Guess which industry has done more than any other to help the environment...

It’s the heating and air conditioning industry!

Does this surprise you? It shouldn’t. Think about it for a second. Do you remember reading about foggy old London in Charles Dickens books when you were growing up? Well, guess what, foggy old London was really smoggy old London. It was smoggy because everyone burned coal.

Coal? Yuck!

Well, without gas, oil, and electric furnaces, boilers, and heat pumps, people would still burn coal or anything else handy. When people are cold, they’ll burn anything to stay warm.

Imagine how dirty the skies would appear over our northern cities each winter without the products of today’s heating and air conditioning industry?

Recycling? Cool!

The heating and air conditioning industry helps in other ways too. The industry voluntarily began reducing the use of CFCs ahead of the global community’s “Montreal Protocol.” With old equipment that still uses CFCs or HFCs, air conditioning contractors aggressively seal leaks and recycle old refrigerant. Few products are recycled as vigorously as refrigerant.

The industry is one of the most progressive in improving the efficiency of its products. Air conditioners are as much as three times as efficient today as they were 30 years ago. Greater efficiency means lower utility bills for consumers and reduced power plant emissions. In fact, if everyone were to use the EPA Energy Star™ labeled products, 170 billion pounds of power plant emissions would be eliminated. This the equivalent of the pollution emitted by more than 15 million cars.

The All-American industry!

No A/C? Then, no computers!Air conditioning is one of the last All-American industries. 94% of all air conditioning products sold here are made here. The industry employs 1.5 million Americans and generates $90 billion in exports against only $10 billion in imports.

Air conditioning contributes much more to the economy than the jobs it creates. Without air conditioning and refrigeration, many industries simply would not exist. Without air conditioned clean rooms for silicon chip production, the computer and telecommunications industries would still depend on vacuum tubes.

The industry was born out of a need to increase productivity when Willis Carrier developed the first modern air conditioner to solve a problems in the production of newsprint.

No air? Then, less health care.

You may think of air conditioning as a comfortable home, but it’s also a healthy home and a healthy America. The air conditioning and refrigeration industry improves the quality of the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the life saving medicine we need.

The first mechanical refrigeration system was developed by John Gorrie, a physician who wanted to improve the comfort and hasten the recovery of his patients in tropical Apalachicola, Florida.

4 ways you can help

The heating and air conditioning industry’s environmental record is stellar, but there’s only so much the industry can do. You can help. Here’s how…

1. Get your equipment professionally serviced before each heating and cooling season. Utility research shows that tune-ups pay for themselves with by reducing your utility bills. Plus, tune-ups restore lost capacity. More important, the safety inspection can help identify potentially life threatening carbon monoxide leaks from aging equipment.

2. Replace old, inefficient equipment now, when you have time to plan. You’ll save money on utilities and eliminate the hassles and expense of repairs.

3. If refrigerant is needed, have your air conditioner leak tested and repair the leaks, or better, replace it with a system that uses one of the new, environmentally neutral refrigerants.

4. Have your ducts tested for leaks and sealed. Leaky ducts are not only expensive, they reduce comfort levels.

© 2002 Service Roundtable