mario Fachini [47:38]
Excellent. Well, that all sounds good. And I’m excited to see where this is going. And it actually leads us right into this. This is the Wheel of Whatever. We’re gonna see what you get whenever it’s spinning like a turbine.

Ron Kamen [47:56]
It’s great, man. I love it. It’s psychedelic.

Mario Fachini [47:59]
Do you want yellow or black?

Ron Kamen [48:04]
Any recommendations?

Mario Fachini [48:06]
And questions are, as you can see all listed there.

Ron Kamen [48:11]
Uh huh. Let’s get to later I got one in one or do I only just got one? I’ll take the sun yellow one for today.

Mario Fachini [48:19]
That’s there we go yellow. Oh, look at that. It just happened to land right where you want it?

Ron Kamen [48:23]
There you go. Perfect.

Mario Fachini [48:24]
So I have a question for you. And it’s where do you see this going in the next 50 years? Great. Globally, globally.

Ron Kamen [48:35]
Look, a 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 their 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 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’s really driving 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 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 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 gonna do it because economically, people, that’s what drives people to raise the economy.

Mario Fachini [50:29]
Well, excellent. And that is inspiring. So thank you for that. We’re going to thank our sponsor, and come back for the Imperfect Action Round.

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Mario Fachini [52:08]
And we are back with the Imperfect Action Round. Ron, are you ready to take Imperfect Action?

Ron Kamen [52:15]
It’s there any other time?

Mario Fachini [52:17]
I love that answer. So these are 60 seconds or less answers. The first one is what is the fastest path to the cash?

Ron Kamen [52:29]
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, we’re 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.

Mario Fachini [52:52]
Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

Ron Kamen [53:00]
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 and 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 of money.

Mario Fachini [53:19]
Excellent. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Ron Kamen [53:26]
So I like to take a holistic approach. And everyone’s a little bit different, right? So some 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 oriented. 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 at a brain technologies and financing and incentives together so that you maximize the value. So it’s really a custom analysis for every individual or every situation.

Mario Fachini [54:18]
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?

Ron Kamen [54:29]
One of the most recent one is that 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. Instead what we’re doing with that, and it’s the convergence with advanced forms of transportation and events, technologies in all different fields and are now coming together to exponentially increase change, and how we’re going to see the world evolving. So the future is faster than you think. Peter Diamandis.

Mario Fachini [55:18]
Yes. Excellent, excellent recommendation. He is awesome. Where would you like people to learn more?

Ron Kamen [55:28]
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, which is 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, different businesses of all different sizes, nonprofits, schools, etc. So earthkindenergy.com if you’re just looking to find out who and why my consulting practice. But if you want to look at awesomeearthkind.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 vehicles 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 we’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 indoor learn how to have a clean energy business if you want to go into consulting.

Mario Fachini [56:48]
Excellent. Well, thank you for that. Thank you for all sharing all your expertise. It was incredible. Thank you again.

Ron Kamen [56:55]
Such a pleasure being here. Mario keeps up the awesome work, man. You’re fantastic. Really love the show. i love what you’re doing and thank you so much for the opportunity.

Mario Fachini [57:03]
Well, I appreciate it. The pleasure was mine, Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here today. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. And God bless.

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www.EAInterviews.com [57:48]
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 in more. Have a blessed day and I’ll see you tomorrow.