Mark Lentz, P.E. President, Lentz Engineering Assocs., Sheboygan Falls, Wis.

Beyond Achieving ARC

Today, the HVAC industry faces a crisis that is growing by the day. We must find ways to significantly reduce energy use in buildings without making them uninhabitable. New solutions are desperately needed and there is enormous room for improvement. While it will vary from building to building, the performance gains our firm has been able to achieve in facilities like Wausau East High School, the project which won CSE's ARC award for HVAC, (see A+ for IAQ IQ ), have brought us to the conclusion that about 85% of the energy used in buildings today is just plain wasted—that's almost 40% of the total energy used in this country.