THE SUSTAINABILITY INTERVIEW energy consumer, faced the challenge of significantly reducing emissions without interrupting critical operations.

“ What we did was to lean into two things: our technologies that drive emission reductions and then frankly, we hired ourselves in‘ as-a-service’ partnership mode,” Katie says.“ We minimised or eliminated any need for upfront capital costs and on the backend we delivered significant operating cost reductions.”

The results speak for themselves: a 43 % reduction in emissions alongside nearly a million dollars in annual operating cost savings. All this while maintaining“ nine nines” of uptime in a must-run factory with state-of-the-art equipment.

Using energy more efficiently For decades, energy efficiency has struggled with an image problem. It’ s difficult to showcase the absence of anything in a tangible, exciting way, let alone something that is already hard to conceptualise like energy.

“ One of the challenges in the energy efficiency space for many decades is that it was hard to make the promise and the possibility tangible because, let’ s face it, you’ re talking about achieving the absence of something,” Katie explains.“ Technology has now emerged that delivers that wow factor.”

Heat pumps are one technology that can demonstrate significant energy savings and be seen. Johnson Controls is now manufacturing heat pumps“ the size of a small aircraft carrier” that provide impressive visual impact alongside their environmental benefits.

reduction in emissions at Norman, Oklahoma facility

In one Canadian community, Katie explains how a heat pump installed next to a wastewater treatment plant captured waste heat to eliminate 78 % of the community’ s other heating needs.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, energy security became a C-suite level concern for many European facilities. Working with a Danish hospital, Johnson Controls identified an abandoned quarry next door as a potential thermal energy source. Katie says the implementation resulted in“ an 80 % reduction in energyrelated costs and up to 90 % reduction in carbon emissions”.

These dramatic improvements challenge the persistent notion that environmental benefits must come at an economic cost.“ Part of our mission is breaking through what has seemed to people for a long time to be inherent – if it’ s good for the environment, it must be bad for the economy,” Katie says.

Existing buildings and retrofits Not every building project starts from scratch. According to the World Economic Forum, 80 % of buildings that exist today in cities will still be in use in 2050.

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