Originally published in Carroll Capital, the print publication of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. Ěý
Luke Mairo ’17 has lived the problem his company, Voltpost, was created to solve. Though he’s an environmentalist, for years he held off on buying an electric car because he wasn’t sure where he’d plug one in. “It was a struggle to see where I’d be able to charge a car on the street. There were so few curbside charging options,” says Mairo, who made do with public transportation and ride shares in San Francisco.
Four years ago, Mairo and cofounder Jeff Prosserman launched Voltpost to make EV charging much more accessible to city drivers. A lack of chargers has slowed the uptake of EVs in cities. Voltpost’s chargers can be joined to existing street-side lampposts. Since the post and its electrical connection already exist, installation takes less than an hour.
Luke Mairo '17 stands next to a Voltpost electric vehicle charger.
As societies respond to a warming world, the development of established green technologies like EV charging will matter as much as the quest for spectacular breakthroughs such as emissions-free air travel. Mairo and other eco-entrepreneurs—including Essa Al-Saleh, MBA ’98, and Elliott Bennett ’21—are helping to make those sorts of technologies accessible to the masses.Ěý
Voltpost addresses several of the bedevilments of city charging. Connecting to the power grid via lampposts eliminates the need for digging up sidewalks and parking lots—“which is really expensive," says Mairo, who studied finance and business analytics at the Carroll School. Voltpost’s chargers are also modular, built from a series of standardized components that can be easily swapped. That enhances reliability and prevents costly, time-consuming repairs. A repair person can just pull out an old module and pop in a new one.
Now introducing its chargers on both coasts and several states in between, Voltpost employs about 20 people. Mairo, who bought a Tesla last year, says, “I hope to soon just plug into a lamppost outside of my apartment.”
A similarly tough urban environmental challenge is local truck delivery. City delivery would seem an ideal application of electric trucks—they can return to a warehouse to charge, and their daily mileage tends to be low, alleviating “range anxiety.” (EVs typically have shorter ranges than comparable gasoline-powered vehicles.)
But delivery companies have been slow to embrace EVs, says Essa Al-Saleh, CEO of Volta Trucks in London. “Electric commercial vehicles are where EV passenger vehicles were 15 years ago,” says Al-Saleh. The upfront price for an electric truck is about twice that of its petrol-powered counterpart. So sticker shock can discourage potential buyers, even though an EV’s lifetime cost of ownership will be lower than that of a traditional truck.
Essa Al-Saleh, MBA '98
The design of Volta’s truck, the Zero, responds to several worries of delivery companies. It has ample range: “The average distance covered in Europe is 75 to 100 kilometers a day, and our battery has a capacity of up to 300 kilometers,” says Al-Saleh, who formerly ran a multinational logistics company called Agility.
Just as important, the Zero is safer than the typical truck. Battery power eliminates the need for a large upfront engine. So Volta created a cab that prioritizes ergonomics and the driver’s field of vision; the Zero’s cab is lower, and its entry and driver’s seat are much closer to the ground. That helps prevent knee and ankle injuries when hopping out of a high cab. A lower floor also allows room for a bigger front windshield, which expands the outward view. And a Zero’s driver sits in the center of the cab, not to the far left or right, improving sightlines. That makes driving safer.
Volta had to restructure when its US-based battery supplier, Proterra, filed for bankruptcy in 2023. The company, which employs about 150 people, is now raising money again and focusing on selling Zeros in several European countries.
“We live in a world where we can sometimes, maybe often, feel bombarded and overwhelmed by the climate crisis. I believe the best way to tackle a big problem is to pick a part of the puzzle and go as deep as possible to solve that part.”
Responsibly disposing of food waste is yet another challenge for those seeking to broaden the application of existing technologies. Apartments and office buildings often don’t have space for composting. Even when they do, neighbors may complain. EcotoneĚýRenewables, founded by Elliott Bennett and his childhood friend, Dylan Lew, has devised a way to digest large quantities of food waste while keeping the messiness out of sight. Their digester—called ZEUS (Zero Emissions Upcycling System)—uses an anaerobic process that breaks down the waste inside an 8-by-20-foot shipping container.
Elliott Bennett '21
“Businesses and organizations are paying to send thousands of pounds of food waste to landfills every week,” says Bennett, whose Carroll School concentrations were finance and marketing. His company is paring down that waste. Users dump their food into a chute in the side of the container, and ZEUS breaks it down, producing methane and a liquid fertilizer called Soil Sauce. The methane powers the digester, and Ecotone sells the fertilizer.
Started in 2019, Ecotone has leased its digesters to customers in New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Ohio. The 12-person company runs them for customers—who just have to encourage their residents or employees to use them.Ěý
“We live in a world where we can sometimes, maybe often, feel bombarded and overwhelmed by the climate crisis,” says Bennett (who, like Mairo, made the ). “I believe the best way to tackle a big problem is to pick a part of the puzzle and go as deep as possible to solve that part. It’s what I see us doing every day at Ecotone.”
