Whole Building Decarbonization: Insights from Industry Experts

Charles Jelen
Decarbonization Program Manager
Trane Commercial North America

Charles is the decarbonization program manager based out of La Crosse, Wisconsin. He has been involved in the development and support of HVAC systems for Trane since 2012. His areas of expertise are in hydronic systems, refrigerants, system modeling, and decarbonized system designs including the electrification of heating. As the decarbonization program manager Charles has responsibility for key account decarbonization and customer project support across North America.

Trevor Joelson
Business Development Manager – Industrial Key Accounts
Decarbonization Program Lead
Trane Commercial North America

Trevor Joelson is the industrial lead for Trane’s decarbonization program for key accounts. Through this program, Trevor collaborates with industrial customers to define their environmental sustainability objectives and establish initiatives and programs to reduce operational emissions through financially attractive and measurable projects. Trevor joined Trane through an acquisition of Fellon-McCord in 2016 and has held various roles in corporate energy & sustainability management over the last decade. His subject matter expertise is in the energy markets and how the supply-side of energy connects to the built environment. Trevor lives with his family in Dallas, TX and is a graduate of the University of Louisville.

Mike Fierro
National Mechanical Supply Chain Manager
SourceBlue (Turner Construction)

Mike currently serves as the National Mechanical Supply Chain Manager for SourceBlue. He supports a team of over 100+ engineers with technical and experiential knowledge. Mike has over 20 years of industry experience to focus on evaluating mechanical design criteria, and offering alternate solutions, producing project specific equipment scopes, bidding and negotiating equipment purchases, coordinating and follow up for on-time equipment factory testing and delivery, and overseeing equipment testing and vendor start-up.

Erin McConahey, PE
Principal in Mechanical Engineering
Arup

Erin McConahey is a Principal in Mechanical Engineering with Arup, an employee-owned global engineering, advisory and planning consulting firm. During her 26 years with Arup, she has worked internationally and now leads multidisciplinary design teams in Los Angeles on a wide variety of project types. She is currently leading Arup’s Global Net Zero Carbon Working Group and Americas Building Decarbonization Climate Services Team. Erin is a Professional Engineer in California and Colorado, a LEED accredited professional (BD+C specialty), an ASHRAE accredited High Performance Building Design Professional, and a Fellow of the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-conditioning Engineers. She is co-author of the ASHRAE Natural Ventilation Design Guide and writes semi-annually for the Engineer’s Notebook column in ASHRAE Journal.

Andrew Blake
Commercial Director, Environmental Services
A-Gas

Andrew Blake is the Environmental Services Commercial Director at A-Gas. At A-Gas, he focuses on the development and sale of voluntary and compliance carbon credits associated with the destruction of end-of-life refrigerants as well as reclamation of HFC gases. For the past 10 + years, he has worked in carbon markets, climate change, and corporate emission reduction strategies in Europe (based in the UK) and here in the U.S. In addition to his work with refrigerants and high GWP gas offset projects, Andrew also has a background in international nature-based solution carbon projects.