The NHS estate and its accompanying facilities services account for 15% of total carbon emissions including primary care, trust estates, and private finance projects.
To work towards achieving net-zero NHS targets, healthcare organisations must commit to upgrading and building new net-zero facilities that consider energy consumption, waste, heating, lighting, smart technology, and even the construction and maintenance teams that maintain and upgrade healthcare estates and much more.
On the 26th of May, National Health Executive hosted its second Net-Zero NHS virtual event on the NHE365 event platform.
The day was opened by Esther Ukala, Environmental Compliance Manager, NHS Property Services who discussed climate adaptation and the actions NHS SPS are taking to help combat climate change, reduce negative environmental impact and measures to cope with existing impacts.
Shortly after we were joined by Ashley Seymour, Senior Development Manager, Assura; Cameron Hawkins, Head of Energy and Environment, NHS Property Services and Alison Foster, Programme Director, Royal Berkshire Hospital to share best practice on how best to decarbonising NHS estates and facilities.
Cameron Hawkins shared “NHS PS has done well over £14 million pounds of LED installation, we’ve been able to work out how to do supply chain, how to do health and safety, permits to work… so if anybody wants to pick up their project then they can do that, and it’s now been really simplified.”
And Cameron later added that the work done at NHS PS has led them to “about £23 million pounds worth of energy savings.”
Alison Foster, who has almost 30 years of experience working within the NHS and is currently a programme director who is also the Trust lead on achieving Net-Zero Carbon, was asked by our host, Helen Fospero, how does your experience in the NHS help with what you are trying to achieve now?
Alison said, “I guess the tool in the armoury is engagement and working with teams… linking with local partners, anchoring institutions, so the university and local council in Reading and also in Wokingham... Discovering in Reading we have the largest concentration of climate change experts in the world globally.”
We also heard from Ashley Seymour, who shared what the definition of net-zero means to the work being done at Assura.
“We split the definition into two elements, so the first one is embodied carbon and the second one is operational carbon. Embodied carbon is the amount of carbon associated with the actual construction of the building and the processes involved and operational carbon is once the building is up and running and what carbon is associated with that ongoing use of the building.”
If you are interested in watching the full on-demand recording, click here.
Or if you are interested in seeing what other virtual events NHE have planned for 2022, click here.
