An Interview With Martita Mestey
Renewables are the cheapest form of energy in human history. Every grid will move toward renewable energy for economic reasons — some faster than others. Accelerating that transition and investing in appropriate infrastructure is the highest leverage move.
As we face an unprecedented environmental crisis, the need for sustainable solutions has never been more urgent. This series seeks to spotlight the innovative minds and passionate advocates who are leading the charge in environmental conservation and sustainable practices. We aim to explore the most effective strategies, breakthrough technologies, and transformative policies that are shaping a more sustainable future for our planet. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Drew Tozer.
Drew Tozer gained expertise in building science and heat pumps as an NRCan-registered energy advisor before partnering with a local HVAC company and rebranding as Foundry Heat Pumps. Prior experience included ten years in the public and private sectors for renewables and energy conservation. Drew Tozer’s revolutionary new book Feel-Good Homes demonstrates how right-sized HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) and other upgrades can be used to create comfortable, healthy, sustainable homes.
Thank you so much for joining us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?
Hi, yeah, thanks for having me. My name is Drew Tozer and I run an HVAC company in Toronto, Canada called Foundry Heat Pumps. I’m also the author of Feel-Good Homes, which is an easy first step for homeowners to understand comfort and health problems in their homes, and find the right solution to fix it. Right-sized heat pumps are usually part of that solution.
By trade, I’m an energy advisor. So I got my experience in the home performance industry as a boots-on-the-ground contractor testing houses, running energy models, and creating retrofit roadmaps for homeowners.
I’d say that my entrepreneurial life came a bit reluctantly. I was constantly disappointed with contractors in my area that were giving bad, outdated advice to homeowners. It wasn’t uncommon to find contractors redirecting to gas appliances and parroting misconceptions around heat pumps.
So, yeah, I partnered with a talented HVAC contractor named Travis Richardson and we created Foundry Heat Pumps. My role has remained largely the same — I’m trying to give homeowners the best advice based on their needs, goals, and budget.
The big difference is that now we can do the heat pump installation with in-house talent rather than referrals. It means getting the job done right.
And it’s important that it gets done right.
I’m here because I’m climate motivated. Heat pumps are a path to electrified, sustainable heating — and heating is the biggest source emissions from houses so heat pumps are a key part of decarbonization.
But I worry about homeowner experiences.
Installing heat pumps in the wrong situations will slow the energy transition. If a homeowner has a bad experience with a heat pump, they’re going to tell everyone they know. They’re going to shout their discontent from the rooftops.
Satisfied homeowners won’t be nearly as outspoken.
So, yes, I care deeply about the electrification and decarbonization movements but I understand that’s not a purchasing factor for most homeowners.
There’s a pragmatic opportunity here, though. Most houses have oversized furnaces, and that’s an underlying cause for many comfort and health problems in the country. The same is true of air conditioners (ACs).
Right-sized heat pumps are the solution. They can make houses more comfortable, eliminate temperature swings, improve air quality, reduce maintenance, and increase safety. They improve quality of life.
For the climate, every heat pump counts the same — -regardless of why the homeowner installed it.
So, my big game is accelerating heat pump adoption to the mass market through homeowner education. Showing homeowners how right-sized heat pumps are a path to comfortable, healthy, sustainable homes.
Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
Yeah, like many people, 2020 was a defining year. There’s “life before 2020” and “life after 2020”. When the COVID pandemic started, my job working for the IESO moved to fully remote. My family took the opportunity to move from Toronto to my hometown of Port Hope, about an hour east.
My long-term plan was to continue to work remotely — but the move changed the direction of my life more than I was expecting.
Port Hope is a small town of around 18,000 people. We bought an old, leaky, century home with a big yard and a detached garage that was later converted into an art studio. It was a double-brick house, solid masonry. Built around 1920.
I was planning to replace the gas appliances with electric options, a process called electrification, but I ran into some big barriers.
There are two big problems that stand out to me. The first was the lack of homeowner education. I didn’t know how to start, what to do, or what order to do it.
Contractors were the other issue.
I was trying to get off gas but every contractor was redirecting me back to gas appliances.
I’d ask about fully electric heat pumps and hear “they don’t work in the cold, you’ll still need a gas furnace”.
Ask about electric water heaters: “gas will be cheaper”.
Induction cooking? “You know professional chefs cook with gas, right?”.
Wood-burning fireplace inserts? “Gas fireplaces are better”.
In hindsight, the recommendations were disappointing and mildly infuriating. But in the big picture, it was an eye-opening experience that helped me see the opportunity and challenges in the market.
My book includes an entire chapter on contractors — why they do what they do, red flags to spot, and how to find great ones to work with.
If we want homeowners to switch from fossil fuels to electric options, we need to help them.
We need contractors to help them.
Contractors will always be the final point-of-contact for homeowners installing heat pumps, water heaters, wood stoves, and cooktops.
So, it needs to be in the best interest of contractors, as well as homeowners, to install electric equipment. That means profitable contractors and great homeowner experiences.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
So, there’s a part in James Clear’s Atomic Habits that stuck with me — and it’s a story about Scott Adams, the cartoonist who created Dilbert, talking about the skills that led to his success.
He doesn’t consider himself an artist but he’s better at drawing than the average person — and he’s not funnier than a comedian you’d find at your local comedy club.
It’s the combined skills of drawing and comedy that lets him stand out.
He belongs to a much smaller group — -people who are both funny and artistic: cartoonists. When you add his corporate career, he has experience with a topic that most cartoonists don’t: office culture.
The lesson is that you don’t need to be the best at anything. You need to find areas where you’re better than most, and stack those skills to create your own game.
Every person has a combination of skills and interests that could put them in the top 1% of their field.
My combination is an interest in climate and sustainability, a knack for finding great mentors, the ability to hyperfocus on technical subjects, and above average communication skills.
Five years ago, I didn’t know anything about building science, HVAC, or heat pumps — -but I’ve always been good at finding the right people to learn from, and ignoring the noise once I’ve found them.
We live in a digital age with unlimited access to ideas, knowledge, and insights from experts on every topic. That means an endless number of potential people to follow, though.
The right people for me — at this stage of my life and career — were Nate Adams (for building science and heat pumps) and Daniel Priestley (for business and entrepreneurship).
My business decisions over the last 3 years come back to, “what would it look like if Nate and Daniel started an HVAC company?”
I continued to learn the technical side of the industry by reading experts like Allison A. Bailles III, Joe Lstiburek, Martin Holladay, and Dana Dorsett, to name a few.
Do I know more than those experts? No, of course not — they’re giants in their fields.
But I know more than the average person.
That knowledge isn’t valuable by itself, but we can leverage it by adding another skill.
For me, it’s communication. I’m a good writer and educator — especially when it comes to making potentially boring technical subjects engaging and accessible to the average person.
It’s common for HVAC experts to keep expertise and knowledge to themselves — not for selfish reasons, but because they’re busy running companies. They aren’t in the business of content creation or societal movements, and writing isn’t their strength.
Once you find the combination of skills to stack, you can be the top 1% in your industry.
The field is where the game is played.
Of people working in climate, I know more about heat pumps than 90%, and I’m a better writer than most of that remaining 10% — -like Scott Adams being funnier than artists, and better at drawing than comedians.
I’m not exceptional at those skills — but I’m among the best when you stack them.
After all, there aren’t many people focused on accelerating heat pump adoption as a climate solution by teaching homeowners how to use right-sized HVAC to create homes that provide a better quality of life.
That’s my game.
And it’s easy to win when the game is rigged in your favour.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that might help people?
Thanks for asking, yeah. I’m publishing a book this month called Feel-Good Homes and I was lucky enough to have Nate Adams write the foreword.
The tagline is “How to choose the right heat pump for a comfortable, healthy, sustainable home”.
It’s a summary of my interactions with homeowners over the years.
There was a common arc. I was having the same conversation again and again, teaching homeowners the basics of heat pumps, working through myths and misconceptions, learning about the underlying cause of comfort or health problems in their house, and finding the right way to solve those problems.
I love having those conversations with homeowners.
It’s meaningful, impactful work that makes a difference in their lives.
But it’s not scalable.
So, I wrote the book to expand my reach and have that “conversation” with more homeowners — to help more people through that arc to improve their homes.
It talks about the universal benefits of right-sized heat pumps, above and beyond regional factors like cost savings and emissions reduction. It’s about improving home comfort, health, and safety in average homes.
There are some great books in the building science world, but they’re the same size, shape, and tone as overly technical science textbooks.
It’s inaccessible for anyone outside the industry — and certainly for homeowners that aren’t inherently interested in the topic. Homeowners want the solution, not every bit of science behind it.
So, yeah, my book bridges that gap. It’s written to be conversational and easy to understand.
It’s a simple first step for homeowners.
Ok, thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of our interview. What pivotal moment led you to dedicate your career to sustainability, and how has that shaped your approach to environmental challenges?
Sustainability and climate change have always been my focus. Before HVAC, I was in the solar industry and then ran energy conservation programs in Ontario.
I mentioned earlier that I tend to hyperfocus when something catches my attention. When I was working through problems in my own house, it became obvious that the electrification movement wouldn’t catch on if it required every homeowner to have the same level of interest that I was taking in building science and HVAC — especially with traditional contractors pushing in the wrong direction.
That was the point where I became an energy advisor and later started Foundry Heat Pumps with Travis Richardson. It was sustainability and HVAC colliding.
There’s a massive opportunity for others to join this space. The energy transition will succeed or fail on the backs of HVAC contractors.
They’re the ones that homeowners call when equipment breaks, which is the ideal time to have these conversations. They’re the experts that homeowners trust. They’re the ones doing the work.
So, I consider every HVAC contractor to be a climate company.
And with the amount of work that needs to be done, I don’t feel a sense of competition. We need to move the entire industry in this direction, to spread accurate information and install high-quality, right-sized heat pumps properly.
Could you describe a groundbreaking project or initiative you’ve been involved in that significantly contributed to sustainability?
For me, again, it’s the book.
That’s the best way I could push the electrification movement forward and accelerate decarbonization.
Homeowners delay maintenance and upgrades in their houses. In the HVAC industry, we say that the only reasonable assumption for homeowner maintenance is zero.
It’s for good reason. Homeowners are busy and budgets are thin.
So, my goal is to move the industry, on both the homeowner and contractor sides, to proactive thinking and using HVAC replacement as a chance to improve homes — not just as a simple utility.
To do all that, we need to create easy steps to get homeowners moving on the right path.
I’m working on a library of assets to help homeowners on that journey. ‘Feel-Good Homes’ is an instrumental part of that, of course. But it will sit in an ecosystem of free content that’s readily available: email mini-courses, explainer videos, online webinars, podcasts, and written content.
If a homeowner wants to learn about electrification and decarbonization, I want them to find me and immediately have free access to everything they’ll need to implement a successful project.
How do you navigate the balance between economic growth and environmental preservation in your sustainability strategies?
Yeah, I think it’s important to understand that there’s no economic growth without climate action.
The decision was just whether we started 30 years ago with gradual changes, start today with more drastic ones, or continue to delay and pay for the fallout.
It’s inevitable that we transition to a low-carbon economy. It’s just about when, how fast, and how much it’ll cost.
So, I reject the premise of the question. It’s not about balancing economic growth and sustainability. There’s no booming economy in a world with rising sea levels and increasing natural disasters.
Like, there are large parts of the US where insurance companies and banks are withdrawing — houses are becoming insurable and unmortgageable because those companies are looking at the data and realizing that it’s too risky to work there.
What does that mean for those local economies?
Their decision isn’t climate-motivated. Those companies aren’t leaving for political reasons.
It’s just business, and climate change is bad for business.
Delaying action just means paying more to get to the same place, and increasing the suffering along the way. We’ll continue to pay the emotional and economic costs of rebuilding and recovering after natural disasters and severe storms until we deal with this.
The only path to long-term economic growth is through environmental preservation.
What emerging technologies or innovations do you believe hold the most promise for advancing sustainability and why?
Hmm, I’m actually not excited about future technologies.
Because we already have the tools, we’re just not using them.
Like, we know how to harness the power of the sun, wind, and water to generate electricity.
We have electric cars, trains, and buses to move around. Not to mention the option that’s cheaper, easier, healthier, and more sustainable: bicycles.
We have induction stoves that work faster than gas, improve indoor air quality, and reduce the risk of asthma in kids.
We have heat pumps that can take one unit of electricity and add two or three units of heat to a house. That’s 200–300% efficient! They take energy from frigid, winter air and use it to keep houses warm in cold climates.
How incredible is that?
That technology already exists.
So, what breakthrough do we need?
I’d argue there isn’t one. We need to get excited about the tools we have.
Renewables, batteries, heat pumps, public transit, bikes, and well-designed cities get us most of the way to a sustainable world.
There’s a saying in city planning that if you design for cars and traffic, you’ll end up with cars and traffic. If you design for people and places, you’ll end up with people and places.
We’ve designed our lives around burning fossil fuels for energy, and it’s completely unnecessary.
I’m optimistic about the future. I know innovations will continue to improve electric technology, but the real breakthrough will be finding the political will to use them.
Here is our main question. Based on your research or experience, can you please share your “5 Top Strategies for a Cleaner Planet”? (Please share a story or an example for each)
The path forward is simple, if not easy.
Here’s the grand plan for a cleaner planet:
- Electrify homes
- Electrify businesses
- Electrify industrial processes
- Invest in electricity grid infrastructure
- Power it, as much as possible, with renewables
Each of those steps come with unique challenges and barriers — but each one is an instrumental part of the energy transition and decarbonization.
The specifics will depend on local climates, available technology and resources, geographic limitations, and a whole lot of local, vital considerations.
That’s intuitive. The path for Canada isn’t the same as Australia’s.
But the bottom line is that a sustainable world is an electric world.
I’m focused on #1 (electrify homes), and that’s more than enough for me.
I don’t want to downplay the scale and complexity of the situation. Yes, the energy transition is a massive undertaking that requires coordination, trillions of dollars, and a long-term vision that doesn’t change directions after every election.
Electrification means energy independence, better domestic jobs, predictable long-term energy costs, comfortable and healthy homes, cleaner air, and reduces potential impacts from geopolitical conflicts.
In your view, what are the key steps individuals, communities, and governments need to take to achieve a more sustainable future?
There’s a different answer for each audience.
Homeowners should focus on electrifying their houses. Switching from gas appliances to electric can improve home comfort and air quality while reducing emissions. Installing a heat pump and electric water heater reduces household emissions by 90%+ in Ontario.
Heat pumps require more expertise than traditional furnaces and ACs to install properly, so it’s worth finding a contractor that specializes in heat pumps. Poor installation quality will lead to poor homeowner experiences and early equipment failure.
But a high-quality, right-sized heat pump is a win-win situation. It can transform an average house into a comfortable, healthy, sustainable home.
For communities and governments, it’s about electricity infrastructure.
Renewables are the cheapest form of energy in human history. Every grid will move toward renewable energy for economic reasons — some faster than others. Accelerating that transition and investing in appropriate infrastructure is the highest leverage move.
It creates a rising tide.
When you add renewables, it increases the impact of every heat pump and electrified appliance that’s connected to that grid.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
It’s the idea that every HVAC contractor is a climate company.
Daniel Priestley talks about how there are four skill sets in business. He matches them to the suits in a deck of cards: Clubs, Spades, Hearts, and Diamonds.
Clubs is the CEO, focusing on big-picture plans and a long-term vision. What big game are we playing? What problem are we trying to solve? What’s our product ecosystem?
Spades is the COO. It’s operational. It’s “doing the work”.
Hearts connect with customers. What’s their current situation and desired reality? What’s stopping them from getting there? It’s the CMO of a company.
And Diamonds (CFO) needs to figure out how to turn it into a profitable business.
I outlined that framework to make a simple point: HVAC contractors are Spades.
Most of the companies in the industry are local, owner-operated businesses with fewer than 10 employees. The owner is a skilled technician that joined the trade, worked their way up, and then left to work for themselves.
The four skill sets are equally important.
Contractors are immensely talented at “doing the work” — -there’s a reason it’s called skilled labour. But the companies rarely have big visions, product ecosystems, ideal customer profiles, or long-term profitability.
They compete on speed and price.
There’s an opportunity for more, though.
HVAC has the best jobs in climate. If we add the other skill sets and let technicians focus on their strengths, we can create more profitable HVAC companies that solve societal problems while improving homes.
What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?
My main platform is LinkedIn. So, you can follow me there and join the conversation. I’ll be launching a Mini Course soon, so you keep an eye out for that.
I’m also giving away free copies of my book to celebrate the launch, so you can message me and I’ll happily send a physical or PDF copy.
It’s all part of my goal to reach as many homeowners as possible.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
No problem. Thanks for having me!
The Future Is Green: Drew Tozer Of Foundry Heat Pump On Their Top Strategies for a Cleaner Planet was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.