English
September 23, 2025
How Sustainability Drives Profitability in the Built Environment
Decarbonizing urban areas requires bold innovation. Many of the solutions we need already exist, as seen at 2025's London Climate Action Week. Our challenge is to implement them at scale.
I gathered with leaders during the 2025 London Climate Action Week to answer the question: How can we accelerate the decarbonization of our cities? By rethinking energy efficiency and addressing high density and high energy demand in urban areas, we see the potential for cutting both carbon and costs.
Technologies that can conquer these challenges were the focus at the Climate Innovation Forum. Thermal management systems that are integrated, electrified and digitally optimized can improve efficiency and resilience while cutting emissions and improving the bottom line.
Tapping into the built environment
In the race to net zero, the built environment is an overlooked opportunity. With outdated, siloed infrastructure, commercial and public buildings increase costs and carbon footprints by wasting nearly 30% of the energy they consume.
Globally, data centers use 10 to 50 times more energy than other industrial and commercial buildings, and their numbers are rapidly climbing. Optimizing energy efficiency can deliver immediate environmental and financial gains.
It’s really absurd that most commercial buildings using electricity to cool them, continue to eject heat (from that system) outside. At the same time, they’re burning fossil fuels…to create heat for that building. We need to stop wasting energy and start using more sustainable solutions.
Jose La Loggia
Group President EMEA, Trane Technologies
Increasing returns with decarbonization technology
Integrated, electrified thermal management systems can turn wasted heat into a valuable resource by providing waste heat recovery and heating and cooling simultaneously. They also offer thermal storage for future use.
These advanced heating and cooling systems can be up to 400% more efficient than traditional setups by capturing and reusing energy that would otherwise be lost. Older systems dump the waste heat and burn fossil fuels to create more.
Often, the return on investment of upgrading a building's infrastructure with these systems can be achieved in just a few years or faster. They’re not just climate solutions — they’re smart business moves.
Proven technology leads to decarbonization benefits
Trane Technologies is a global climate innovator in thermal management solutions. These case studies show how these technologies are being implemented around the globe.
Industrial decarbonization: Capturing waste heat with innovative technologies can cut costs and emissions. By addressing inefficient heating and cooling in the commercial environment, Organon saves nearly 243,000 cubic meters of gas each year — all while maintaining strict manufacturing standards. How? The Oss, Netherlands, pharmaceutical campus replaced three fossil fuel boilers with high-efficiency heat pumps.
Waste heat recovery: Create energy savings while rapidly decarbonizing by implementing industrial-level electrification. For example, replace fossil-fuel boilers with a heat pump. In the UK, Derby College installed a new network of air- and water-source heat pumps to capture wasted heat and provide heating and hot water across campus. The technology upgrade cut energy use by 790,000 kWh and reduced emissions by 160 tons annually.
Smart controls: By learning how buildings use energy and adjusting in real time to cut waste and emissions, AI-enabled controls increase these gains even more. Trane Technologies’ 2025 acquisition of BrainBox AI brings autonomous HVAC optimization to approximately 40,000 connected buildings and over 2 million pieces of equipment supported by Trane Technologies. Through predictive, self-adjusting algorithms, this technology can reduce emissions by up to 40% and create up to 25% in additional energy savings.
The future is here for sustainable buildings
Innovative technologies, like thermal management systems, combined with digital optimization, allow cities to convert wasted energy today into tomorrow's competitive advantage. Business leaders who act on these opportunities will capture both financial and climate dividends while building healthier, more prosperous communities.
Embedding sustainability into business strategy can lead to long-term competitive advantage and growth for companies. Our own trajectory demonstrates the impact: our Sustainability Commitments have put the company on track to carbon-neutral operations by 2030. We have already cut operational greenhouse gas emissions by 44% from our 2019 baseline and increased renewable electricity to 68% of our global energy use. And as our carbon footprint has decreased, revenues have consistently grown, generating a 286% 5-year total shareholder return.
As I reminded London Climate Action Week delegates, the technical hurdles have already been cleared, and scale is the next frontier. Scaling can be challenging because every building has legacy systems, budget constraints and local regulations to navigate, but those barriers are surmountable. We need policymakers, industry leaders and communities working together to embrace this vision.
The decarbonization technology for our buildings already exist. The question is how quickly we can put them to work. Fortunately, with the solutions we have today, we can act now.
If you’d like to dive deeper into the solutions and real-world results behind these technologies, we invite you to read Trane Technologies’ latest Sustainability Report.
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