Spokane-based Hotstart receives 2022 clean air award

The Spokane Clean Air Agency presented Spokane Valley-based Hotstart Thermal Management with a 2022 clean air award for the company’s efforts to improve air quality.

“We are extremely pleased to recognize Hotstart with this year’s Clean Air Award,” Scott Windsor, Spokane Clean Air’s executive director, said in a statement.

“Not only do they demonstrate a strong commitment to local clean air efforts, but the company also has an 80-year history of designing and manufacturing products that improve air quality in communities across the globe.”

Hotstart designs and manufactures thermal management systems. The company was founded in 1942 to develop a solution to keep school bus engines warm while reducing idling in the winter.

Hotstart’s products are also used on trucks, machinery, ships, gas compressors and emergency generators nationwide.

Hotstart partnered with the Spokane Clean Air and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway in 2014 to reduce diesel emissions from 11 locomotive engines, which were retrofitted with the company’s idle-reduction devices.

The retrofit project is estimated to reduce diesel particle emissions by 22 tons and saving more than 63,000 gallons of fuel.

Hotstart is also a participant in Avista’s Solar Select Program, powering its headquarters from the solar electricity array in Lind.