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October 28, 2026
One Gigaton, Many Industries: Creating Sustainable Business Value
Systems thinking, connected solutions and collaboration can turn climate technologies into drivers of stronger business performance.
Some of our biggest opportunities to improve business performance begin with a sustainability question: What can we do to use less energy? Where are we wasting resources? How can we decarbonize while improving outcomes for our customers?
At Trane Technologies, one of the most important lessons we’ve learned is that sustainability creates the greatest impact when it is integrated into the way we innovate, serve customers and grow. Across industries, this approach has helped generate business returns for both our own company and our customers while advancing decarbonization goals.
An ambitious challenge rooted in strategy
Our Gigaton Challenge, which we launched in 2019, reflects the connection between sustainability and business strategy. By 2030, we aim to reduce our customers’ carbon footprints by one billion metric tons through climate technologies that support reduced resource use and smarter energy management.
This commitment is rooted in the same strategic approach that guides how we think about innovation, customer value and long-term growth. When we step back and look at the potential outcomes for an entire building portfolio, the full cold chain or rapidly expanding AI infrastructure, we can see connections between business priorities, energy use and operating needs that provide opportunities to decarbonize while creating value.
As we’ve explored those connections, we’ve found opportunities that extend beyond individual projects. Systemically applying innovative climate technologies — from energy efficiency and electrification to thermal management and intelligent optimization — can create meaningful emissions reductions at scale while improving business outcomes.
Systems thinking for decarbonization
When we look at entire systems rather than simply applying individual technologies, we uncover new opportunities for efficiency. The built environment, with its millions of existing structures, can provide especially clear examples of the power of systemic decarbonization.
At New York City’s 55 Water Street, a commercial office building so large it occupies a full city block, a strategic retrofit integrated electrified heating and heat recovery systems, all executed while the building was fully occupied. The project improved energy efficiency by 20%, while reducing steam use by almost 70% and saving over $1.5 million in annual utility costs.
For global pharmaceutical maker Organon’s manufacturing facility in the Netherlands, we helped redesign the heating and cooling system to support the facility’s transition away from natural gas. A thermal management retrofit integrated high-efficiency, heat pump-based heating and cooling with heat recovery technologies. Together, the upgrades save approximately 7,700 gigajoules of energy annually, the equivalent of saving nearly 243,000 cubic meters of gas.
These case studies illustrate how understanding the whole system can transform individual improvements into a broader set of business benefits. Whether applied within a single facility, across a building portfolio or throughout an industry, this approach helps us identify where sustainability investments can deliver the greatest customer value.
When we look at entire systems rather than simply applying individual technologies, we uncover new opportunities for efficiency.
Connected solutions, multidimensional value
The full range of returns that a sustainability investment can deliver may not always be visible at the outset. When climate technologies are deployed as connected solutions, they can improve operational performance, support cost control, reduce emissions and strengthen resilience. In many cases, they create more business value than any standalone technology could deliver on its own.
For example, innovative technologies for the cold chain are creating value across several performance dimensions by combining energy recovery and smart technologies with electrification and lower-impact refrigerants. In Europe, logistics company Logista is using the AxlePower® energy recovery technology from Thermo King®, a Trane Technologies company, to power the organization’s refrigerated trailers. The system captures energy from the axle as the trailer moves, stores it in a battery and then uses that energy to power refrigeration. Smart controls manage both energy recovery and battery use. Together, these solutions helped reduce fuel use and emissions while maintaining the precise temperature control that the cargo requires.
In another example of climate technologies creating value in multiple ways, a Trane Technologies project at Northern Illinois University integrated solar power, thermal energy storage and smart controls throughout the campus. The initiative, which modernized infrastructure across over 90 buildings, is projected to reduce energy use by 26% and create approximately $5 million in cost savings annually. The initiative also created opportunities for students to work on real-world projects, linking infrastructure improvements with educational outcomes.
The ROI of sustainability investments can build on one another, strengthening both business and sustainability outcomes.
Collaborate to scale
Collaborations with customers and technical experts across industries are a key part of scaling these solutions. Bringing different perspectives together is a powerful catalyst for innovation, helping us identify sustainability and value-creation opportunities that extend beyond any single discipline.
For example, shared expertise and collaborative approaches are helping data centers become more efficient and sustainable. At the Infomaniak data center in Geneva, Switzerland, a community collaboration between the data center operator, a housing cooperative, the local energy utility and other community members helped integrate data center heat into the local energy system.
The Trane Technologies team worked together with architects, designers and contractors to design a system of heat pumps to capture energy that would otherwise be wasted during the cooling process and supply it to a neighboring district heating network. At full operational capacity, the system provides enough heat to warm 6,000 homes in winter and provide enough hot water for 20,000 5-minute showers each day during the summer.
Collaboration will also shape the future of data center energy management, from cooling system design to heat reuse. As a member of the Open Compute Project, Trane Technologies is collaborating with innovators from throughout the sector to accelerate the development of more efficient approaches to data center cooling. Systemic approaches are key for this because decarbonization requires managing performance and energy demand together.
Joint efforts like these help customers improve performance, use energy more efficiently and reduce emissions at the same time.
Scaling climate technologies for long-term value
Decarbonizing at the gigaton scale requires proven climate technologies combined with clear, industry-specific strategies that optimize systems holistically.
That is the opportunity ahead: not only to decarbonize systems, but to make them work better. When we improve efficiency, resilience and performance, sustainability and business results reinforce one another, creating lasting value for customers and accelerating progress at scale.
Learn how we are continuing to lead the way in climate innovation.
Read our latest Sustainability Report
The future is ours to create.
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