ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Left: The eye- catching new boiler facility at Guys and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust
The NHS is
cutting carbon, as managers and clinicians consider the impact climate change could have on healthcare, ever more stringent emissions legislation, and the huge potential cost savings from using less energy. Tim Pryce, who runs The Carbon Trust’s public sector engagement operations, explains why.
T
he NHS is the country’s biggest em- ployer, and unsurprisingly the biggest
public sector emitter of carbon – and like the country as a whole, relies on both lead- ership from the top and action by individu- als to do something about it.
In fact the NHS experiences many of the same issues as other parts of the public sector and private businesses, according to Tim Pryce, Head of Carbon Management at the Carbon Trust.
He told NHE: “A lot of the key drivers are similar in the NHS to not just the rest of the public sector, but private sector bodies as well. We’ve worked intensively with well over 100 NHS trusts over the last fi ve or so years to help produce carbon and energy management plans, and to put the board- level support and fi nancing arrangements in place to implement those plans.
“From that experience, we’ve found that the key drivers in the NHS, pushing them to take action, are, fi rstly, climate change itself; that’s a real driver, particularly the links between climate change and health and some of the expected impacts of heat- waves and temperature changes on the spread of diseases. That’s something the NHS is aware of.
“Then another driver is legislation; again, this isn’t unique to the NHS, as the CRC (Carbon Reduction Commitment) applies to the NHS as it does to everyone else. There’s a new 50% target that’s been set under the Climate Change Act for the UK as a whole between 1990 and 2025. That’s a pretty stretching requirement and is defi - nitely going to need action on the part of the NHS and is going to require things of the NHS as well as it is everyone.”
More with less Driving the agenda
“But probably the biggest driver of all is effi ciency,” Pryce continues. “Again, that very much applies across the board, as increasingly big private sector companies are looking at energy effi ciency as a way of cutting unnecessary costs out of their busi- ness. That’s one factor that affects the NHS more acutely than almost any other part of the economy, because it’s very much bound up with the need to deliver more and treat more people and treat an ageing popula- tion, with the same or fewer resources.
“It frustrates me in my job that there’s a widespread fallacy out there that managing carbon is something that costs money. It’s just not true; certainly in the NHS and pub- lic sector, we’ve found that cutting carbon
There is a debate in management circles about whether driving forward agendas such as the need for carbon-cutting is best done by a widespread ‘buy in’ by all execu- tives, so all understand its importance, or whether it is better to have one person or a small team concentrating on it and ensur- ing a constant drive in the right direction.
Where does Pryce come down on that question?
He said: “We’ve worked intensively with well over 100 NHS trusts, and in some way with over 200, and we’ve found that a broad, board-level buy-in, and particu- larly a broad board-level understanding
national health executive Jul/Aug 11 | 59
saves a lot of money and should very much be part of the current public sector effi cien- cy drive. In our work with the public sector, we’ve helped them implement net savings of over £400m so far.
“We’ve proved there are real savings there – even after deducting the costs of im- plementing the projects, putting in a new boiler or insulation or whatever it may be, there are very real fi nancial savings to be made.”
getting
serious about
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