ASHRAE has established an annual grant program to support chapter-led projects to develop and execute innovative solutions to pressing building problems. The Gordon Holness Presidential Fund will make awards to chapters ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 to support their projects. A total of $50,000 will be awarded each year, ASHRAE said in a Feb. 12 release.
“This fund will significantly empower our members to bring forward creative solutions that address critical building issues,” said ASHRAE President M. Dennis Knight.
The society says the award program builds on previous support launched for chapter projects through the Young Engineers in ASHRAE, or YEA, Decarbonization Fund. The prize was initiated by ASHRAE 2023-2024 Presidential Member Ginger Scoggins and allocates between $50,000 and $75,000 annually for project awards.
ASHRAE has 200 chapters internationally including 120 in the U.S. The society’s Presidential Award of Excellence, or PAOE, system encourages members to work with their chapter to compete regionally and nationally, providing incentive for members to share knowledge, train students and support external organizations.
Chapters are awarded PAOE points through a variety of categories, including chapter knowledge transfer, government affairs, student activities, communications, and membership promotion. Additional points are also assigned by ASHRAE staff.
This year, the PAOE award awards points to chapters for submitting building assessments, presenting on building environmental quality to outside organizations and facilities managers, or YEA activities that provide technical support. Chapter projects also provide a way for members to earn additional awards announced yearly at the society’s annual conferences.
For example, last year, engineering students at the University of Cincinnati performed audits of two local churches. Upon discovering that a historic church it examined used nearly 60% of its energy costs to heat a large sanctuary space, the students applied funds under the YEA Decarbonization Challenge to see if installing localized heating would significantly cut down on energy costs, the university said in a Sept. 2024 release.
The group installed heaters, performed tests and confirmed that energy consumption was significantly reduced.
ASHRAE says the presidential theme of Gordon Holness’ 2009-2010 society year tenure, “Sustaining Our Future By Rebuilding Our Past: Energy Efficiency in Existing Buildings—Our Greatest Opportunity for a Sustainable Future,” underscores the substantial role that improving energy efficiency in existing structures plays in reducing energy damage.
In another chapter success story, the ASHRAE Miami Chapter helped Miami-Dade County Public Schools and Broward County Public Schools submit winning Renew America’s Schools Prize grant applications, according to Haleh Moghadassi, senior energy and sustainability manager at EXP and professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture.
The chapter provided engineers and local subject matter experts that participated in bi-weekly meetings and offered technical support, including comprehensive energy audits of all schools in the district that enabled the district to determine which projects it would prioritize for its grant application, Moghadassi said during a seminar at the 2024 ASHRAE Annual Conference in June.
The kind of collaboration the ASHRAE chapter and the local firms engaged in can be a model for other chapters, Moghadassi said. “If possible, collaborate with engineering firms that can provide pro bono services for energy audits,” she said. “Also staying persistent and positive …. This is a very challenging and stressful process, and so staying persistent and positive is a key factor to be successful.”
Alan Deal, another panelist at the 2024 ASHRAE conference who previously served as past of the HVAC society’s Detroit chapter, says his chapter was able to drastically reduce the amount of funding his local district needed to address aging infrastructure.
Deal said he found that the current systems were oversized and that by experimenting with the schools’ building management system and adjusting the replacement boiler size, the schools were able to drastically reduce the cost of replacing the systems.
“Bottom line, that $35 million that they wanted to spend in the bond request ended up being just a smidge over five, and then spending money that they had in their sinking fund, they didn't have to come back to the taxpayers and say, ‘we want some more money’,” Deal said.
