National Capital Chapter Members,

We have officially kicked off the chapter year and I want to again thank our presenters for a very successful and well attended September event. Our first Virtual PES on the “Use of Natural Refrigerants in our Industry” from Kurt Liebendorfer was very educational, especially for those of us who have not had the opportunity to incorporate natural refrigerants into our everyday design practices yet. Coupled with the dinner presentation on the “Refrigerant Transition” from Alex Albrecht, our attendees can now say they are up to speed on the future of refrigerants and alternative technologies in our industry as well.

As a reminder, a major benefit to being a member of the National Capital Chapter this year is that we offer the virtual PES for FREE, meaning no-cost continuing education credits for our licensed professionals!

October’s theme is Membership Promotion and Young Engineers in ASHRAE (YEA). Without an active membership, ASHRAE would not exist or function. We truly are a Society governed by its membership, providing input for the future direction of our industry through updates to standards, work of our technical committees, and development of new guidelines. For those of you with questions about the benefits of being a member in ASHRAE, I encourage you to reach out to our Membership Promotion Chair, Stephanie Gonzalez, at membership@nccashrae.org for assistance.

We cannot have good Membership without having a strong YEA base. Our Chapter and organization grow with continued involvement from engineers, particularly in the under 35 years old. YEA is one of the easiest ways to get involved in our Chapter with fun social events, as well as technical tours or presentations geared toward up-and-coming engineers in our industry. I will reiterate my thoughts from September, that the more active we can be in the committees like YEA, the better our Chapter’s future will be in terms of new ideas, new volunteers, and leadership. If you have any specific YEA questions, I encourage you to reach out to our YEA Chair, Ryan Cleary, at yea@nccashrae.org for more information.

We have an exciting meeting planned this month with topics surrounding decarbonization, as we align our October program theme with the ASHRAE Decarbonization Conference scheduled to take place in Washington DC later this month. I personally would like to invite you to attend and learn more about this topic, as well as how our chapter’s Membership and YEA committees plan to engage with the chapter this year.

Wishing our members all the best!