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Aircuity's Chairman Addresses Congressional Committee on Climate Change Solutions

Posted on: Thursday, 30 April 2009, 16:14 CDT

NEWTON, Mass., April 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Gordon Sharp, Chairman and founder of Aircuity, Inc., testified yesterday to the House Small Business Committee in a hearing entitled "Climate Change Solutions for Small Businesses and Family Farmers." Mr. Sharp informed the committee about how innovation from small businesses such as Aircuity are helping to address climate change and gave some suggestions on how Congress might help spur the development and commercialization of innovative technologies that can address climate change.

Chairwoman Nydia M. Velazquez (D-NY) set the stage for the hearing by stating that: "Entrepreneurs and family farmers are pioneering innovative ways to reduce carbon in the atmosphere ... As legislation to address climate change goes forward we need to make sure that the final proposal not only protects our environment, but creates jobs."

Following up on her comments, Mr. Sharp testified on two small businesses he founded, namely Aircuity and also Phoenix Controls, which was sold to Honeywell (HON) in 1998. Both firms have commercialized technologies that are making a difference to the environment by saving significant amounts of energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Sharp described how Aircuity has commercialized technology to optimize ventilation for commercial and institutional buildings without sacrificing comfort, safety, or occupant productivity. With most commercial buildings being over-ventilated, properly controlling outside air and building ventilation is the single largest factor affecting both building HVAC energy efficiency and indoor environmental performance. Aircuity's innovation was to develop an improved means to enable reliable demand based ventilation in response to dynamic changes in a building's proper ventilation requirements. Aircuity's forecast of 2009 system sales should represent more than $7.5 million in annual energy savings or an annual reduction of 38,700 metric tons of CO2 for those customers.

Sharp commented that while cost is often raised as an obstacle to implementing energy efficiency and climate change solutions, in reality these solutions are very cost-justified. Aircuity's systems consistently deliver paybacks of 1 to 4 years which equates to internal rates of return from 100% to about 20%. He also suggested utility and government incentives that would further reduce perceived financial barriers for early adopters.

A link to Mr. Sharp's 5-minute verbal testimony in video and text form as well as a longer written testimony statement can be found at: http://www.aircuity.com/Marketing/index.asp?p=congressional_hearing.

Contact: Elaine Kourkoutas ph 617.641.8800 | ekourkoutas@aircuity.com Aircuity, Inc. | Newton, MA 02458 www.aircuity.com

SOURCE Aircuity, Inc.

Source: PR Newswire

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