I still feel the weight of winter nights back home in Nepal—how the cold seeped through the walls, how we huddled around wood fires, wrapping ourselves in thick woolen shawls. The chill wasn’t just outside; it was inside too, in rooms where warmth wasn’t a switch away. Summers weren’t any easier, the air heavy and stagnant in homes designed to trap warmth rather than release it. But here, in Madison, warmth is different. Warmth is easier. You step inside from the biting cold, and it’s as if you’ve crossed into another world. The transition is seamless, instant, unthinking—a flick of a thermostat. Comfort comes easy.
And yet, that comfort carries a cost.
Buildings guzzle energy to maintain steady temperatures, regardless of whether they’re full or empty. HVAC systems hum through the night, cooling unoccupied rooms in the summer, heating vast, vacant lecture halls in the winter. This silent, invisible consumption isn’t just about electricity bills—it’s about the bigger picture, the shifting climate, and the places already bearing the brunt of those changes. In my village, we don’t need data models to tell us the climate is changing—we feel it. We feel it in mango trees that once stood resilient, now yielding fewer fruits. We sense it in monsoons that drown our fields one year and abandon them to drought the next. We see it as the fireflies in our fields, once abundant, no long power our night light. It’s communities, like mine, who are the first to feel the heat.
The irony is hard to miss: the very systems that make places like Madison livable also contribute to a global cycle that accelerates the instability faced by places like my home.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. If buildings consume energy mindlessly, then the solution must be making them more mindful—more responsive to real needs instead of running on autopilot. That’s why, as a freshman studying chemical engineering, I’m advocating for ways to make heating and cooling systems smarter, not just as an engineering challenge, but because their inefficiencies have consequences far beyond campus.
This spring semester, I’m interning with the Associated Students of Madison at UW-Madison to explore HVAC energy optimization in campus buildings. I’ve started my advocacy small. I am creating a digital survey tool that invites students to rate their comfort with the internal environment on a scale of—hot, warm, ideal, cool, cold. The goal is to identify internal zones that consistently receive poor ratings. Engaging students will be a challenge; after all, gathering consistent feedback is tough when everyone’s juggling hectic schedules. But that’s part of the journey: to make sustainability a conscious, collective effort. My ultimate goal is simple: to advocate for smart controls that use real-time occupancy data and comfort feedback to dynamically adjust set-point temperatures and air turnover rate, ensuring that heating and cooling are only active when needed.
It’s a small step, but small steps matter.
My passion for sustainability didn’t begin here, at UW-Madison. Before coming to campus, I spent four months in an environmental biotechnology lab at IIT Delhi, working on microbial solutions for breaking down plastic. That experience gave me a new lens to view problem-solving—not just through engineering but through nature itself, which cyclizes energy flows rather than wasting it. HVAC systems should work the same way to reduce unnecessary consumption and enable energy recapture.
But sustainability isn’t just about better technology—it’s about accessibility. For places like my home, where winter heating still relies on wood and dung, passive solutions are key. We need solutions that are both effective and feasible. Passive strategies like improved insulation and solar thermal collectors could significantly reduce reliance on traditional fuels, making homes warmer without adding to environmental or health burdens. The challenge isn’t just making sustainability possible—it’s about tailoring it to communities like mine, ensuring that warmth and progress go hand in hand without leaving the most vulnerable behind.
Every time I step from comfort of heated halls into the crisp Madison air, I think of home. I think of the struggle for warmth, of the unpredictability of seasons, of the fireflies that once filled our nights with their soft glow, now dimming as the seasons shift. And I know that the work I do now is not just about making buildings more efficient. It’s about making sure that warmth—true, sustainable warmth—isn’t a privilege, but a universal right.
That’s the future I want to contribute to.
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