"Sustainability" — the word refers to a goal of many projects that could take years or a lifetime to accomplish. This often seems far too long in today's business and political climate of impending environmental dangers and rising energy costs. How long would it take you to develop a knowledge base spanning the wide variety of new technologies? The answer is that if you are willing to meet the challenges head-on, you can succeed in a very short period of time.
If you meet Kai Curry, the Executive Director of Sundays Energy Community Company, you encounter a person willing to examine his actions (and the broader American way of life) and attempt to do something to meet the challenges head-on. Beginning with a project to build an off-the-electrical-grid cabin in rural Wisconsin, and leading into vegetable oil fuel and biodiesel production, he has charted a course for Sundays Energy away from conventionality. He watched his involvement in biodiesel grow from a do-it-yourself operation in a garage to a relationship with larger distributors. He is now on track to break ground on the first of several 5 million gallons/year biodiesel production plants -- as soon as early 2007.
But his involvement in sustainability doesn’t end with biodiesel — it continues to solar hot water systems, photo-voltaics, building performance and energy conservation. Included in all of this is his altruistic but entrepreneurial sense of how to successfully market these technologies. He brings not only the desire, but also the know-how of placing these technologies in a market context. It makes both environmental and business sense.
Kai Curry is 23 years old and uses this fact to full advantage. Sundays Energy Community Company is built around youth as much as it is built around experience. The business and environmental problems that the company is working to solve are the kind of which have been caused by the status quo. Often it takes a strong new approach to bring actual change. When Rudolph Diesel began working on his first Diesel engine he was 27. By the late 1890s, his engine ran on many fuels including peanut oil. Now, more than 100 years later, the more things change, the more things stay the same. The return to the original intent of the technology is here — however, it is going to take new, positive and energetic entrepreneurs to take the once old and make it new again.
Kai, along with the rest of the team at Sundays Energy, know that nothing happens overnight, and that making big changes possible in the future involves making a number of minor changes at present. This is why another aspect of the company is community education aimed at self-reliance and embracing sustainability on your own terms. Sundays Energy aims to teach you how to make your own fuel if you choose not to buy from us. We want to educate you on how to fix your own bike, or give you a knowledge base to make healthier decisions for yourself as well as the planet.
Determination and drive to succeed are important qualities in any business, and as a result competition is a given. However, when it comes to meeting sustainable goals, Sundays Energy chooses to look at the picture differently — when it comes to helping save the planet, there should be no competition, only cooperation.
