I first learned about climate-friendly homes in my gap year, & it’s why I went into climate advocacy because I thought I could do something after feeling helpless for so long. At first, I thought an eco-conscious apartment was just a place with plants around it. Still, I got to experience firsthand how several major players, including the heating industry, have come together to create new heating & cooling possibilities which are not carbon-intensive. I got a task working with a local building supplier where they had a heating supplier subcontract an Heating & A/C pro for each of their homes to ensure they were energy efficient! When I worked with a heating pro in one of the homes, I learned that a heat pump is more climate-friendly because it uses electricity most of the time, reducing every home’s carbon footprint considerably. For the apartment my pal Ed and I were working on, for example, the heat pump installation was going to provide entire apartment heating & heat their water, which was a major save for the homeowners & the world. They also installed a smart thermostat to maximize help with indoor comfort. It allowed the homeowners to regulate the temperatures while saving them the struggle of scheduling oil furnace maintenance checks because the thermostat app would send alerts. By the end of my time with the building supplier, my interactions with the heating company experts were enough to teach myself and others a lot more about heating than I would ever have had the chance to learn. It did not make myself and others want to become a heating contractor or dealer rep. Still, it taught myself and others enough about technological advancements & their section in solving the dire climate crisis, so I picked environmental engineering for my undergraduate degree.