Energy (original) (raw)

Last year, Marie Tai needed a better way to keep her condo cool. Her window air-conditioning units were borderline ineffective, even running at full blast. Summers have been getting more intense in Tai’s Boston neighborhood because of a rapidly warming climate, and she had just adopted a 16-year-old cat named Mittens, who was still recovering from being hit by a car.

Tai had already been considering a heat pump, an all-electric appliance that heats and cools spaces and lets homeowners ditch polluting fossil fuels. But three contractors had quoted her prices ranging from about 28,000to28,000 to 28,000to40,000. Tai, who heads finance and administration at Harvard University’s Project Zero, thought those estimates seemed excessive for her 1,000-square-foot, two-bedroom place. So she had hit pause on the project.

But with Mittens’ well-being front of mind, Tai renewed her heat pump search last spring. Through Facebook, she found an opportunity to participate in a program that aggre... Read more