Q&A with Sustainability Champion Dar-Long Chang
Find & follow Dar-Lon Chang: LinkedIn | Twitter
This month, I was honored to interview local sustainability champion Dar-Long Chang, a former ExxonMobil engineer now fighting for an emissions-free future in Arvada's Geos Neighborhood. His compelling story and advocacy for sustainable living have garnered attention nationwide, with features in renowned media outlets like CNN, CBS News, PBS, Gimlet Media, and the BBC!
Our interview is below:
Q: Thanks for sharing your story with our community! Can you start by telling us about the Geos Neighborhood?
A: The Geos Neighborhood in Arvada was started with 28 homes that were built all-electric and net-zero, meaning that each home generates as much solar electricity as the homes uses in a year and requires no fossil gas to heat the air and water or cook. Each of the first 28 homes was sold at close to the average median price of an Arvada home of $600k, and residents typically pay about $6 a month in electricity bills with no gas bill.
The neighborhood is important because it shows that green, energy efficient homes can be built affordably while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by about 8 tons a year per home.
Q: What inspired you to become an environmental activist?
A: I joined the ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company in 2003 with the promise that I would help ExxonMobil transition away from selling energy as oil and gas to clean energy. I was disillusioned by the time I left the company in 2019 because ExxonMobil had doubled down on fracking and increasing oil and gas production while greenwashing research projects that were unlikely to help avert the worst impacts of climate change.
Given the urgency of the world's leading climate scientists calling for the reduction of world greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, I was determined to focus my career transition and home life on climate action.
Q: How did you end up living in the Geos Neighborhood?
A: I quit my career ExxonMobil and moved my family from the Houston area to the Geos Neighborhood in Arvada in 2019. My daughter was 10 years old at the time, and she really enjoyed helping to take care of the five neighborhood goats, who grazed on the undeveloped land and kept weeds under control while mitigating fire risk.
Q: What is it like living in the Geos Neighborhood?
A: My family was impressed by how much more involved our neighbors were with taking care of each other than in our previous neighborhoods, where we barely knew any of neighbors. We bonded with our Geos neighbors while taking care of our neighborhood goats, built our community garden, shared composting responsibilities for the garden, and played board games on Game Night.
Q: What are the challenges facing the Geos Neighborhood?
A: The challenges come from the resistance of real estate developers and builders to change. A new developer took over the Geos neighborhood in 2020, and after initially promising to continue to build the next 220+ homes like the first 28 homes, broke the promise on the excuse that it would take longer to build them that way. My neighbors and I protested the installation of gas pipelines, and our protest was featured in a CNN story.
The fight also motivated me to join a start-up company based on the original vision of homes free of unhealthy emissions and fossil gas dependence.
Dar-Lon is currently working as the Director of New Product Development at GeoSolar Technologies. To support and learn more about his work, please find and follow him on LinkedIn or Twitter!