A Passion for the Environment Led to a Career in HVAC

Julie Eagle has always been passionate about the environment. As she pursued her education in engineering she discovered an interest in built environments and architecture. And then worlds collided when she took a course on sustainability in buildings – she was hooked.

“My concern for the environment is the reason I chose to work in the HVAC industry,” Julie said. “My coursework opened my eyes to how much of our energy usage comes from buildings – most from HVAC systems. The industry presents a lot of opportunity for positive change.”

As lab operations leader at our Trane Residential HVAC and Supply’s facility in Tyler, Texas, Julie is in a position to help drive this change. In addition to leading more than a dozen lab facilities and 43 team members in Tyler, Julie leads the business’s efforts to reduce customer greenhouse gasses and contribute to Trane Technologies’ 2030 Sustainability Commitments.

“As a company, Trane Technologies is committed to reducing customer carbon footprint by one gigaton – that’s equal to the annual emissions of Italy, France and the United Kingdom,” Julie said. “Residential HVAC and Supply has already been doing this for years by manufacturing high-efficiency equipment HVAC equipment – but we haven’t been tracking and measuring the impact.” 

That’s what Julie has been tasked with. “It’s been fun figuring out how to measure our progress, and also discover all the other places we’ve already been doing this work.”

Another area we’ve already tackled is refrigerant reclamation in our Trane Supply locations.

“We make it easy for customers to return old refrigerant to our store in exchange for in-store credit,” Julie said. “We turn over the refrigerant to a reclamation company that either remanufactures it into new refrigerant or disposes of it properly, so it doesn’t harm the environment. Our work here is to make the process even easier for customers and associates to get better adoption in our stores.”

Residential HVAC and Supply engineers are also looking into different refrigerants with lower global warming potential – and designing the new equipment that will use them. 

“A lot of development goes into these new products – but we’re making progress,” Julie said.

“This is a really exciting time for our business as we explore the positive impact we can make on the environment through our products and services. I’m incredibly grateful to work for a company that cares about the environment as much as I do.”