How’s this for a prize? This woman won a heat pump

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This week:

• How’s this for a prize? This woman won a heat pump
• The environmental cost of rocket launches
• At COP28, countries will be fighting over these fossil fuel phrases

How’s this for a prize? This woman won a heat pump

Last December, Madeline Koch learned she had won a big prize. It wasn’t an SUV or a vacation. No, it was something she was way more excited about: a heat pump.

“I’ve never really won anything — certainly nothing of such high value,” she said. “I feel very, very lucky.”

How it happened is a bit of a tour of the ecosystem of neighbours, activists and businesses that are helping communities come together to help each other transition to a lower-carbon world — something we’ve previously seen in places like Montreal, Calgary, many Indigenous communities, Charlottetown and Toronto’s east end.

In the summer of 2022, Koch moved into a century-old semi-detached house in Toronto’s west end. The home was heated with a gas furnace and had no air conditioning. Koch, who is concerned about the climate, decided she would get a heat pump to provide cooling and cut her carbon emissions from heating.

But she figured it would make sense to live in the house for a year first so she could compare the two systems later.

Koch joined the street’s online mailing list, and found she had many new neighbours who were concerned about the climate, too. Among them was Sarah Lazarovic, who puts out a weekly newsletter called Minimum Viable Planet, which focuses on how to fight the climate crisis. Koch signed up.

A few months later, in November, Koch was at the G20 meeting in Bali. She’s the executive director of the G20 Research Group at the University of Toronto, and was producing reports on how well the summit was fulfilling its commitments, including commitments to fight climate change. 

While switching planes in Taipei, Taiwan, Koch checked her email and found out in Lazarovic’s newsletter that there was a contest where you could enter to win a heat pump. Koch promptly did so.

The contest was run by Richard Laszlo, a Toronto energy consultant. For years, he says, he…