He quit his job in oil to sell solar panels

Brut America

For 18 years, he worked in oil fields, covered in dust and dirt. Today, he brings clean energy to the California homes that need it.    An environmental success story...

Transcript

00:00I left partly because of the oil crash, but also I just I got tired of just how dirty it was.

00:13I actually spent quite a bit of time out at that particular patch.

00:16And you get all that dust and dirt out there.

00:19It's such fine dust, everybody calls it moon dust.

00:22So you're breathing that in, getting it all up in your pores, all over your body, in your eyes.

00:27You get that raw crude oil on your skin, which is not good for you.

00:31It gets all over your tools, all over your trucks, all over your clothes.

00:34It ruins your clothes.

00:36Solar, you don't have to worry about that.

00:39The most common thing that is smelled when you drive past an oil field is a byproduct called naphtha.

00:57And I mean, it's just shy of smelling like an open sewer.

01:00And that will permeate into your pores and it'll cause you to smell like that.

01:06Everybody there is basically conditioned to say that that's the smell of money.

01:11My wife, one of her first trips over here, I had just gotten off work a couple hours before she got into town.

01:17Obviously got off work, went, took a shower and everything.

01:21And still she comes in, gives me a big hug, kind of leans back, wrinkles her nose and goes, Troy, what is that smell?

01:27And I just laughed.

01:29I'm like, oh, that's the money, sweetheart.

01:36With the last big oil crash, like many, I found myself without a job.

01:48And I found myself working in the warehouse of a local solar installer.

01:53It has been my pleasure and a blessing to be part of a sustainable and responsible industry.

02:00Solar truly is the future.

02:02The majority of people don't know what we are talking about when you say climate change.

02:07But they do know when you say pollution is killing seven million people a year worldwide.

02:32Ideally, we're going to be energy independent.

02:52We're going to have clean air.

02:54It's very important.

02:55My health, my wife's health, my children's health.

02:59We do a lot of camping and backpacking and we adhere to the tread lightly mindset.

03:06Just leave it better than you found it.

03:08So a clean environment.

03:10I want those great outdoor places to be here for my great grandkids.

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