Coal is not cute… and doesn’t Debra Albro know it! Deb lives in Alpine, NY with her four-legged family (and two-legged parrot!) in a mobile home set in the woods. Her backyard is a beautiful flower garden haven! In stark contrast, her old coal furnace was a pretty ugly situation for her. To stay warm in the winter, she would go through 5 tons of coal (hurting her budget…ouch). And to make matters worse, she had no place to dispose of the coal ash waste, which she ended up using as fill in her driveway. In addition, burning coal made her sick, damaged her lungs, and constantly dirtied her home. She really needed help, but was unable to attend HeatSmart classes because of her work schedule. Fortunately, she still got in touch to get started, and they connected her with Snug Planet. They replaced her giant health-risk of a furnace with a new high efficiency air-source heat pump system, along with a heat pump water heater that costs a third as much to run. Deb is now a big fan of Snug Planet, saying they were clean, efficient, and such a friendly group of people. They connected her with NYSERDA state incentives and applied on her behalf for a Climate Fund grant and our HeatSmart incentives. We were so pleased to award her our 49th grant of $4,800 towards her new energy system ($2,500 was from our maximum carbon offset grant…shoutout to our devoted offsetters!). By making these improvements, Deb is preventing 305 tons of CO2 from entering our atmosphere…good riddance, coal! Deb is finally able to look forward to winter this year, and is no longer worrying about loading coal into the furnace everyday, cleaning up the mess it makes, or finding a place to put the ash. Sounds like a win for Deb, the community, and our climate!