All of the finalists for CCN's main award are industry veterans that have dedicated their careers to HVACR.
Scantec Refrigeration managing director, Stefan Jensen, is a strong advocate for natural refrigerants for almost all applications. “This does not mean that development of new technologies plateau – on the contrary. There are many new and exciting natural refrigerant based technologies to be developed and refined further,” he said. “Some examples are water as a refrigerant for large scale chilled water systems, microwave assisted food freezing, district cooling systems using water as refrigerant and combined with vacuum ice as thermal storage, system charge reductions for improved safety.”
Jensen said his contribution to the transformation of the industry is through innovative system designs that actually work when installed and encourage others to follow.
“To some extent leadership is relative. You can be a leader in a workshop environment, within academia or within industry. To be a real leader individuals must work on themselves first and foremost,” he said.
CCN's other finalist, Paul Cooper, director of the Sustainable Buildings Research Centre at Wollongong University, is working toward a 'net-zero' future.
"The HVACR industry is absolutely crucial to improving the productivity and sustainability of our country and the world as a whole. And I beliee that Australia really has the potential to lead the world over the coming century in developing and implementing net zero emissions technologies to mitigate ouir collective environmental impact on the planet," he said.
"But we need to make deep cuts in HACR energy consumptions and emissions. This means making significant use of distributed renewable energy generation (at buildihng scale) and designing our building services from a much more holistic point of view."
Cooper said it was a "great privilege" to be a part of the CCN Awards ceremony, especially to be in the company of so many leaders and future leaders in the industry.