Teamwork Drives Innovation in our Industry

As you may recall from my colleague Jim Porter’s recent blog post, “What the Future Holds for HVAC,” ASHRAE held their winter conference and expo in person after two years apart. It was nice to be back, seeing old friends and participating in committees to strengthen the HVAC industry.

This year’s conference and committees concentrated on the themes of Decarbonization and Electrification. It would be ideal if we had a single path forward to achieve these goals, but the more we dig into the topics, the more we realize a multifaceted approach will be required to reduce carbon emissions and improve energy efficiency. In order to be successful, this approach must have the joint efforts and cooperation of building owners, utility providers, manufacturers, architects, engineers, contractors, CMs, regulators and city planning officials, just to name a few.

I was intrigued by one particular innovative example I saw of what cooperation in our industry can achieve: city planners and regulators coordinated with industry partners to help share energy between buildings that were miles apart. It takes a concerted effort to bring together industries with unique needs, like data centers providing heat to a manufacturing facility that needs heat to make a product—and it takes this kind of teamwork to continually improve our industry.

I am excited to see the direction our industry will take over the next ten years, particularly when it comes to innovations that solve the issues we face today. If you’d like to discuss what teamwork with HAWA could mean for your next project, I invite you to reach out.