sourcing renewable energy
activities does make it worthwhile ex- Department of Health masters to dem-
ploring opportunities for the Service to onstrate that the Service was ‘doing its
generate a significant proportion of its bit’ towards reducing the government’s
total energy requirements from renew- carbon footprint.
able sources. The principle of delegating a difficult
Hospitals, for example, generally have issue away from the political firing line
car parks which could be used to cap- is not unknown to Whitehall. The fact
ture solar heat and re-apply it using that the SDU is shown in Saving Carbon,
Interseasonal Heat Transfer method, as Improving Health as having just seven core
described in this magazine’s earlier edu- staff including the Director might sup-
cation sector focus. port that view.
In essence, energy is captured during How successful the SDU will be in
the summer by heating dark-coloured having its grand strategy implemented
areas of ground; the heat is directed in the Primary Care Trusts of the North
through the soil into an earth reservoir East, for example, or the home counties’
beneath an adjacent building where it Foundation Hospital Trusts cannot be
is stored for release in winter months.
There has to be a sustainability
judged for half a decade or more.
This is a technology that has been
successfully implemented – the Carbon
objective in the brief of every
Could the document have been more
Trust funded its commercialisation – in
manager so that part of the
prescriptive, perhaps, with the SDU set-
an environment not dissimilar to that in carbon reduction becomes
ting numerical targets for tonnes of
CO
saved per patient bed in specific types
2
a hospital.
their specific responsibility. Every
of hospital?
NHS Trust board could be asked
The Unit, through its CEO, has ac-
Saving 20% through monitoring
where on their risk scale climate
cepted that no two NHS organisations
are the same, creating more problems
The simple process of monitoring energy
consumption and alerting stakeholders
change registers.
than would be solved if that kind of in-
struction were to have been sent out to
to where electricity, gas and water are the shires.
being wasted in an organisation can than wind turbines (because the equip-
save about 20% of energy according to ment is often housed in the basement of
BERR and the Carbon Trust. buildings), but no less effective is Com-
4.7 Mn tonnes of CO at stake
2
This statistic is used extensively to jus- bined Heat & Power (CHP), which can Success will be measured in terms of
tify the cost of installing equipment for be configured to use whatever resources the
energy monitoring by demonstrating are available.
CO
2
tonnage saved: that is the politi-
cal gauge. But NHS executives right
payback on utility bills within months These can be biomass fuel grown for across the Service’s estate should be
of the investment being made. Again, the purpose or waste materials taken in locked firmly in debate about how best
there is extensive experience in the edu- from the local authority. In a very practi- to reduce their carbon footprint.
cation and local authority sectors that cal way, NHS premises would be gener- They are not driven by political ob-
the NHS could draw upon. ating renewable energy and helping the jectives but the need to save the costs
And then there are the full-size wind community to reduce the landfilling of which come from lower carbon con-
turbines that could generate electricity waste. sumption. Improvements in health will
for a hospital site and sell any surplus be a bonus on top of that.
back to the Grid. On balance, therefore, we could be
As David Pencheon observed, being
More than a PR exercise?
looking at a rare example of joined-up
highly visible, they send out a ‘message’ It would be easy to see the NHS Sus- thinking in the public sector: there are
to the community that the NHS is taking tainable Development Unit as a high- about 4.7 million tonnes of
its responsibilities seriously. Less visible profile gesture by the NHS and its
CO
2
a year to
play for by 2020. §
The principle of delegating a difficult issue away from the political firing line is not unknown to Whitehall.
The fact that the NHS SDU has just seven core staff including the Director might support that view.
40
40
The Informed Executive
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