IDEA Innovation Award

Showcasing technology, engineering and operational innovation within the district energy industry.

The Joseph M. Brillhart IDEA Innovation Award recognizes the collaborative efforts of our members in delivering innovative projects that reduce energy use, improve efficiency, and strengthen reliability and resilience. These innovative, ‘think outside the box’ projects demonstrate replicable solutions with the potential for widespread application, delivering benefits to the communities they serve while also showcasing the value of district energy around the world.

Submit Your Application for the 2026 IDEA Innovation Award!

Innovation in District Energy

The Joseph M. Brillhart IDEA Innovation Award highlights how collaborative district energy efforts deliver meaningful benefits across a wide range of constituencies, including customers, communities, institutions, stakeholders, the environment, and society at large.


The award provides a platform for IDEA members to share emerging best practices and collaborative applications that advance the industry. Its focus is on smaller-scale, practical initiatives—distinct from the IDEA System of the Year—that demonstrate processes, approaches, or programs that can be replicated and more widely adopted by others.


The Joseph M. Brillhart IDEA Innovation Award is not intended to promote a commercial technology, product enhancement, or proprietary innovation for the purpose of commercial recognition. While a technology or product may be part of a successful project, submissions should emphasize the collaborative application and outcomes rather than a product-centered or proprietary solution.


All submissions must be made by an IDEA member in good standing. There are no restrictions on  member type—utility, campus, consultant, manufacturer, or other—reflecting IDEA’s commitment to broad participation and collaboration
among operating systems, consultants, and business partners. Multiple submissions per member site may be accepted.

Presented annually at IDEA's Annual Conference & Trade Show, the award is evaluated in four main categories:

  • Ingenuity: the technology has to be a new technical, business, or operating practice that shows ingenuity.
  • Measured Success: the technology must be working for a sustained period of time with demonstrated efficiency success that can be measured.
  • Replicable: the innovation must be replicable, meaning that this idea can be easily applied elsewhere.
  • Economic & Environmental: the innovation must demonstrate economic and environmental benefits.
Submit Your Application for the 2026 IDEA Innovation Award!

Please email Jason Beal at jason.idea@districtenergy.org with any questions.

About the Joseph M. Brillhart Innovation Award

Beginning in 2024, as unanimously decided by the IDEA Board, the IDEA Innovation Award has been renamed The Joseph M. Brillhart IDEA Innovation Award.
 
Joe served on the IDEA Board for multiple terms and on the Executive Committee and as IDEA Chair in 2012-2013. It was Joe’s singular idea to create the IDEA Innovation Award during his term as IDEA Chair in 2012-13. He felt that the annual IDEA System of the Year Award recognized excellence in our industry at the system level, but there was a need to bring greater visibility to the innovation and partnering that happens among IDEA members and business partners at a more granular level.
 
Under Joe’s stewardship, we launched the Annual IDEA Innovation Award more than a decade ago. It has grown in participation and prestige ever since. As a memorial to Joe Brillhart, it is fitting and appropriate that going forward, we will continue to recognize his collegial and curious spirit by naming this prestigious award after Joe.

Paul Holt (left) accepts the 2016 Innovation Award from Joe Brillhart of JCI (right).

Meet Last Year's Winner - NLine

On Tuesday, June 3 at IDEA2025, NLine Energy and Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center took home the 2025 Joseph M. Brillhart Innovation Award for its Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center: Sustainable Energy Transformation . This award represents the very best example of public and private collaboration between multiple parties, where members share emerging best practices, new technologies and techniques to better their community

Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center (PSHMC) launched a bold, campus-wide energy optimization strategy in 2009. Located on a 550-acre medical and research campus in Hershey, Pennsylvania, PSHMC serves over 1.2 million patient visits annually and includes two hospitals, five institutes, and the Penn State College of Medicine.

Before the launch of this program, the campus was fully dependent on grid-supplied electricity and conventional steam pressure reduction valves, which wasted valuable thermal energy. HVAC systems operated inefficiently, chilled water delta T was poor, and operational costs were steadily rising. Recognizing the need for a resilient, cost-effective, and sustainable energy platform, PSHMC launched a multi-phase energy transformation plan, harnessing the power of many partners.

Intrigued to learn more? We encourage you to read their application and watch the awards ceremony video. 

This is the second year the award was given out as the Joseph M. Brillhart Innovation Award, named after the beloved former IDEA Board Chair and Executive Committee Member who launched the award 10 years ago. Brillhart passed away in 2023 and the IDEA Board unanimously voted to name the award after him.

The quality of submissions this year were so impressive, we were able to honor four companies with an Honorable Mention designation, including submissions from Cordia and Capture H20, Corix, Empower Energy Solutions, and Exergenics.

Read Their Submission
View Award Ceremony

IDEA Innovation Award Committee Chair Bob Smith (on far left) and IDEA
President & CEO, Rob Thornton (on far right) present NLine Energy and Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center with the 2025 IDEA Innovation Award. Also pictured from left to right: Katie Bickford & Joanne Barrett, NLine Energy and Kevin Kanoff, Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center 

Past Recipients