Arkansas HVACR NewsMagazine January 2026

HVACR NewsMagazine January 2026

Energy Talk

Test Data? Where are the Solutions? Tom Turner, Air Evangelist and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ( ARRA ) was an attempt in public spending to counter the private sector downturn during the Great Recession. The expenditures were based upon the British Keynesian economic theory developed by John Maynard Keynes. Since the government does not create wealth, the theory spends tax revenues. Manipulation of monetary policy eventually catches up making the original issue small. Britain’s first woman Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher said, “you soon run out of other people’s money to spend .” I find it interesting that our industry loses sight of this fact when our sector is tempted with subsidies and government funding. Emphasis on test data The expenditures in the residential energy sector did spur new interest and training in the use of diagnostic testing equipment. Until 2009 the International Energy Conservation Code did not mandate residential duct testing. Prior to the 2009 timeline, government grants were the only authority that required the use of blower door and duct blower information. Some regional energy sectors prescribe the blower door calculation be used in extreme climates to ensure construction envelope performance would match the equipment being installed, thus reducing oversizing The American Recovery

and waste.

See Arkansas HVACR

Magazine November 2024.

Blower door and duct blower training was a boon for a time. Unfortunately, a substantial number of diagnostic graduates found limited access to jobs due to government entities overestimating the actual number of jobs necessary to manage demand. Those areas of the country with utility rebate programs in place were the practical place to start. Utilities, with no programs, struggled to access the appropriate workforce and set up processes to distribute funds efficiently. With slow uptake, government offices often pulled promised funding redirecting those monies where they could be distributed quickly. This practice left graduates of the new training on the move or abandoning the diagnostic market altogether. In the end, all the millions of dollars of funding did not translate into expected reductions in energy consumption. While massive amounts of data were harvested, the data was sometimes misunderstood or misinterpreted. Solutions were an inconsistent process due to the rapid turnaround demanded, thus no solid policy for ensuring performance was implemented. Government spent a lot of money to harvest data the industry did not know how to digest.