Season 4, Episode 144 : Rasha Hasaneen

Will Richardson 00:05
Welcome to the Green Element podcast where we meet business leaders and innovators transforming their operations to be more environmentally and socially sustainable, and in the process help you on your journey of sustainability. I'm your host, Will Richardson. Today we are speaking with Rasha Hasaneen; the Vice President of innovation and product management excellence for Trane Technologies, an industrial manufacturing company formed in 1905 that produces a range of efficient and sustainable climate solutions to buildings, homes, and transportation. This is why Trane technologies describes itself as a global climate innovator. Russia has an aim is a seasoned executive with a broad background in product management, Product Marketing, strategy, and planning. Rasha is also a member of the board of advisors, ClimateTech, the global community of innovators working to address the climate crisis. Rasha, thank you very much for joining us today.

Rasha Hasaneen 01:04
Thank you for having me, Will, excited to be here.

Will Richardson 01:07
Before we get chatting about trading technologies, I just like to know a bit more about you, and particularly your journey from working in the oil and gas sector and moving into the sustainability sector. And how did that transition come about for you?

Rasha Hasaneen 01:21
Sure, I will tell you that the transition out of digital, which is where I spent the first part of my career, back into the industrial sector, actually was driven by sustainability. And so after spending a good number of years in Silicon Valley, doing software, it became clear to me that software and digital solutions have a very important role to play in climate change, but only if you can influence the industries that were driving a lot of the climate issues. And so that was at the time I was working in Silicon Valley, and that was when I decided I needed to learn more about sustainability and climate change. And started my PhD actually in sustainability. At the time, I was really interested in supply side sustainability. So industries that were that were generating carbon, not industries that were generating the fuels that were generating carbon, not necessarily the industries that were generating carbon. And so I started to learn a lot more about sustainable fuels, sustainable energy production. And that's how I got into oil and gas, and my goal, oil and gas and power, really, and my goal was to really understand how to generate more sustainable fuels, how to sustainably generate fuels, and really work on the supply side. And then going into power; more sustainable power generation, and how do you get the most out of your existing assets, as you transition into a more renewable environment. My underlying thesis is, it's not going to be a silver bullet, it's not going to happen overnight so you have to make existing industries more sustainable while finding new solutions for sustainability. And while I was in that sector, I was approached by Trane at the time it was Ingersoll Rand. And the pitch at the time was "hey, you thought there was an opportunity on the supply side? You need to come over to the demand side" because consumption of these fuels generates as much greenhouse gas and climate as the production side but at a much bigger scale. And the whole idea was at some point, every home will have some form of HVAC, or climate control system, whether it's heating or cooling. And as the climate gets warmer, that goes up and Trane at the time, was very committed to ensuring that that happened in a way that was sustainable for the environment. And that is actually what drew me to Trane. And I've never looked back, because the scale that you can impact from an HVAC perspective across all of our sectors, whether it's heating, whether it's increasing ventilation, whether it's air conditioning, or whether it's refrigeration, of goods, all have a huge impact on the climate. And because there are so many more of them than there are power plants. If you can make a significant change, and how these things operate. From a sustainability perspective, you can have a huge, much bigger impact on the planet and that's how I made it here.

Will Richardson 04:42
Brilliant. And so Trane makes heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigerators. Okay.

Rasha Hasaneen 04:53
Big, big industrial size, not home refrigerators, but things that that refrigerator sort of big trailers, lorries, that carry food and ice cream, and in the latest case vaccines and pharmaceuticals.

Will Richardson 05:10
And so from a sustainable point of view, your products use less energy to heat more or cool, you know, cool more, etc.

Rasha Hasaneen 05:20
That's correct.

Will Richardson 05:21
And is it within the product itself as well. So when you design the products, I end of life, etc.

Rasha Hasaneen 05:29
Both. So there's a few different ways [how] cooling and heating products impact the environment. The first is really around the refrigerants that they use. So a lot of people in the residential space refer to it as Freon, but it's really the refrigerant that's, that's being used to cool. A lot of those refrigerants. The very traditional refrigerants have higher global warming potential but but that's what's really required for them to generate that efficiency. So it's always that trade off between getting a product to be as energy-efficient as possible while using a refrigerant that has a relatively high global warming potential. So we were very, very focused on working with chemical organizations that are developing refrigerants that have a lower global warming potential number one, we're also very focused on reclaiming those refrigerants versus venting them, that's the second real piece of it, reclaiming them and then neutralizing them so they don't ever get into the atmosphere. The other side that we look at is really around not just the efficiency of the products and how they're designed, but the efficiency of the overall system. So while the home HVAC system may have just a couple of components, in a lot of places, home systems or mini splits or ductless systems, which are very simple commercial air conditioning and heating is very complex. You can just imagine if you have to centrally cooler heat, you know, a 12 storey building in a large urban environment, those are highly complex systems. So in addition to having these individual components of the system be very efficient, we look at optimizing the system itself across multiple components using advanced control mechanisms to make sure that you know, with the occupancy and extra externals sort of weather conditions and humidity and all of these pieces coming together, we have the most efficient sort of systems. And then the third really big piece pillar that we look at, and we'll talk about these efficient systems a little further down because with the pandemic, we've had some really interesting shifts in how we think about those systems because they impact the quality of the air we breathe in these spaces. The third, I think, a big pillar for us, what we call our sustainability pathways is really our impact on food waste. And so our transport refrigeration business transports the world's food all over, right, they can be taking food from a farmer a short distance to a market, or to a processing facility, or they can be taking tuna, from one part of the world to the other part of the world. They can also be taking pharmaceuticals, medications, vaccines, blood plasma, all over the world. And so when we think about sustainability, we really think about how do we reduce the amount of food loss and food waste all over the world, which, if you look at the UN, that can contribute as much as 8% of the total greenhouse gas emissions of the world, right. So if we can improve the shelf life of food and reduce the amount of food that's lost or waste throughout the food chain, we can impact climate change. So those are our three sorts of big pathways. When we think about when we think about climate. There, we have other smaller ones, and we're always looking at ways to innovate and further impact the world there. But those are our three big ones right now.

Will Richardson 09:26
And how do you measure say, the last one? I mean, that's a really hard thing to try and measure. It is. So we are actively so we recently announced our science-based that we recently announced that we are qualified for the second time with our science-based targets. So we have algorithms for measuring the baseline of that. Is that scope one and two, are you including scope three of the Science-Based Targets?

Rasha Hasaneen 09:51
It is scope three as well.

Will Richardson 09:55
Okay, brilliant.

Rasha Hasaneen 09:56
And the way we're looking at is we have, you know, so we had 2020 commitments that we met ahead of our timeline for 2030 commitments, which we're talking about scope through the commitment of a gigaton of carbon reductions. We are using a baseline of what the industry emits now. And then we're looking at improvements. Over and above that, and there's sort of very sophisticated algorithms that our sustainability teams use, we have an analytics leader who focuses on that. But I think the industry overall is evolving and how we measure that. And, you know, the more we can interconnect the value chain around food, the more we can create some of these cold chains, what we call Cold Chain Solutions, so solutions that connect a head of lettuce from all the way from growing it to consuming it, the more we can digitally track that, the better we're going to be at measuring that. But right now, I think the entire industry is evolving in terms of how we truly measure progress. Here, I would say, our goal is so large if we can get it directionally correct, we're going to be awesome. But it is very much around, how much longer can you extend shelf life, the shelf life of food, and then you can sort of back into what that means, from a green [perspective], how much less is wasted. And therefore, how much greenhouse gas can be, can be emitted. And then you can do some things around how much of that sits with your products versus a competitor's products, for example.

Will Richardson 11:51
Okay, interesting. And so when looking at, say, for example, air conditioning, and looking at science-based targets, do you take into consideration - because it's all about the reductions? It's nine, basically, you've got to reduce by 90%, as a rule of thumb, and so do you look at, right, 10 years ago, we were using this gas, now we're using this gas in 10 years time, we shouldn't be using any type of gas, we should be able to be ionizing air, that then I've just never really made that up. But you know what, I mean, something that's completely climate free.

Rasha Hasaneen 12:32
Yeah. Yeah. So that's exactly right. So we have pathways using traditional technologies or technologies that we know today. And there our target is to get, you know, is to get as much reduction as possible where science will let us, right? And, like I said, is always that balance. You can use refrigerants that have lower level warming potential, but you compromise efficiency. And when you compromise efficiency, use more fossils. And so we're very, very conscious of, you know, the grid impacts. And if I have to use more fossils, I can't just take - I can't just drop, you know, my refrigerant [and] kill my efficiency just because oh, well, I don't generate power. The power industry has to worry about that. No, we're very much focused on balancing energy intensity with refrigerant impact in parallel. My team, so the innovation team, is really looking at transformative innovation, so non vapor, what we call vapor compression; is a thermodynamic cycle we use to cool and heat. Everybody uses it, whether it's your refrigerator at home or your freezer, or a big unit that's cooling Burj Khalifa, right? We all use the same thermodynamic cycle, which is this vapor compression cycle, which requires a refrigerant. We're looking at what my team is doing is looking at emerging technologies that don't, that aren't vapor compression at all, right, that don't require a refrigerant and different ways of cooling. And so we're constantly on the lookout, as soon as that the science evolves and can scale so again, things that work on small scales, they might work in your home refrigerator, you know, won't necessarily work at scale, for a large commercial building, the energy tax would be too high again, right. And so we're, we're constantly looking at these emerging technologies that can reduce our reliance on refrigerants. However, like there's no free lunch, let's be clear, there is no free lunch. So how do we figure out the right, how do we minimize our impact on climate? How do we get our energy efficiency down to a point where we can use renewables most of the time, right, or 100% of the time to power these devices? A lot of it has to do with scale in these very large buildings, in our transport refrigeration business, it has to be mobile, you can't rely on it being static. So there are all of these constraints. And what we're doing is trying to really uncover this transformative innovation, that's going to allow us to reduce our reliance on refrigerants, while not compromising the energy impact, or the the carbon footprint of the device itself. And for us, our devices last so long, right? That embodied carbon is just a blip. It's always about used carbon, right? It's about the carbon, the operating envelope, right? I mean, these are the shortest piece of equipment we make last 15 years, most last 30 or 50 years. And so when you look at energy consumption over that time, you know, our embodied carbon becomes such a small blip in that just like with an automobile.

Will Richardson 16:05
I think it's about four or five years ago, Germany produced a passive office block. And therefore, I think it's completely energy neutral, they've got air conditioning, they've got heating, because everything is done within that one building. They obviously don't have air conditioning units. Now, should we - you know where I'm going with this - do we need you as an organization? Should we not be going down that route? Because actually, that is more environmental? But I'm asking, that's more of a question than the statement. Yeah. So so the climate zones on this planet that allow you to create a completely passive building, and allow people in the building to be comfortable. And by comfortable, I mean, we're talking about thermal comfort, and this is getting a lot more now in [to] indoor environmental quality, but thermal comfort, air quality, visual comfort, all contribute to our health and well being when you're inside. Your productivity, your learning, your personal health suffers if you don't have certain levels of thermal comfort, over extended periods of time. There's very few climate zones in the world where that can be achieved without some sort of intervention. And so yeah, you could, if you piled everybody into, you know, this moderate Germany, the UK, not even the northern part of the US, because you need heating, you need like the middle zone in the US. So you're, you're in this situ - and the planet is warming. And ironically, the more it warms, the fewer of those zones exist. And so the extreme, you know, climate change isn't just about global warming, it's about global extremes. And the more you have these extreme snowstorms in Texas, 95 degree heat in Minneapolis, those are sort of our extremes this year, right? You end up with more needs. So it's this vicious circle. So we have to figure out how to create what we call life sustaining, cooling with the minimal possible impact on planet. We have - my team has a passive cooling portfolio, we're constantly looking at passive cooling technologies that further allow you to expand that scope. But a lot of these passive cooling technologies require, you need to be facing the sun and you need to have a lot of space and it's okay, well, if I'm in an urban environment with very narrow buildings that have a lot of density, I can't get enough. So but if I'm spread out in a very large suburban or rural environment, yeah, maybe I can get space to do some passive cooling. And so all of these are our trade offs Will, and and really the climate zones that allow you to have the luxury of having a completely passive and comfortable building, are not getting more in the world, they're getting less. And so we as companies, as as a climate companies, have to be responsible for how we are providing this indoor environment for our customers, while caring about our impact on the planet. I mean, look, ideally, we could not drive cars and not have an impact on the planet, right? There's a lot of things we cannot do and not have an impact on the planet. Those don't tend to be practical in all places in the world. But imagine what we're talking about actually complements each other as well, though, because if you position your building, you know, with certain windows certain things, but you use your technology, you're using it less because you're using on extremes. So it goes back to what you said right at the beginning about actually, it's not just one thing, it is everything coming together.

Rasha Hasaneen 20:20
And and let's be clear, right? The ideal building has no windows.

Will Richardson 20:24
Oh really?

Rasha Hasaneen 20:25
But yeah, because windows create two things. One, they create a greenhouse gas effect. So window glazing is a big thing. But two, you can't insulate a window so you're losing heat through the window, and you're losing cool through the window, but we know that our mental health requires visual comfort, we need sunshine, we need a visual of trees and natural environments, so we have windows. So now it's window glazing. So this is where it's like the perfectly tight building has no windows, has really thick walls, right? Doesn't have the best air because you're constantly recirculating air so as soon as you bring in fresh air from the outside, you have to condition that. So you're like breathing each other's air. So there's a lot of needs that the human body has, that requires us to have these balances of, I need to have high quality and this is where my focus is with the center for healthy and efficient spaces, high quality indoor environments that keep me as a human healthy, while not compromising our goal for sustainable buildings. So making these buildings as efficient and as sustainable as possible. And it's that constant balance that makes that makes my job interesting. But but that that train is committed to providing,

Will Richardson 21:53
In your opinion, how big a role does the technology sector have to play in achieving net zero?

Rasha Hasaneen 22:01
Technologies as in digital technology or technology as an innovation?

Will Richardson 22:04
Innovation.

Rasha Hasaneen 22:05
Yeah, big, huge, because I will tell you, most companies that have committed to what we've committed to so [that's] a gigatonne reduction. We've got you know, we have line of sight to you know, if with everything we know, today, all of the technologies that are common and mainstream today, we can't get there. So we're relying very heavily on innovating in this space. And some of it is digital technology. So can we get to a situation where AI and machine learning constantly and continuously optimizes these systems for the conditions of the weather of occupancy, etc. So advances in digital technology, advances in sensing, can I sense when I have a need for temperature, very personal cooling, right? Versus zone cooling. So that type of technology is essential, and as it continues to advance, and we continue to to apply it, that's going to have a huge impact. Materials, technology, mechanical technology, all of these advances are going to be required. The ability to go to non vapor compression means I either have to have some real solid energy storage some way for materials to substitute for the thermodynamic cycle, or I have to have a different thermodynamic cycle, which is a very electro mechanical approach. And so all of these, in every field of innovation will apply. And, you know, we're relying on the fact that technology, with the right funding [and] with the right focus, technology that's focused on sustainability, clean tech is really going to enable us to go there. And we're constantly on the lookout outside of the commercial HVAC space for what are other industries doing, what technologies are they using to solve difficult problems? Can they be applied? So I'll give you an example: noise reduction. So acoustics are very important to human health. It's part of our indoor environmental quality, we look to the the aerospace industry. Very loud jet engines; what are they using to dampen noise? And can we use some of those types of technologies to create the right acoustic profile for an indoor building? So noise is not disrupting our environments, and that way I don't have to compromise the efficiency of my machine to get lower noise. I can use an acoustic material to dampen the noise and still have high efficiency machines. So things like that.

Will Richardson 24:58
Which of course applies to your thermal as well, I would imagine.

Rasha Hasaneen 25:02
Exactly. Because it keeps the heat in. Exactly. So all of these innovations from other industries, we are always looking to say, Okay, what are some of these proven technologies in these more sophisticated industries that we can bring in? What are they doing in space? Like, what can we learn from the space program that can be applied here to improve efficiency and reuse, etc. So we're constantly scanning and screening from an innovation perspective, to really figure out how we continuously improve the indoor environment while reducing our climate footprint, so continuously reducing our climate footprint. You know, our biggest hope is that there will be technologies out there that provide us a step change improvement, like you talked about, right? Is there something that we can use that eliminates refrigerants altogether? That would be a step, a step change improvement, but it doesn't exist yet. Right? So we're constantly out there, looking, talking to inventors, talking to universities, you know, I'm on the board for Venture for Climate Tech, looking at new companies, looking at other industries, and then really experimenting and prototyping and, and piloting technologies all the time to help us balance that.

Will Richardson 26:17
You should look at ionizing air [laughs].

Rasha Hasaneen 26:19
So we have, we have done [laughs]. We have, we've tested ionization.

Will Richardson 26:25
Have you? I completely made that up! I am not an inventor [laughs]

Rasha Hasaneen 26:31
But not for cooling, for air quality. So, so break, that's the other thing, right?

Will Richardson 26:37
Yeah because you can ionise water, can't you, for quality?

Rasha Hasaneen 26:40
Yes, yes, you can. So we are looking at all different kinds of technologies. And it is it's a high bar, right? Because we're talking about human health for us. So we are, you know, it's easy, you know? What's easy is I can increase the amount of outside air I bring in so I can bring in more air from the outside [and] increase ventilation. And if you happen to live in an area where outdoor air is clean, that's fantastic. You don't have to do as much filtering. But you still have to condition that air, which increases the energy consumption. The higher quality your filter is, the cleaner the air that you're going to breathe, but the more energy you're going to use, because there's a higher pressure drop across those filters. So during COVID, you know, we were all advocating for, and we continue to advocate for high - what we call Merv - filter. So you hear about Merv 13, or whatever these high-quality hepa filters, right? You know, what people don't talk about is, that's a huge energy drain and for your house - first of all, they're expensive, and you have to change them way more often. But for your house, that's not a big deal. Right? So yeah, so now I'm paying $30, or whatever, 10 pounds, no, it's not that bad anymore. But you're paying a lot more for a filter, and you're changing it more often but then you're paying a little bit more for electricity. But that multiplies, right? If every house in the country, every house in the world, were to increase their filter level, and increase the amount of times they open the window, right? Or the amount of outside air they bring, it would blow up our greenhouse [gas emissions], we would be using so much electricity, let alone for these huge buildings. Right? These are huge amounts of cuts, 30 to 40%, as what we seen through the pandemic. And so we've got to innovate, we've got to find ways of being able to recirculate conditioned air in order to really keep that global greenhouse gas footprint down while continuously cleaning that air, so that you're not recirculating bad stuff, right? And, and that's really the nut to crack. Right. So we've obviously, we've introduced some innovations where there's so much more work to do there. But what I think the pandemic has done is it's really raised people's awareness around, hey, look, the air I breathe matters, right? And, so now I want to have really good quality air. But I can't afford to do that forever with the current technologies. So we're on a quest right now to really understand what the best technologies are for air cleaning, for purification, so that we can provide those solutions. We know the tried and true. And that's what we're providing to our customers today. And what we're trying to do is really introduce new innovation that allows us to really bend that to provide that air quality, while bending the curve, continuing to bend the curve on on climate change. And one of the things that we learned through this process is if you look at just cold and flu right through the pandemic, because of all the safety measures we've taken cold and flu cases, at least in the US, are now so low, the CDC can't count them. So it went from like 40,000 deaths a year 500,000 cases to under 3000. And by the way, if you go to the CDC website, it goes, we think it's under 3000 but it's so low, it's hard to count. And so, now we've learned that I don't have to deal with a flu season that kills 40,000 people a year, at least in the US. But I don't want to be wearing a mask all the time and I don't want to use hand sanitizer all the time. But there are measures we can take just with indoor air quality, right, that can help us reduce the reduce allergen trend, you know, reduce allergens inside our homes, inside our buildings, reduce transmission of communicable diseases, there are technologies we can use to do that. Now our goal is to is to uncover and mature those technologies that allow us to do that without compromising energy efficiency. That's the nut to crack.

Will Richardson 31:05
Yeah. What drove you as a large organization? I'm just fascinated to know, what are the drivers behind it? Because why isn't everyone in your industry doing it?

Rasha Hasaneen 31:17
It's hard to say why everyone is in our industry isn't doing, what I can tell you is why we're doing it. So sustainability is at the core of Trane Technology's purpose, it has been for the last 10 years. So when we set our 2020 targets, it was core to our purpose. And and our previous CEO, and now our new CEO, are committed to climate being at the core of what we do. And, and the reason we do that is because everybody in the company, and we run very large innovation contests across the entire company, but we've built a culture where everyone in the company is committed to providing these, you know, life sustaining cooling services, without compromising the planet, the planet is important. So everyone I talked to is incredibly focused on climate and the impact of the built environment on climate. And so someone's got to do it, right? The industry, Will, has to change or get disrupted. And, for us, the the core, the purpose, our purpose as a company, is to do that. And so, you know, at the end of the day, everybody, all industries are going to have to embrace climate change, right? And they're all going to have to figure out how they're going to do their part. We're just choosing to do it first. Right? We just don't feel it sustainable to continue to go on our current trajectory. So whether it's attaching, you know, reducing distributed heating sources, attaching more higher efficiency, electric heat to the grid, and then focusing on grid decarbonisation, whether it's energy efficiency of our systems, whether it's looking for refrigerant alternatives, whether it's reducing food waste, those are all things we can do to change, really the world and continue to allow the world to develop, right? And to have those services in a way that's sustainable. Right? Again, we can all go back to, we can all do not - we can all not drive, right? There's a lot of things we could deprive ourselves of to get to a more sustainable world. And then there are ways to innovate, to give us those levels of comfort those services that we need to really thrive as a civilization without compromising the climate. And that's what we're really focused on.

Will Richardson 34:06
Our listeners are running businesses, they are looking at probably technologies like yours to install into their buildings. I mean, other than the obvious, install our technologies, what sort of things which would you want the listeners to be looking at?

Rasha Hasaneen 34:24
Yeah, there's a couple of things right. Your listeners need to understand that there are alternatives, right. So be mindful, as you're, you know, typically the HVAC even in our homes is the last thing we think about even though it's the biggest component of most of our electricity bills, especially if you have central air in your home, right? Businesses are not different, right? HVAC is a huge component of their utility bills, but not just that, right? When you t hink about businesses that serve clients. When you go into a store to purchase something, how you purchase is highly dependent on the environment you walk into. And you see a lot of work being done on lighting and display of merchandise. And there's so many studies to that. What I would say is to to your, to your listeners is, be mindful, be mindful that you can make small changes in your indoor environment, and really impact your clients. Number one, but number two, really impact your carbon footprint. And so just increasing the energy efficiency of your system. A lot of businesses may not have control over their facilities, right, they may be renting or leasing a facility. Well, there are things you can do, even in your space, to improve your indoor environment without having a huge impact on climate. You can understand from your facilities managers what they're doing to ensure you have a high quality environment, high efficiency. I would say ask the question as you're looking to lease space. And the question is, you know, it's what are you asked the question of the HVAC system, ask the question of the indoor environment, ask your facilities managers, right? Help me understand, put in monitoring devices there. We sell monitoring devices, they're great monitoring devices on the market today, you know, monitor your indoor environmental quality, and then understand what your facilities teams are doing to make sure those those indoor environments are high quality, and what are they doing to ensure that the energy consumption isn't skyrocketing as a result, that's really the deal. Now, if you do have full control over your entire facility, you own the facility or you are in the building management space, look for those solutions that provide the balance of high quality indoor environments, and energy efficiency. The pendulum is going to have to swing back post pandemic, we can't afford to pay these energy taxes that we have been paying. But there are solutions. And so have an open mind, ask the questions around safety and efficacy of these air quality solutions and the energy intensity of those don't forget to ask about energy intensity, right? When you're thinking about those solutions for yourself, understand the energy intensity and the footprint of what you're doing and drive us, drive all of us in the industry to be better at helping you understand that because that's what's going to make us better as an industry is when consumers are demanding that of us. If they don't demand it of us, it's very hard for us to justify continuing, right? With us, we have a purpose, we continue to do it. We need everyone who's thinking about facilities, buildings, etc, to be thinking about the most environmental solution. Because we need the industry to get better. We all need to be better at it.

Will Richardson 38:22
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for today. I've got one, it's been so interesting, I could carry on for ages listening to you and talking to you about what it is you're doing because it's such an integral part of running a business and running organizations, whatever it is, from manufacturing, to office space to everything, and it encompasses everything around us as well. So it's what we put in our bodies, what we drink, what we, it's brilliant, it's lovely to hear a company that isn't greenwashing, that actually is doing something and you know, you can read between the lines. And sometimes sadly, I've done these podcasts. And I can read between the lines. I've been doing this for long enough that I won't call someone out on a podcast, because I don't think that's fair to that person. But I think the listener can come to their own conclusions on the questions I've asked. But I hope that, well, I know that the listener will understand that you guys are doing it. And we've actually got a podcast special coming out on organizations that are trying to reach that Real Net Zero [and] Science Based Targets are obviously included in that, but what are you doing as a business to get to Real Net Zero by 2050? And I believe that you're one of those companies that are truly forging the way for others, it's going to be a really hard journey. It's not gonna be easy.

Rasha Hasaneen 39:48
It is and it's a it's always a it's a pleasure working for a company that walks the talk. I know I didn't talk about our scope one and scope two. That's not my wheelhouse, but any one of your listeners can go to our site and look at our scope one and scope two commitments as well. But I will tell you Will, I have worked for companies that greenwash and I've not loved it right, because this is what I've been doing for the last 10 years, like, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. So it's I this is what I love about working also for Trane Technologies is it's amazing to be surrounded by people who this is at their core and by a leadership team that is focused on this at our core, and so, so you're absolutely right, it is, it's not just great to listen to you. It's great to work there as well. And it's great to be innovating in this space and be encouraged to continue to innovate in the spaces as an employee.

Will Richardson 41:01
Can I finish on asking you what you think your business superpower is?

Rasha Hasaneen 41:05
Our business superpower is our purpose driven culture. It absolutely is. I will tell you, having lived through this last year and a half, with a pandemic, where it's airborne, it's not airborne, oh, it's airborne and HVAC makes it worse so it's airborne and HVAC doesn't [make it worse] - so much noise in the marketplace. What I love about our company, is really how we came how we came together in this pandemic to really help our employees and our customers. I mean, the pandemic, COVID, was declared a pandemic from the US in March. But by the end of March, we had measures in place for business continuity for keeping our employees safe. We had employees in China procuring because they were ahead of the US procuring PPE and sending it to our plants in the US within three weeks, just securing - making sure our employees were safe - that we could get back to work safely. We had all the measures in place, all the PPE all the procedures we needed, we had convened a cross company group to understand how we help our customers. And we scoured our portfolios around because we had been working on indoor air quality for years in pockets across the organization, we brought a huge cross functional team together, we were sharing experiences, products were being exported from the US to China, China was identifying partners in China and then taking the learnings back to the US, we were launching product, we were repositioning product, we were going out to our customers and helping them you know, optimize their HVAC systems for unoccupied spaces, we were putting helping them put procedures in place for reoccupying places, we were helping them upgrade their systems, we were assessing their systems and what they've been doing. We found a lot of companies that hadn't kept up their maintenance, that their air quality wasn't great. Like, we were helping them come back. And it was all in a matter of weeks. And the whole company rallied around helping our customers be as sustainable and come back to work as quickly as possible. And then we launched this in our healthy and efficient spaces, because we knew that the pendulum swings and that energy efficiency goes out the window, we couldn't let that happen. We needed to keep energy efficiency front and center as we were coming out of the pandemic. A culture that is not purpose driven and focused on the customer and focused on really making the world better would not have been able to come together that way. And that is, in my opinion, really Trane Technologies' superpower; [it] is a culture that's purpose driven around sustainability. And if you you know you fit there, you fit there. Right. And that's that's kind of what I what I love about Trane. Hopefully that answers your question.

Will Richardson 44:08
It does. Thank you Rasha. Thank you very much for joining us today.

Rasha Hasaneen 44:12
It's my pleasure.

Will Richardson 44:13
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