Accelerate America is pleased to open the nominating process for its third annual awards program, which recognizes companies and individuals doing the most to drive adoption of natural refrigerants over the past year. The awards are divided into five categories: Best in Sector, Best Contractor, Best Utility, Person of the Year and Innovation of the Year; the Best Contractor and Best Utility awards are being introduced this year.
Winners will be selected by a panel of shecco and third party experts. The awards will be presented at ATMOsphere America 2018, to be held June 12-14 in Long Beach, Calif. The winning companies and the Person of the Year will be profiled in the August 2018 issue of Accelerate America.
A Best in Sector award will go to one end-user company in each of three sectors – food retail, foodservice and industrial – that has gone above and beyond in advancing the adoption of natural refrigerant technologies in HVAC&R applications in the previous 12 months.
Criteria for assessing nominated companies will include:
The Best Contractor and Best Utility awards will go to the organizations that have done the most to facilitate the adoption of natural refrigerant systems in the past year.
The Person of the Year Award will honor a single individual who has forged new pathways for natural refrigerants – someone without whom the natural refrigerants business in North America would be much less developed than it is. This award is open to any individual, including end users, manufacturers, policy makers, academics and researchers.
Criteria for assessing nominated individuals will include:
The Innovation of the Year award will go to a company that developed a particular technology having a significant impact on the market. The nominating process for the awards will remain open through April 13. Nominations may be submitted by end users, manufacturers, contractors, consultants, academics, policy makers and others involved with HVAC&R applications using natural refrigerants; companies and individuals may nominate themselves. Nominations, which should cite a particular category of award and include details supporting the company or person nominated, can be submitted at: www.shecco.com/accelerateawards/
The awards program was launched in 2016. The winners of the 2016 awards were: Marc-André Lesmersies of Carnot Refrigeration (Person of the Year), Sobeys (Food Retail), Red Bull (Foodservice), Campbell Soup (Industrial) and True Manufacturing (Innovation of the Year). See, “The Best & The Brightest,” Accelerate America, July-August 2016.
Winners of the 2017 awards were: Paul Anderson of Target (Person of the Year), Whole Foods Market (Food Retail), Nestlé (Foodservice), US Cold Storage (Industrial) and Hillphoenix (Innovation of the Year). See, “Celebrating the Distrupters,” Accelerate America, June-July 2017.
