It seems like we were all just in Savannah, and now we’re looking at starting another membership year. That means we’re wrapping up preparations now for the next IIAR annual conference, in Long Beach, Calif., March 12- 15, and I’m approaching the last annual meeting during my term as Chairman.

In each membership year, the annual conference is the place to kick off new programs and initiatives for the year ahead. In 2021 we met several important goals, even as we were meeting remotely, and this year, our return to in-person conferences marked the beginning of a new slate of initiatives led by IIAR members.

As your IIAR Chair this year, my major initiative has been to help lead the formation of an AIM Task Force to help learn more about the AIM Act’s requirements and how the association and its members can support the act.

This initiative is one of the most important activities IIAR can take on. Through the work of this task force, every one of our members is in a position to influence the greater adoption of ammonia refrigeration.

Now is the time to educate anyone outside our IIAR membership and our circle of influence. We can teach about our systems by talking about how good they are for the environment; how efficient they are and how safe they can be. I also want to use this opportunity to thank all our IIAR committees for the day-to-day grunt work they have done to get us to this point this year. Our safety standards, educational training, and many other activities led by committee members and staff have set us up well for the effort to come.

In addition to the AIM Act Task Force, I’m proud of several other activities IIAR pushed forward this year. One of them is a newly created Hydraulic Shock Task Force which will take hydraulic shock research produced by the Natural Refrigeration Foundation, (formerly, the Ammonia Refrigeration Foundation) and incorporate it into IIAR standards, bulletin documentation, and other practical, usable documentation for the everyday operation of our systems. My hope for the future is that we will be able to use the new Hydraulic Shock Task Force as a model for the conversion of information yielded by other Foundation research projects – into real, actionable information that can be incorporated into IIAR materials to help us design and operate even safer systems.

As IIAR members, the programs we support are made possible by the hard work of our committees and the volunteer members who run them. IIAR continues to focus on providing our members with the safety standards, regulatory support, industry technology, and other member services that are necessary to operate an ammonia system in today’s environment.

Each opportunity for sharing knowledge and information, such as our annual conference, our Academy of Natural Refrigerants program, and the many other IIAR initiatives we advance every day, is a chance for us to build and strengthen the resources we have available for our members.

We are constantly at work, developing the world’s largest and best information resource for our membership and the industry in general. One of the best parts of being IIAR’s Chairman over the past year has been the opportunity to be part of this work.

Although we are still months away from our next meeting, I am already looking forward to seeing many of you at the conference. And beyond that, I’m looking forward to seeing where the achievements of the past few years take us as we move toward the future of our industry.