VO: You are listening to Cool Air Hot Takes.
Dan Gentry: Welcome to Cool Air Hot. Takes a podcast about anything and everything from the energy sector to the built environment. We're your hosts. This beautiful gentleman to my left is Charlie. I'm
Charles Jelen: Dan. Thanks for joining the show. Whether you're boots on the ground, engineer, buildings and facility manager are just curious about where the building industry is going, you're in good company listener.
Here's what we got for you today. HVAC. Headlines. We have an awesome interview with Molly De Ramas, director of Deep Carbon Reduction from JB and B out in New York City. Ooh, we're gonna bring you another edition of Hot or Cold. Mm-hmm. And then we've got the Stat of the day. Stat of the day. But before we do that, Danny, boy, you got a, you got a hot take for the episode?
Dan Gentry: Yeah. Hot take today. So, um, I like this one and the take is I can't wait for the hot take. You don't like Hot Take is chillers. Do not need VFDs to unload. Why am I saying this? Why am I talking about this? This comes up all the time. I've been in the chiller world for my whole career and um, I think there's a conception out there that you need a VFD on a chiller for it to be able to turn down from a capacity standpoint.
And that is just not the case when it comes to centrifugal chillers. There's other things at play, mainly inlet guide veins that are part of a compressor technology that are used to unload the compressor from a capacity standpoint. Many say fixed speed compressors with just inlet guide vein control can unload to 25% or even way, way, way lower in some instances.
So maybe a tip also too, you don't need VFDs on your chiller. All right. I, I feel like we're, it's like learning today. This is good stuff.
Charles Jelen: Alright, my hot take. Yeah, my hot take for the episode is the robots are taking over. Oh, they are infiltrating our industry. It came up two different times this week, and so that's where I got it from.
One was I was reading industry articles for our headline segment and there was an article about drones that are doing bridge inspections and they're finding issues that. Human inspectors did not find, so that was like, wow, that's, that's pretty cool. But then the second one, and this is from a meeting with a healthcare company, they are using drones to do thermal imaging on the outside of their buildings.
To find hot and cold spots so they can get a better idea of where they're losing energy on the facade of the building.
Dan Gentry: Well, that is pretty cool. I thought that was very cool. I think that I didn't know that was a thing. The robots are coming.
Charles Jelen: All right, let's get you to your headlines,
VO: HBAC, headlines your news today.
Charles Jelen: All right, listener. It's six o'clock in New Delhi. Here's your headlines. First headline. EPA taps the brakes on refrigerant transition. So this one's from A CHR News. Not a big surprise that there's change going on with the current administration and the EPA. How this is working is the new EPA administrator announced that they are reconsidering.
Keyword, they're reconsidering the technology transition rule that was part of the AIM Act of October in 2023. So that was the rule that essentially phased out 1 34 A and four 10 A in stationary HVAC equipment, which is all of the equipment that we use in on the commercial side. So everything from rooftop units to chillers.
The phase out dates for that rule though, for our equipment was 2025 for most of our equipment. So we've already transitioned our equipment away from 1 34 A and four 10 A, so it seems a little unlikely that we would revert back at this point. Right. But there are other industries like supermarkets, convenience stores that have future transitions.
So between 2026 and 2028. And those sub-industries are the ones that are pushing for this reconsideration. So when this first came out, we got a ton of emails like, Hey, what are we gonna do? Are we going back to four ten eight? Do we not have to worry about a two Ls? The update? There's no final rule yet, but there's lots of bylaws and loss of process that needs to be followed as part of the AIM Act.
It doesn't look like the entire rule is gonna get repealed, but I think parts of it might change. All right? But on top of that, the AIM Act, it does not preempt state law. So any changes to the AIM Act would not affect areas where states have already set their own transitions. So most notably California, state of Washington and New York.
Dan Gentry: Mm.
Charles Jelen: Do you remember the Refrigerants? Yeah. Oh, episode. I think it was Randy. Randy in Chicago was asking if we could get our 22 packs. Yeah. Good old Randy, friend of the show, friend of the show. We're not bringing back R 22, but maybe four 10 A in some applications. Something to watch out for. Headline number two.
This one's a little, uh, listen or beware. Active ventilation can reduce bio aerosol risks in public restrooms. This is more of A-P-S-A-I would like to make sure all the designers out there here. This one. This one is from News Medical. Okay, so a new study published in risk analysis, they found that bio aerosol concentrations of two different bacteria, e coli and staphylococcus orus exceeded acceptable levels of established by the center of disease control after toilet flushing.
Dan Gentry: Okay.
Charles Jelen: And inhaling these biological particles can produce symptoms like abdominal cramps, nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting.
Dan Gentry: Hmm.
Charles Jelen: Sounds
Dan Gentry: like me on a Sunday morning,
Charles Jelen: which then co, it's a cyclical problem here. Yeah, I think, I feel like this is something I just don't want to know about. No, but what we're trying to tell people is if you're designing bathrooms, please ventilate them properly so that we don't have to deal with this.
I agree. Speaking for everyone,
Dan Gentry: please adhere to that advice. Up next special guest, Molly d Ramas, director of the Deep Carbon Reduction Group at JB and B. She joins us to talk all things decarbonization.
Hey Charlie. Yeah. Have you met my new friend? HVRF?
Charles Jelen: Nope. But I love new systems. What you got?
Dan Gentry: Well meet the world's only two pipe hybrid VRF system for simultaneous cooling and heating. With heat recovery, it reduces the overall amount of refrigerant, making it easier to comply with. Ashray guideline 15.
Whoa. Whoa. Wow.
Charles Jelen: Where do I find out more?
Dan Gentry: Just head over to trane.com/hvf. Alright.
Charles Jelen: All right, Molly. Molly, welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on and joining us for a little bit.
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: Thanks Charlie. Appreciate it. I'm glad to be here.
Charles Jelen: Awesome. Alright, so Molly, we met on April 22nd. I. 2021. A little creepy, right? Little creepy that I know the date. It's very
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: specific. Yeah, it's very
Charles Jelen: specific.
I had to, I had to go back and check it out. It as public knowledge, it's out there. So we were both on the Advanced Energy Group stakeholder challenge. Do you remember this? It was like the Shark Tank pitch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do remember
Dan Gentry: this. Mm-hmm.
Charles Jelen: Alright, so I remember you and I remember Danelle Baird from Black Power.
Right. That's what I remember from that event, but that's how we met. That was the first time we met. We've ran into each other since then at conferences and stuff, but I had to go back and check the date.
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: That's so funny. Well, alright. Good for you for, for finding, finding that out, uh, ahead of time. It's very impressive.
I knew we had met before, so Good.
Charles Jelen: Well thank you for that. I appreciate the intro and we'll get to the professional one soon, but before we do that, name of the show, cool Air Hot takes. We ask everybody that comes on to bring a hot take. Could be personal. What is your hot take for the episode?
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: Let's see.
My hot take for the episode is that the energy transition is not a curse, even though it can feel very difficult. In fact, it's an opportunity that we should all lean into and hopefully is gonna turn out better for the world overall. That's my hot take, not a curse. Yeah, I like
Charles Jelen: it. Opportunity. Welcome.
Challenge. So for the people that do think it is a curse, what are your words of wisdom for them? What? What's the silver lining that they should be looking at?
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: That's a great question. I mean, I think the opportunity is to innovate. To do new things, to kind of set the stage for the next however many, 10, 20, 30 years of how we build buildings, how we operate buildings, how we think about the contribution from buildings.
It's a pretty exciting time to be in the industry. It's hard. It's a hard time. You know, certainly the challenges are very real. Definitely not discounting that at all. But at the same time, HVAC at least, and many of the consulting engineering type trades have been done the same way for so long. And now we're at a place where it's been a complete and total evolution of how we think about these things.
And I think that's. An interesting and engaging place to be.
Charles Jelen: Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna see your hot take with a previous hot take and get your opinion on it. So the first person that we interviewed, his name's John Horne, he's a managing partner at a venture capital firm, and he said his hot take when he came on was that the HVAC space is going to change more in the next five to 10 years than it has in the past 100.
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: I would agree with that. Yeah.
Charles Jelen: Yeah. All right.
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: Hmm.
Charles Jelen: Anything stand out in your head? You're like, I think this is gonna change, or I think this is gonna be the culprit.
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: Well, I mean, the big thing now, or that has been going on, I would say like in the past five years, it's gained a lot of traction, is the integration of heating and cooling systems, right?
For a hundred years, heating systems and cooling systems were kept completely separate. Separate equipment, separate distribution systems, separate everything, and. Now everybody's kinda like, Hey, wait a second, why are these things completely separate? Why aren't we recovering heat? Why aren't we getting more creative about where heat is in a building and how we can reuse it?
And so that leads to the integration, right? The crossover of these systems working together in a way they never have before. So I think that has changed things significantly already. And then moving into the future. Buildings don't really interact with the grid very much yet, and I think they're going to need to interact with the grid for things to really be successful.
And so there's a whole thing that I think could potentially happen in that space that's coming that hasn't quite hit yet, but people are starting to understand the importance of.
Charles Jelen: Yeah, absolutely. Alright, well that's kind of leading into where your role, so let's get into that. So you work for J, B and B, you are the director of deep carbon reduction.
And for the listeners out there, if, if, if you've never heard of J, B and B, they are at the forefront of engineering in this company. They work on some of the most high profile real estate in the world. So Molly, what is your role with JBB? What are you doing?
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: So I am the director of the Deep Carbon Reduction Group, and our role within JBMB as a firm is all things energy, sustainability, carbon emissions reduction, and we do everything from strategic planning, right?
30 year timeframe, decarbonization, strategic outlook type stuff, all the way to the very, very specific compliance related energy, local law tasks that your listeners in New York and Boston will be super familiar with. So that's what our team does. My role on the team is largely strategic. I actually founded the team with my colleague Chris, and we've been building it really from the ground up for the past five or six years.
And so a lot of the thinking around I. Strategic decarbonization a lot of the work in city and state government, right? Kind of figuring this stuff out from a, a working group standpoint or the things that I've been involved in, and just working to build a process and set of services for JBMB that really meets this need in the industry, which is very real, you know, to have concrete.
Engineering based energy and carbon analysis to help people get where they're going.
Charles Jelen: So you created this group, I'm assuming there was a, a catalyst from it. What was it that has changed over time? Like you've been in the industry for a decade plus. Mm-hmm. What has changed over your time in the industry that got you to the point where you're like, we need to create this team.
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: So I do a majority of my work in New York City. Uh, that's where our headquarter office is, and anybody who's in New York will know about local N 97, right? For those of you that are not in the New York area, who haven't necessarily heard of this, local N 97 is a building performance standard and it caps carbon emissions for buildings.
And so in about 2019, I wanna say this local law was introduced and that was the catalyst. It changed everything, the way that people were gonna think about the metrics of performance for buildings, it used to be energy cost. And so that was a radical shift over specifically to emissions that are produced by a building.
And you know, the reason it really moved the industry, I think was because it's very much a. Stick in that you have large financial penalties associated with non-compliance, with your prescribed limits. So when that started to come about, it became very clear that people were gonna need a different take on energy and carbon analysis.
'cause this stuff is, it is not new. I mean it's been going on for a long time. Energy code modeling, things of this nature. But it needed to be different. It needed to be more about the real performance. Day to day, the real utility rather than something that, that you're doing at the beginning of construction that's based on an energy model.
Charles Jelen: So what are, when you are working with clients today in this group, what are the outcomes that clients are asking of you?
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: So primarily we're looking at long-term decarbonization, which effectively translates to electrification. The rate at which different buildings can or will electrify changes, right?
Not all electrification is created equal, but you do have to probably get to an electrified future to meet that net zero decarbonization goal, and so mm-hmm. Our clients are planning for somewhere along that pathway between now and 2050. There's a lot of partial. Electrification. You know, some folks are going all in and they're signing up for full electrification.
It's a lot easier to get there with new design, but we've got clients that are also on the forefront in the existing building market that are, are thinking about how to get fully electrified by 2050 to meet their own internal goals, but also the requirements of, of things like local on 97.
Charles Jelen: Give us an idea though, like the, the long-term goal versus it, it sounds like there's penalties and I'm assuming it ratchets in terms of your cap over time.
It does, yeah. So how do you balance out the short-term penalty avoidance with the long-term goal?
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: That is the name of the game. So that's the reason, I mean, that's the reason I have a job basically, is because it's hard. It's hard. It's really difficult to figure out what the right mix of low and no cost, energy efficiency work that you might wanna do upfront versus the big capital intensive infrastructure renovation type stuff that eventually will need to happen to get to a fully electrified future.
And it's a moving target. So you have these policies that are driving things at the city level. Obviously there are influences from state and federal levels, which change with time, right? We're seeing that right now. Technology changes, education about this kind of stuff. Equipment, there's so many different moving parts.
And every building is so unique, right? That trying to actually identify the right mix of projects and when they should take place, given the context of all of those things, you know, it boggles the mind. It's the kind of stuff we love to do 'cause it's hard. But yeah, it's definitely something that keeps people up at night.
Dan Gentry: So with the metrics going to carbon based, what does that do for the cost for the customer? Their operating costs?
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: Yeah. It depends on what you choose to do. So you know, if you're looking for a decarbonization strategy and you're thinking about electrification as a means of getting there, the cost of electricity is higher.
Then the cost of other utilities. But it also depends on what kind of equipment you use. So for example, if you've got electric resistance heating, that's gonna be way less efficient and much, much more expensive than if you're swapping your gas fired system out for, for an air, uh, the heat pump system, for example.
I won't get into all the specifics of COP and how these things are more or less efficient and whatnot, but I think the thing to remember is that not all electrification is created equal. And so you have to be intentional about the strategy you use, knowing that the cost of electricity is typically higher than the cost of other utilities that people use, especially natural gas.
Charles Jelen: One of the things, I remember working on a few projects in New York that we were looking at electrification, and it, it kind of died early on because the infrastructure cost just to get the wire mm-hmm. To the building was prohibitive, let's call it. Yeah. How are you seeing that workout in a place like New York where there's policy in place that requires that your existing buildings have limited amounts of emissions, and then on new construction, and you could probably educate us on what this is, but there's requirements on, on what fuels they can use.
Mm-hmm. How does that cost balance out? Is it all on the owner? Are there subsidies available from local governments or from utilities? It, it, it just seems like that's a, that's a really high hurdle to get over on the requirement side.
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: Yeah, it is. It definitely is. There's no doubt about it. It does largely fall on the owner from a cost perspective.
Yeah. I think what we're seeing is a fair number of incentives from utilities from state and city programs, although. Those in some ways are being rolled back, especially those that were available at the federal level. And on top of that, there's this thing that's happening in the industry where people are looking for quality real estate.
Right? And so I think part of the equation, part of understanding whether or not the cost is worth it, is about the ability to attract people to your building and this idea of a low carbon building. Is pretty valuable to occupants, right? Health, wellness, sustainability. That angle sells pretty well as it turns out.
And so, you know, as people are evaluating what they wanna do in the long term, it becomes part of the calculus, right? Like, do we have to invest X number of dollars to hit, you know, a decarbonized? Goal in order to even bring people in, or are we gonna get passed over for other buildings that are pursuing these avenues now?
But yeah, I mean the reality is that the cost is largely on the owner and it can be prohibitively expensive. We're hoping that costs come down over time, especially as equipment expands and is more accessible. Um, but yeah, I mean it is a risk for sure that people are dealing with and trying to figure out how to, how to make the projects, so to speak.
Pencil. That's the term that, that we hear a lot is how do you make it pencil.
Charles Jelen: Yeah. What projects are penciling right now? Like if you, as you look over, like across your project portfolio, like what are the common themes where you're like, yeah, these are the projects that are winners. I.
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: Heat recovery. So, so I have to say energy efficiency because always energy efficiency works.
Oh yeah, for sure. A hundred percent. Um, and should always be the first step in anything you do. It's got mm-hmm. You know, really important consequences. Um, but heat recovery projects we're finding are the ones that right now are able to pencil and are a meaningful step forward toward electrification, uh, without necessarily needing to put all the money in right now upfront.
Charles Jelen: Well, let's talk about some actual buildings that you've worked on or that you think are interesting too, that, that I know of, that you guys have worked on. Pen 1 55, water Street. One of them is, you know, this concept of heating with ice, which is, is, is very, very interesting. What is that concept? How's that work?
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: So ice heating sounds counterintuitive and it sort of is, but effectively, if you think about ice, what is ice? It's liquid water with the heat removed from it. And so that heat, right, can be used for heating in a building. And that's the fundamental idea behind, uh, ice heating, is that if you have ice tanks, which buildings sometimes will have for things like demand management, right?
That on the cooling side, um, you can actually repurpose those assets and pull heat out of them to use for building heat, either at the perimeter in the case of 55 Water Street, or depending on what you combine it with. Right, which other types of equipment you combine it with, you can. Possibly do a whole building, right?
You have to layer heat in that particular scenario. But it's cool stuff. And you know, it goes back to what I was saying before about the idea of, you know, the way we used to think about heating and cooling systems and how we've kind of turned it upside down. Heating is cooling. Cooling is heating, right?
It's, it's all just about the transfer of heat at the end of the day and doing it in a clever way.
Charles Jelen: Yeah. So essentially you're, you're making ice. To reject that heat to meet your heating loads, and then you're melting that ice later in the day when the building's occupied, when you need cooling loads. So it's non coincidental heat recovery back to your heat recovery side.
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: Yes. Effectively.
Charles Jelen: Yeah. That's cool. Alright, as you look out to the future. Where do you see building decarbonization heading?
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: I mentioned the grid. Flexible stuff. Grid, interactive stuff. I, I think that's the next frontier for buildings. I really do because you can only get so far on the systems that are internal to the building, right?
At some point you have to start reading the signals that are coming from the outside and adjusting the operation of that building. To meet the sort of the conditions that are happening on the outside. So I think that's gonna be a really critical piece of it. I think hopefully high temperature heat pumps, fingers crossed, is gonna be something that is more available, you know, and it makes it easier for the existing buildings market to, to decarbonize.
That's one of the biggest challenges is, you know, what do you do with a building that has high temperature, hot water? With the heat pump equipment, you know we have now. Yeah.
Charles Jelen: What would, if you could wave a magic wand, what product would show up in there? Oh, that's a good question. Yeah,
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: a hundred percent.
It would be a heat pump that is able to produce steam. That is footprint wise, similar to that of a condensing hot water boiler. That would be air source
Charles Jelen: or water source,
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: preferably air source if possible. But, um, that's obviously pretty challenging from a thermodynamic standpoint, but you know what?
People are doing it. There are some solutions out there that are kind of in earlier stages right now that are using novel refrigerants and are doing some interesting stuff on the compressor technology that maybe we'll see that sooner rather than later. And there are innovation competitions that are happening that are, are certainly encouraging that kind of technology innovation.
But yeah, I mean that would, that would be the solution to a lot of New York City building problems if you could get a small footprint. Air source heat pump that produces steam. That's like the holy grail.
Dan Gentry: Do you think there's a, is there a COP that would make that make sense? Like above or below that would or would not make sense?
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: I think in general, you wanna be, so air source heat pumps now on average in heating, right? Two and a half maybe. So I think you wanna be around there or better per, you know, preferably to make it worthwhile set
Dan Gentry: a, you set a pretty high bar there, Molly, that I'll say every high bar listeners, now we gotta go start designing stuff.
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: Yeah, well that'd be great.
Charles Jelen: All right, so la last question here.
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: Yeah.
Charles Jelen: New construction. New construction side.
Producer Elena: Mm-hmm.
Charles Jelen: If you have a blank canvas, what would your recommendation be to designers out there that are looking towards the future? How do you build the building of the future? What are the key parameters that you're designing around?
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: Key parameters are definitely reducing loads as much as you possibly can right off the bat. All right. Not letting any unnecessary heat leave the building without reusing it, if you can. Right. That heat recovery piece, I think is really critical. Probably then I would say a partial electrification solution in the interim with a plan for a full electrification solution in the long term.
And the timing on that is gonna depend on a bunch of different parameters like we talked about before. And then understanding the need to actually probably put up some additional capital for building intelligence beyond what is typical beyond your building management system. You know, even your typical energy management system I think is probably not gonna be enough for buildings of the future.
We need that next level interactivity, which I talked about before.
Charles Jelen: I love it. That's great. Thanks. Very interesting. Molly, thank you so much for coming on. That was awesome. Great conversation. Yeah. Enjoyed having you on the show. Thank you.
Molly Dee-Ramasamy: Thanks for having me,
Charles Jelen: Dan. Yeah, Dan. Oh, you paying attention? Oh, I'm here. I'm all, I'm all here. All right. This is a good one. All right. Train design assist
Dan Gentry: Uhhuh. Yes. TDA. This intuitive web tool offers scalable layouts, up to date specifications and innovative decarbonization strategies. Customized projects, generate flexible documentation and collaborate effortlessly.
Charles Jelen: Best of all, it's free. No user fees, no subscription fees. Register today@tranedesignassist.com and transform your HVAC design process.
VO: Is it hot or cold?
Charles Jelen: All right, listener. In honor of Molly being our guest this week, we are bringing back one of our favorite segments, hot or cold, but we're gonna do. The Decarb edition. So our producer, our wonderful producer, Elena, has put together some decarbonization trends and the aim of the game is to decide are we hot on the trend or are we cold on the trend?
Hot being, we like it. We think it's a great idea. Cold being, we don't like it. Terrible idea. It's never gonna work. Alright, Elena, what's the first one?
Producer Elena: Yeah, thanks guys. I feel like I should say thanks for having me. Big fan of the show, longtime listener, long-term fan. Um, first one, the all solar skyscraper.
So imagine a typical skyscraper, but totally covered head to toe solar panels. What do we think is this realistic? Are we hot or cold on this? Talk me through what are your thoughts?
Dan Gentry: So I like the idea of solar panels, like on top of every building that has the space for it, because it's there. Put 'em up there, it's energy.
Let's do it. Great. But thinking about covered in solar panels, I guess my reservation here would be windows and not being able to see. Out of the building. I really like glass and being able to see out a nice, tall building. So I, I like the idea, but I'm gonna go overall cold because I can't envision this.
Charles Jelen: Dan, I'm gonna turn you into hot fan real quick. Oh geez. So they already make, they already make this see through solar. Yeah, well, there we go. This is, this is a thing, you know, obviously very expensive, but yeah, I, I'm, I'm very hot on this. I think this is a great idea, this combined. Have you ever heard of, uh, electrochromic glass?
I have, but you should educate the, uh, listener. Okay. It's, uh, it's glass that changes its tint based on how much light is going through it, and you can program it in different ways. So during the winter, if you actually want heat, it'll open up. It'll, UNT tint, so to speak. Sounds
Dan Gentry: expensive, but really cool.
Charles Jelen: Very cool. Yeah. Uh, there was actually, it was funded through the IRA in the first iteration. Oh. But anyway, so like you combine that, you combine solar glass. I, I think it's a, it is a great idea. Obviously the barrier is cost.
Dan Gentry: Yeah, definitely. I mean, super cool idea, I guess. It is more feasible than I thought.
Hot, hot. Hot. I'm hot.
Producer Elena: All
Dan Gentry: right, cool.
Producer Elena: Okay, well hot. Okay. Number two, genetically engineering cows so they don't expel methane. It sounds a bit sci-fi, but it's actually happening. I found a story. They're doing it, but what do we think hot or cold? Do we think this is a good decarbonization trend?
Charles Jelen: I'm very cold on this one.
Very cold. I think cows burp for a reason. If we take that away from them, there's consequences that we don't know about that's happening in general. I'm not a, like genetically engineered cows, doesn't just doesn't sound good to start with. Genetically engineered cows so they don't burp methane. I, I, I'm, I'm getting further away.
I'm cold on this one.
Dan Gentry: I'm not going to depart too much. I guess my initial thought was we have genetically modified foods and animals and that kind of stuff, so I think we, I. Kind of more or less know what we're doing. I just didn't want it to affect the steaks. I'm a big, uh, I'm a big beef eater, so as long as it doesn't mess with any of that kind of stuff, or the health benefits that I perceive from eating beef, there goes our vegan crowd.
But, uh, you know, sorry guys, but, uh, you know, to that point about, I'm guessing they like expel methane for a reason and there's. Gotta be something behind that. So this, it is interesting, don't get me wrong, but, um, definitely questionable. So I, I'm gonna land on cold just 'cause I just, I'm, I'm worried about mistakes.
Producer Elena: Okay. Cold. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should necessarily.
Charles Jelen: Well
Dan Gentry: put, there you
Charles Jelen: go. That's well put. Thank you.
Producer Elena: Yeah. Nice. Okay, next Decarbonization trend. Point of use combustion carbon capture. So capturing CO2 directly from large emissions like power plants before it's released directly into the atmosphere, transporting it and then storing it.
What do we think about this? Hot or cold?
Dan Gentry: I'm gonna go first 'cause I think you know more about this than I do. My first takeaway is it just seems like crazy expensive and I don't even know how that is actually done. I know carbon capture is a thing, but it just seems very difficult. So like, hot on the idea, if it can do that, make that happen, but to make it actually happen seems insurmountable and I'm not sure what the, how the whole cost thing rolls up into it.
And does that. I mean, if it makes power more expensive, I'm not down. I'm not hot with it, so I, I'm leaning cold unless you can make me hot again.
Charles Jelen: On the spectrum of carbon capture, I would lean towards hot on this idea, the opposite being like direct air carbon capture, which I'm very cold on. I don't think that's a great use of energy in this country.
So going to higher intensity sources and trying to do carbon capture, there would be better. But in general, I'm cold on this one and, and then the reason is, is because I think it disincentivizes other technologies that can do a better job at getting to the same outcome. If you're looking for clean power, go somewhere else other than natural gas power plants.
Producer Elena: Interesting. You're colder on that than I thought you're going to be.
Charles Jelen: Oh, hmm.
Producer Elena: So I think out of those, the hottest one was the also a skyscraper.
Dan Gentry: I think that was a pretty easy one right there. But listener, what do you think? We want to hear from you. Do you agree? Do you disagree? Have we missed something?
Let us know. Cool air.hot takes@tra.com. Up next is our stat of the day.
Charles Jelen: Here comes
Dan Gentry: Joe. Stat. Of the day. Of.
Charles Jelen: Of the day. All right, listener. Today's stat of the day is the top performing s and p 500 stocks over the last 20 years. You got it, Danny, boy. 20 years s and p 500 stocks. Am I gonna rattle a couple off now or what?
Well, I'm gonna give you the baseline here. So the s and p 500 over the last 20 years has grown 400%.
Dan Gentry: Hmm.
Charles Jelen: Okay. Nice. All right. Okay. All. Can you guess? A couple? You wanna throw out a couple? This is hard.
Dan Gentry: Yeah, I mean like I would think like some tech stuff like Apple, Google, Microsoft, I'm sure Chips, Nvidia obviously would be on there.
You know what, uh, what's like a big store? Walmart or Amazon or something like that. Okay. Killing it. Any cars? Like, is Tesla? I don't know, like, uh, nope. I don't think they were even incorporated 20 years ago. Oh, not very true. Any kind of like heavy industry stuff,
Charles Jelen: but I, I, all right, here we go. You did great.
You did great. Let's do it. What do we got? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Eight. Ready? Okay, I'm ready. Number eight, Amazon. 10000%. I need a time machine. 10000% over the last 20 years. Next one is a company I used to work with, actually, intuitive Surgical. Have you ever heard of Intuitive? No.
Dan Gentry: I
Charles Jelen: was gonna say, what do they do?
They do surgical robots. Oh wow, cool. Which is really cool. So they build these surgical robots that are like super precise and so a surgeon can use the robot. To do surgery, but then they can also do remote surgery. I've seen that. So if you have like this really good surgeon that's at like Mayo, they can do surgery all over the world.
Dan Gentry: I didn't realize that was such a huge thing. I thought it was like a very like cutting edge.
Charles Jelen: I mean this steam's cutting edge good enough for a 14000% increase over the last 20 years. Not too shabby. Yeah. Alright, next one. Monster Energy. Didn't see that one coming. 15. That's a surprise. Thousand percent.
That's a, that's, that's a lot of energy drinks. booking.com. 21000% increase. Apple 23000% tpl. Do you know TPL? What's TPL? TPL is a, A land company. They own land, but they own large swaths of the Permian Basin.
Dan Gentry: Oh. In Texas, you know, they say it's good to own land. It is good doing land down there.
Charles Jelen: A 30000% increase.
Netflix. Oh, not a big surprise there. No, but a 54000% increase and chill. And then a number one. Number one, Nvidia, 93000% increase in the last 20 years.
Dan Gentry: Man. Would you love to own a couple of those? Stocks back in the day. It's outta of the day. Outta of the day.
Alright, thanks for listening to this episode of Cool Air Hot Takes. Thank you so much to Molly for joining us. It's a great interview. As always, please drop us a line, send us a message, cool air.hot takes@trane.com. We want to hear whatever you guys have to say, your questions, your hot takes, HVAC hacks, funny stuff, whatever you got, send it our way.
We're looking for it.
Charles Jelen: And don't forget, if you're a fan of the show, which we hope you are, please like hit follow. We release new episodes every two weeks. Give us a rating and a review if you'd like. That would be awesome. And until next time. Stay cool and keep those takes hot.
Dan Gentry: Yeah.
