Brian Ler on WNYC, now our climate story of the week, which we're doing every Tuesday on the show all this year, and it's a bit of news you can use.

For context, here's an interesting if.

If all single-family homes in the United States adopted heat pumps,

the total annual emissions reduction would be at least 160 million metric tons,

equivalent to taking 32 million cars off the road, unquote.

That comes from rewiring America, a nonprofit focused on

electrifying homes. Heat pumps have been touted as the cleaner and climate-friendlyer choice

for home heating and cooling, but there's a lot to know before you update your home's HVAC system.

There was a really helpful piece in the New York Times Climate Forward newsletter that

lays some of this out. It comes from our next guest, Christopher Flavel, who covers climate adaptation

policy and recently made the switch to a heat pump himself. His story is a heat pump can cut your

emissions, but read this before you switch.

Christopher, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Christopher Flavel.

Hi. Can you hear me?

There you go. Now I can hear you.

Perfect. All right.

You want to do a little 101 first?

We've done heat pump segments on the show before in this climate series, but you want to do a little

one-on-one for a lot of people who don't have any experience or haven't engaged in heat

pumps as an issue? What are they? How do they work? Sure. A heat pump is a combination

air conditioning system and furnace.

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