My View Of Clean Energy & Clean Transport, Across The US & Around The World – CleanTechnica

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These are some of the factors that help me write articles for CleanTechnica:

1. I’ve been driving 4 different electric cars for almost 11 years. (See 3 of the 4 including the Tesla Model 3 that I’ve been driving the last 5 years in first figure below)
2. I put solar panels on my roof in Utah in 2014 (see the 2^nd figure below) and just had them taken off and put back on for a new roof this month.
3. I live in congested, booming northern Utah and drive my Tesla frequently on a 12-lane freeway (I-15) in the winter as shown in the 3^rd figure below.
4. The rest of the time in the winter we are in less populated sunny Saint George in southern Utah.
5. My wife and I and a small rescue dog spend our summers on a lake where I experience driving my Tesla in rural northern Wisconsin, as shown in the 4^th figure below.
6. In addition to doing the 3000-mile roundtrip to Wisconsin and back 5 times, we’ve driven to both US coasts all in the Tesla. We’ve done over 140,000 miles of metropolitan, rural, and cross-country driving in the Tesla. See examples of both the empty and full Superchargers we have used in these travels in the 5^th figure below
7. I taught alpine skiing at Brighton Ski Resort for 10 years, so I have a great deal of experience driving electric cars on snowy mountain canyon roads. (See photos of summer and winter Tesla driving in the 6^th figure below)
8. I’ve been driving obsessively with Tesla’s Full Self Driving now for 32 months.
9. I’m an emeritus research scientist for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and at age 84 I’ve been retired for nearly 20 years. I’ve traveled extensively in my work and since, and have observed clean energy production and electric transportation wherever I’ve gone.
10. I’m an experienced computer user, writer, photographer, and photo editor.

In my travels, I see progress toward clean energy production across the country: for example, a small wind farm in Spanish Fork, Utah, and the transportation of a wind turbine blade on I-90 in South Dakota, and a massive wind turbine farm in southern California as seen in the figure below. I also saw huge solar farms and once even a concentrated solar array in southern California.

In my travels I have observed the introduction of electric buses: 1) I’ve seen the complete conversion to electric buses at Zion National Park in Utah. 2) With the help of my brother, I’ve observed the introduction of electric buses in Madison, Wisconsin. 3) I’ve observed a significant introduction of electric buses in Salt Lake City, Utah, and 4) When my wife and I visited Paris, France, last spring we observed the introduction of electric buses on one line there. You can see photos of the electric buses in these locations in the figure below.

In my life and travels I’ve observed various forms of clean public transportation. My brothers and I took the Straßenbahn (street car) to school every day when we lived in Munich for a year in 1955. My wife and I were regular users of the Paris Metro (subway) when we lived there for 6-months in 1975. When I traveled for NASA, on one occasion I took the AMTRAK high speed (by US standards) electrified Acela train from Washington, DC to New York City, New York. You can see my Acela train in the photo below. With new nonstop service, the travel time is 2 hours and 35 minutes. This is certainly faster than air from downtown to downtown when you consider travel to and from airports and security check-in.

Europe: All the passenger trains I’ve traveled on in Europe are electrified. My wife, daughter, and grandson and I took the high-speed TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) on a 6-hour trip from Paris to Munich in 2013. At almost 200 mph, it’s a great alternative to air travel with a much smaller environmental footprint. You can see TGV trains at Paris Gare de l’Est in the photo below and a TGV train with its pantograph and overhead wires in the central France countryside in the following figure. I took the night sleeper train from Vienna to Zurich when I was in Europe on business in 2013. My wife and I traveled by rail from Prague to Český Krumlov in the Czech Republic and from Paris to Chartres in France when we were in Europe recently.

Australia: When my daughter served as Adobe’s far east sales manager in 2015-16, we lived with her in Sydney Australia, for multiple weeks on three occasions. We rode a train on the Sydney Trains Network from her house near Bondi Junction to the Circular Quai in the Central Business District (CBD). The train was on one route of a 229-mile network of electric rail serving Sydney and its suburbs. At Circular Quai, you could catch a ferry to all of the Sydney suburbs that line the massive Harbour. While the ferries are diesel-powered, they are more efficient than automobile travel and will be targets of future electrification. On another occasion, I put my bike on the train and rode it to the CBD. I got off near the only “bike-safe” street in the CBD and rode it onto the Harbour Bridge. You can see these events illustrated in the figure below. Nearly all of these means of public transportation utilize steel wheels on steel rails to efficiently move large numbers of people with electric motor propulsion and energy capture on deceleration, so they use much less energy per person than automobiles.

Thailand: Earlier when my daughter was working for Intel Inc. in Bangkok, Thailand for two years we got to visit her there twice. Within walking distance of her 25^th floor high rise apartment was the single elevated electric sky-train line which intersected with a couple subway lines. You could travel to the huge Bangkok market or the river (See the Sky Train and river travel in the figure below) but not much else. Travel by car or van on the city streets of Bangkok was so congested that you had to plan on about one mile per hour. That was in 2004, 20 years later, looking at a Bangkok commuter rail map there are many more public transportation options.

Vietnam: I couldn’t resist including this. In 2005 I was invited to give lectures for NASA in Bangkok, Thailand, and Hanoi, Vietnam. I believe if I had visited Hanoi 20 years earlier, everyone would have been riding bicycles. In 2005 in Hanoi, there was virtually no public transportation, but the streets were swarming with motorcycles. It was an eye-opening experience to see a country in such an early stage of development. The photograph below shows a motorcycle lineup at a stoplight and one of the most amazing sights, a family of 5 riding on a motorcycle — the Hanoi version of a SUV! There were some bicycles, some rickshaws for tourists like us, a handful of automobiles, and an occasional minibus, but otherwise motorcycles were the dominant means of transportation. Even the taxis were motorcycles, and I rode on my first motorcycle taxi. I’m sure that in the intervening 20 years there are some electric motorcycles. Maybe there is even some public transportation. But if you think we have everything figured out, this illustration says we don’t.

Experience as a computer user, writer, photographer and photo editor: I’m an experienced writer, photographer, and photo editor. I wrote over 40 peer-reviewed articles as a NASA scientist. I’ve written 7 photo-biographical books since my retirement from NASA. They are available from Amazon.com (search on Arthur Frederick Hasler). Finally, this is my 141^st article published by CleanTechnica. From my time at NASA and since, I have been a techno-nerd who has always tried to use the latest technology. I’ve been using Apple computers since the 2e and the first Mac. See my current Mac Mini M2 with 8-Terabyte SD drive, 8-terabyte backup hard drive with a standard 28″ 4K Costco-purchased TV monitor that I used to write this article in the photo below. I’ve been using Microsoft Word since version 1.0. I’ve been using Adobe Photoshop since version 1.0. I just purchased Photoshop Elements 2025 and can’t wait to start using its Artificial Intelligence enhancements. My primary camera is a digital full frame Nikon DSLR 750 with a 10 x (28-300 mm) zoom. I’ve been using Apple iPhones since their introduction, however, my iPhone 15 Pro Max with lenses ranging from extreme wide angle to 5X telephoto is so good and so handy that has taken over the majority of my photography and videography. See my Nikon 750 DSLR and iPhone 15 Pro Max in the second photo below.

Photos by Fritz Hasler.

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