February Lunch Meeting

Date: Tuesday, February 9, 2021

Time: 12:00 - 1:00pm

Location: Online

Gordon P. Sharp, Chairman Aircuity Inc

With the pandemic upon us and attitudes changing about air quality, buildings are receiving increased scrutiny to increase outside air levels to ease indoor air quality concerns.  However, the impact of large increases in outside air rates is also raising already high building energy costs and straining mechanical systems that are being operated at or even beyond their limits and design levels. This in turn can also increase air quality concerns in the form of excess humidity and potential mold growth.  For many buildings outside air was already the largest single driver of both energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality and now with the current pandemic guidance this is even more so. Traditional demand control ventilation has attempted to reduce energy expenses by reducing outside air when appropriate but the actual results over time have been mixed at best and ASHRAE has recommended against operating in this manner during a pandemic. This presentation will discuss and provide case studies for both commercial and laboratory buildings on a healthier yet still energy efficient approach for controlling ventilation based on indoor air quality levels while also using a cost effective, and more accurate IEQ sensing approach known as multiplexed sensing.

Mr. Sharp is the chairman of Aircuity, Inc. and has over 25 years of wide-ranging entrepreneurial experience and more than 25 U.S. patents in the fields of energy efficiency and laboratory controls. As founder, former president and CEO of Phoenix Controls, he led the development of this world leader in laboratory airflow controls that was acquired by Honeywell in 1998. The technologies invented by Mr. Sharp at Phoenix Controls are today saving over $1.5 billion annually in energy use. In 2000, Mr. Sharp founded Aircuity, which was spun out of Honeywell and is a smart airside energy efficiency company.

Mr. Sharp is a graduate of MIT with bachelors and masters degrees in electrical engineering. He is Executive Vice President and a member of the board of directors of I2SL (International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories), the nonprofit foundation that operates the Labs21 conference. He is also a member of two important standards on ventilation: the ANSI/AIHA Standard Z9.5 Committee on Laboratory Ventilation and the ASHRAE SSPC 170 Committee on Ventilation of Health Care Facilities. He is also a voting member of ASHRAE technical committee TC9.10: Laboratory Systems and TC9.11: Clean Spaces/Cleanrooms.

Mr. Sharp is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences on the topics of energy efficiency in buildings and indoor environmental quality and has testified before the US Congress on the topics of climate change and energy efficiency.