Turning Ambition Into Bold Action and Impact
This article is authored by Scott Tew, Vice President, Sustainability and Managing Director, Center for Energy Efficiency and Sustainability, Trane Technologies
![Scott Tew - Vice President, Sustainability and Managing Director, Center for Energy Efficiency and Sustainability, Trane Technologies " "](/sites/default/files/styles/carousel_2x/public/images/Scott%20Tew%20-%20%28PREFERRED%29.jpg)
Trane Technologies has clear ambitions—to reduce our customers’ carbon footprint by one gigaton (that’s 2% of global emissions); to lead by example in the way we approach carbon, waste, water and energy in our own operations; and to create opportunity for all by removing barriers for our people and investing in our communities. We’ve been intentional in setting these goals. We’ve rigorously aligned them with internationally recognized frameworks. And our enterprise and strategy are firmly grounded in these commitments.
But ambition alone is not enough to limit global temperature rise.
Every day, we take action to enhance our positive impact, delivering climate technology to decarbonize the built environment and the cold chain and reduce the use of fossil fuels. And to hold ourselves accountable to the goals we’ve set, we track, measure and report on our results. This focus grounds our culture and guides how we view innovation, engagement and our role in solving some of the world’s biggest challenges. This is what differentiates us. We are, as they say, the oldest climate tech startup in the industry.
Action and outcomes
Each year, we release our ESG report as the accounting of the actions we’re taking and the impact it is having for all our stakeholders.
Our biggest opportunity to reduce carbon emissions lies within our commitment to help customers improve their sustainability. I’m pleased to report that we are making steady and significant progress toward our Gigaton Challenge. As of 2022, we’ve reduced 93 million metric tons of CO2e from our customers’ carbon footprint since 2019. To give that metric another perspective, that’s the equivalent CO2e of the amount of gasoline consumed in Australia in two years or Norway over an entire decade.
In our own operations, we are accelerating toward a more sustainable future, with significant reductions in carbon emissions, improvements in our total energy efficiency – including energy demand met with renewables – and great progress in our efforts to decrease water use in water-stressed regions where we operate.
We’ve continued to increase the diversity of our workforce and acknowledge we have more to do to be reflective of the communities we work in. We are stepping up our investment in our corporate citizenship strategy and deploying more and more employee volunteers to uplift their communities.
And so much more.
Staying our course
The shorthand that has arisen among the investor and NGO community to describe the efforts of companies like ours to align our business with positive social and environmental impact is “ESG,” environmental, social and governance. Andrew Winston, a renowned expert on business and sustainability and a member of Trane Technologies Advisory Council on Sustainability, recently wrote an article about pushback on ESG in the Harvard Business Review entitled, “Why Business Leaders Must Resist the Anti-ESG Movement.” Andrew wisely counsels, “Don’t let loud voices keep you from doing what your business is meant to do.”
Our business is meant to boldly challenge what’s possible for a sustainable world. Customer demand for our sustainable climate solutions is strong and growing, as reflected in record bookings of $17.5 billion, organic revenue growth of 15 percent, and unprecedented backlog in 2022. With optimism and pragmatism, we will continue to deliver for them, for our investors and for our communities.
And we’ll continue to share the details of our actions and outcomes in our ESG report so that others can learn and follow suit.
See the results of the actions we've taken so far in our 2022 ESG Report.