Aircuity Addresses Healthy Buildings Sustainably

How Air Quality as a Service Balances Efficiency with Need for Healthy Buildings

Currently we are seeing two seemingly conflicting requirements collide in the world, across all business, educational & institutional sectors. The first is the need to increase ventilation rates so people can return to healthy working and gathering places.  The second is the need  for organizations to maintain their sustainability commitments. The interest in healthy buildings  had been growing well before COVID, but has since sky rocketed with global acknowledgement of the critical impact air quality has on core business and mission outcomes. 

So, how do businesses and institutions balance these seemingly conflicting objectives especially in challenging economic situations?

Using maximum fresh air ventilation at all times is one solution that has been proposed. Unfortunately, that approach is impossible for most existing systems to handle, and unstainable from a cost and environmental perspective.  And even if it were technically and economically feasible, it is not a reliable way to ensure healthy air is delivered. 

We believe strongly that you can’t control what you don’t accurately measure.  If you start by accurately measuring the air quality in each occupied space, you can provide the right amount of ventilation to maintain the science-based healthy building parameters with the most cost effective / sustainable approach. 

With the change in administrations, the creation of new sustainability goals is occurring rapidly at the federal, state and local levels. Utilities are also increasing their incentive programs for energy efficiency projects. The New York City area is a striking example of this. Local utility ConEdison is offering incentives that in many cases cover up to 75% of the cost of a Healthy Building ventilation system!

If you are in an area with less attractive incentives, Aircuity has created an Air Quality as a Service (AQaaS) offering. This allows customers to implement a Healthy Building ventilation solution that addresses both IAQ and efficiency/sustainability needs with little to no up front costs. In many cases a program can be structured to be cash flow positive- with savings far outweighing AQaaS payments.