Engineer returns to push conservation

Press, 10 March 1984, Page 14

Engineer returns to push conservation

A New Zealander who is B’ ent of an international cal society is in Christchurch to promote the exchange of energy conservation technologies. Mr Richard Perry, now a resident of Canada, is president of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-condition-ing Engineers, A.S.H.R.A.E. The society promotes arts and sciences associated with these engineering activities, and has 50,000 members in 120 countries.

Mr Perry has met members of three New Zealand engineering societies associated with A.S.H.R.A.E. in Auckland and Wellington. He met engineers in Christchurch.

He said people should not lose sight of the fact that the energy crisis could happen again. “People in the United States do not think they have an energy problem, but they have,” he said. People in New Zealand were much more aware of

energy conservation than in America, where fuel oil was a third of the price. Although the energy embargo had alerted the world to shrinking energy resources, long-term solutions to the energy crisis still had not been found.

“We ought to be em-

barked upon a concerted, co-operative global effort to develop new energy technologies and to apply proved energy conservation techniques to ward off an energy disaster,” he said. Mr Perry became president of A.S.H.R.A.E. in July, 1983. He has an engineering firm in Vancouver, British Columbia, and has been in charge of a number of important engineering projects. These include Vancouver International Airport, the first jet-age airport to be built in Canada, and the central heating Slant which serves down--)wn Vancouver.