According to T S Eliot April is the cruellest month, but February surely ranks among the gloomiest months of the year.
In Europe the winter weather has hit particularly hard: combine the bitter cold with record energy prices and economic austerity measures and you have a recipe for winter misery.
By their nature cleanrooms require a lot of energy to run. Maintaining constant temperature and humidity conditions in a climate showing ever wider variations and greater unpredictability takes a heavy toll on power supplies and with oil prices forecast to continue upwards more and more companies will be looking for economies.
Relatively small and cost-effective changes to the HVAC system can make a significant difference to energy consumption and therefore to costs. In sectors where manufacturing operations need to be carried out in a clean environment, there is no place for risk-taking, but sometimes companies go too far in the opposite direction and overengineer the system to be on the safe side.
Perhaps this would be a good time to reassess what is truly required and compare it with specifications and actual performance. It may be that safety margins could be reduced without increasing the risk factor.
Or perhaps reviewing the type of ventilation and exhaust equipment in use could reveal a more efficient and cost-effective way of handling the air.
In terms of the overall climate change scenario it may have a negligible effect, but on an individual company’s bottom line the difference could be staggering.