Adults were suspicious of us. We found a way to reduce emissions at our high school anyway

When temperatures exceed 90In Oakland, California, the small air conditioning units in Melrose Leadership Academy’s classrooms can’t keep up. so high school students in the MLA chapter of the climate justice group Youth vs. Apocalypse set out to do some extra work: they researched, planned, and proposed installing a heat pump on campus.

Building heating is calculated 10% of CO₂ global emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. Heat pumps have become an increasingly popular clean energy technology because they can heat and cool using electricity, reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The students proposed using a portion of the $735 million school-district connection to invest in a long-term solution that would also shrink their carbon footprint. After a campaign characterized by persistence, the teenagers, first profiled by the local Oaklandside news paper, succeeded. Now, their efforts have become a blueprint for what the district wants to implement in other schools.

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Augie Balquistage 13: It started last year when it was really, really hot and we really didn’t have AC. We had these mini AC units, but the power would go out because there were so many of them going out at once. It wasn’t very practical. And the only heating we had were gas boilers. We realized that they are producing so much carbon that it is really hurting the environment.

I went to research and then gave a presentation on heat pumps. We started by talking about the Oakland Unified School District’s action resolution that they made in 2020 that says we need to get to 100% clean electricity and get off the use of fossil fuels. We felt the district should honor the action decisions they made.

Next was our estimate of how much gas our boiler was burning: 32 metric tons of CO₂ every year. We also explained how heat pumps work.

Our estimated cost was $5 million of the school’s $32 million bond money. It would be more expensive than just putting in a new AC. And our boiler was just recently put in so they didn’t want to take it out because it was so new.

Then we wrote a petition.

Jayden Tern, 14: We went to all the classrooms and presented and got 250 signatures. It was basically the whole high school and we had a bunch of elementary school students.

Yuji Hong, 14: We spoke at community meetings held in our cafeteria where parents, staff, students and school board members could discuss the bond money and how to use it for the school.

Lyra Modersbach, 13: After that we went to school board meetings. There was much more opposition there than in community meetings. One of the board members told us to go back and learn more and stop talking about things we didn’t know, which was completely untrue because we had done a lot of research to present to them.

Augie: I think it was just because we are young, and they assumed that we didn’t know anything.

Juliette Sanchez, 13: We persisted and made sure we showed up to almost every meeting, talked about it, and showed that we did research on what we were saying.

Augie: We went to maybe 10 meetings. The school board then invited us to visit the office of the architects who are designing the improvement of the school building. They showed us the cost of different heat pump options and their efficiency compared to gas boilers.

One really important thing they told us is the exact carbon output of our school for the last two years, which was much more than we estimated. It was equivalent to somewhere around 250 transatlantic carbon flights each year. We also learned that the heat pump really didn’t cost that much more than maintaining our gas boiler, which requires a lot of maintenance.

A lot of the backlash was people saying there wasn’t enough money. But the architects told us there was enough funding.

Someone from the district, who was initially reluctant, ended up supporting us in the end to show everyone how good heat pumps are.

Lyra: There was a final Zoom meeting with the project advisory committee and Augie and I were there to update the district on what we had learned in the meeting with the architects. When we found out that the campaign had been successful and we would be getting the heat pump, it was exciting.

Juliet: I learned that no matter our age, we can make a difference through what we do and we can use our voice to impact the world in a positive way.

Augie: Sometimes it’s hard, but you just have to keep persevering and eventually you can do anything you set your mind to.

Lucy Down, 13: That’s why I got interested in Youth vs. Apocalypse, because we care about the climate and how our actions affect others.

Lyra: Something I hope politicians do is really look at what they are doing to the world and start doing what they need to do as soon as they can because we don’t have much time and we have to do everything we can for this point.

Augie: They should listen to the voice of the youth, because we are the people who will grow up with these problems. If you listen to young people, we can provide solutions that will help everyone in the long run.

• My DIY Climate Hack is a series about everyday people across the US using their ingenuity to tackle the climate crisis in their own neighborhoods, homes and backyards. If you want to share your story, email us at diyclimate@theguardian.com