This past March, I asked the question, “Do you have a corporate sustainability plan?” and recently I was discussing this topic with a director of a physical plant for a major college on the East Coast. He commented, “Energy conservation and environmental management should be a team effort.”

Last September, on what would normally have been a mild autumn day, Southern California was blasted by a record-breaking heat wave with temperatures spiraling upwards to 116°F in the Los Angeles basin. The heat was far above the normal highs, which would typically be in the mid-70s.

Located in this city’s famous Loop commercial center, the 600-foot-tall Chicago Board of Trade Building (CBOT) houses the world’s oldest futures and options exchange. Until recently, the building also housed a pair of aging built-up systems that were beginning to worry management.

Innovation has thrived in Philadelphia since Ben Franklin invented bifocals, the lightning rod, and the wood stove that bears his name more than two centuries ago. This tradition of innovation

Using a CO2 cooling system reduced this organic grocery store’s refrigerant use by 60% to 65% a year. Arizona-based Sprouts Farmers Market is not only a leader in natural and

Whether your client has a school or office building, desiccant dehumidification can successfully control the project’s humidity, save energy, and remove pollutants. This primer empowers you to teach your clients how desiccants work, while other tips and applications can help your future projects more than make the grade.

As noted in last month’s column, accessibility to mechanical, electrical, and control system components is critical for sustainable systems operation. However, the design and construction industry is sorely lacking when it comes to agreeing on what appropriate accessibility means. In order to make a meaningful difference in how systems are delivered to owners/operators, it is critical to define measurable accessibility acceptance criteria early in the design phase and allow the commissioning professional to shepherd that criteria through the design, construction, and acceptance phases.

Earthquakes and strong gusts are threats in the physical world that creep into the HVAC design world of isolators, supports, and special louver considerations. Furthermore, a new legal world in terms of codes, insurance, and liability can leave inattentive engineers, owners, and manufacturers quaking in their boots. Read on to stay safe in more ways than one.

There’s a concept, eh? The author takes a comparative discussion of chiller technologies and options, and he places it squarely within the current events context of domestic energy sources, the utility rate landscape, and thermal efficiency. Read this and then look for Part 2 in the near future.

When your primary worker is a 70-ton robot, you try your best to stay out of its way. Such is the case at RoboVault, an ultra-modern, high-tech storage facil-ity in