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Paul Stalknecht is president and CEO of the Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA). On Jan. 26, 2010 he sent this letter to President Barack Obama just prior to his State of the Union address.

It will come as no surprise that a lot of the new products at the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Exposition (AHR Expo), Orlando, Jan. 25–27, addressed some aspect of energy efficiency or alternative energy. In the vernacular of the day, some would simply call that being green.

Additional information made available to the person taking customers’ calls allows them to answer questions knowledgably without having to ask someone else to give the customer a callback. This can be a huge benefit in both customer relations and time savings if applied correctly, by an owner or manager who doesn’t object to sharing information.

For quality installations, involve the manufacturers. Risk of various refrigerants.

We all pretty much knew what the EPA’s final rulings concerning refrigerants would look like but we frankly won’t know all that much about what effect they will have for a while. As for the climate change conference in Copenhagen, it was a non-event. The problem was that everybody was not on the same page regarding climate concerns.

Having been both booth peddler and booth-stroller, I love the AHR Expo. Some of my best memories of this industry seem to have occurred in late January while ambling along the aisles. Perhaps you feel the same. Invariably, one instance always stands out, and usually it is an occasion of the too much information (TMI) variety.

This poor role model for New Year’s resolutions did however wonder on New Year’s Day what this industry might do differently in 2010. From residential, light and heavy commercial, to industrial and institutional business practices in the HVACR world, there must be a lot of resolutions floating around offices this month.

Readers are not buying climate change science.

The world of refrigerants currently revolves around HFCs, ammonia, and CO2. But what about hydrocarbons such as propane, propene, and isobutane? They’ve been around seemingly forever and have many advocates. How might those hydrocarbons fit into the equation? Well, the answer probably relates more to geography than chemical formulas.

Nearly 18 months ago, an opinion rendered here generated a noticeable amount of attention - “Who’s in Your Fave Five?” took a verse out of the T-Mobile commercials, to create a list of people I would most like to have on my advisory team. Closing out another year, why not think back to the people that may have most influenced our lives, our decisions, our successes?