Heating, cooling, and refrigerated transport account for a significant share of global emissions. How is Trane Technologies addressing these areas through its core businesses and technologies?
The governing umbrella that guides us is the fact that 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from heating and cooling buildings. Another 10% is from the movement of food through refrigerated transport. That 25% is what we’re focused on. We go to market through our strategic brands like Trane, which includes both residential and commercial businesses. The Commercial side includes nearly everything except housing—data centers, commercial buildings, schools, healthcare, and industrial processes. We also have our Thermo King brand, which is all about refrigerated transport—moving food, medicine and other perishables using different types of trucks, containers, airand rail.
We have deep application expertise in each market we serve, with highly skilled teams who bring our broad portfolio of systems and services to customers to help them achieve their objectives – often, these solutions exceed what the customer expects or even knows to ask for. Sustainability pays off. It’s good for our customers, good for the environment, and good for our business.
Trane Technologies has committed to eliminating 1 billion metric tons of CO₂ by 2030—an ambitious goal. How are you tracking progress, and how does that tie into your recent growth?
When we set that goal, our Gigaton Challenge, it felt bold and audacious—but we believe that one company can help shift an entire industry, and that one industry can change the world. That 1 billion metric tons is equivalent to the annual emissions of France and Italy combined—about 2% of global emissions.
The vast majority—98%—comes from helping our customers reduce their emissions. We’re tracking progress through tangible advances in areas like low-GWP refrigerants, more efficient HVAC solutions, and refurbishment and circularity. These efforts are also key growth drivers. Over the past year, we saw 11% revenue growth, fueled by both innovation and culture.
Sustainability isn’t a side initiative—it’s our core strategy. Everything we do ties back to energy efficiency, circularity, or renewables. We’re investing heavily in technologies like heat pumps and thermal energy storage that deliver both environmental and economic value. We also maintain a direct-to-customer model, with thousands of engineers partnering closely with clients to design systems and build long-term relationships. It’s not just about selling equipment or providing services—it’s about making sustainability scalable and partnering with customers over time.
You’ve been exploring a range of innovative technologies in your portfolio. Can you share some concrete examples of how these solutions are being applied in real-world projects?
In traditional HVAC equipment that you use in buildings, like chillers or air handlers, we have a full portfolio that we’ve optimized for maximum efficiency and that use low-GWP refrigerants. We have systems that recover waste heat from buildings or processes to use in more productive ways. We also offer a wide range of heat pumps, chiller heaters, and boosters that move and use free energy from inside or outside to lower operating costs, increase energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. We continue to invest in industrial heat pumps to bring these same solutions to industrial processes – another major source of carbon emissions.
Thermal storage, which is like an HVAC battery using ice, is another area of focus. For example, we have thousands of customers where we use “ice batteries” that make ice at night when electricity is cheaper and more available, then melt it during the day to cool the space. At 55 Water Street in New York City—the city’s largest office building by square footage and the second largest privately-owned office building in the United States —we installed a thermal energy storage system that now supports both heating and cooling. The tailored solution lowered overall energy intensity by nearly 20%, significantly cutting emissions and improving system flexibility to better serve tenant needs.
We’re also excited about emerging technologies like digital twins, which act as a “birth certificate” for the system—defining optimal performance and allowing us to constantly optimize against that baseline using AI and autonomous controls. We continue to invest in other digital services to enable predictive analytics and solutions to optimize how/when we service equipment. To supplement this, we continue to invest in scaling technician training and digital tools to enhance field service and system optimization across the board.
Trane Technologies recently acquired BrainBox AI, a company focused on autonomous building optimization. How does this technology enhance energy efficiency and system performance in your projects?
We’re very excited about BrainBox AI. Traditionally, equipment performs best on day one and degrades over time. Our business model has always involved service technicians maintaining systems to stay as close as possible to that original performance. BrainBox AI adds a layer that autonomously adjusts building controls to keep performance high, sometimes even better than day one.
It takes inputs like weather, occupancy, and load to optimize energy usage in real time. It augments manual maintenance and can also predict HVAC failures. BrainBox AI’s technology can detect issues early and alert us before there's even a customer complaint, in some customer cases, it’s reduced energy use by up to 40%. One example of the technology in action is in collaboration with the retail chain Dollar Tree. They deployed its AI for HVAC optimization solution in 600 stores spanning 6.6 million square feet. In one year, the solution delivered nearly 8 million kWh in electricity savings, reduced carbon emissions by 5,632 metric tons, and saved over $1M USD in costs in one year.
Your region—the Americas—is the largest segment in your portfolio. What are the key complexities you face across these markets?
Trane Technologies is global, but in the Americas, there are a lot of nuances. From GDP differences in South vs. North America to local regulation, to power infrastructure challenges, it’s very complex. In the U.S., utility prices, climate conditions, policies and incentives can vary widely.
To help customers navigate that complexity, we have an energy services business that partners with customers to achieve their desired outcomes including maximizing ROI and navigating the incentive landscape – at times, there may be dozens of potential energy credits available in an area or region. Our energy engineers and consultants partner with customers to apply the right solutions based on local requirements and opportunities.
With so many sectors exploring electrification and sustainability, from schools to data centers, where are you seeing the most innovative or high-impact adoption of technologies like heat pumps, on-site renewables, or heat recovery systems?
We see a lot of traction in schools—K-12 and higher education—commercial office buildings, healthcare facilities, data centers, and manufacturing companies. We've applied heat pumps, efficient systems, and even unique solutions that optimize energy use based on real-time electricity or gas prices in each market we play in. We have countless schools and commercial buildings where we have HVAC solutions that include thermal batteries. In renewables, we’ve implemented solar and wind across state buildings and universities, with thermal storage playing a big role in making that energy usable when the sun isn’t shining.
We’re strong in many verticals, including data centers, which are an increasingly important vertical for us. Cooling used to be somewhat of an afterthought, but now it’s a primary design concern. We’re collaborating with customers, suppliers, and the larger ecosystem to innovate together. From managing excess heat, to developing fail-safe systems, to finding innovative cooling solutions for next-generation data centers, we’re co-innovating globally to meet the growing demand in data centers while improving sustainability and efficiency. For instance, we partnered with a data center customer on a solution to reuse heat generated by the data center to warm surrounding facilities (installation recycles heat.) And, we have many others we are currently collaborating with to create solutions for next-generation data centers.
