Awardee Profiles

Ian Shapiro

Renters can get heat pumps too! Pictured here are Gwen and Ian. Ian, our 63rd Climate Fund grant winner, owns a duplex on Cascadilla Street in downtown Ithaca, where Gwen has been a tenant for 4 years. Ian was committed to getting their apartment off fracked gas and making his tenants more comfortable in their home. He applied to and won a Climate Fund grant award — replacing their gas furnace with this beautiful air source heat pump! His tenants just had to verify that they income-qualified for the program. When we spoke with Gwen, Sabrina, and Anna, they said the installation took under a week – and the installers (Snug Planet/Halco) only did the indoor work when they were all out of the house at class! There was minimal interruption in their life with the fantastic end result of air conditioning and clean heating. Ian actually had bought them energy-efficient window AC units earlier that summer when they were too hot in the apartment, and they said the heat pump’s AC was impressively even better than that! And on top of that, Gwen didn’t need her humidifier anymore since the unit didn’t blow freezing air aggressively at them anymore. Congratulations to Ian and his tenants for preventing 76 tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere!

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