SUSTAINABILITY
Green Plan progress and future opportunities in focus
NHS Trusts across England were required to have finalised and submitted a Green Plan to their Integrated Care System by mid-January, outlining their actions and targets over the next three years on a wide range of sustainability issues as part of the drive toward a Net Zero Carbon NHS. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, spoke to Beth Goodwin, an NHS specialist at Inenco – which has been actively helping a number of Trusts deliver their Plans – to discuss both the varying approaches, and under-exploited carbon reduction opportunities.
In October 2020 the Greener NHS National Programme published its new strategy, Delivering a ‘Net Zero’ National Health Service. This warned that – left unabated – climate change would have a highly detrimental impact on both health and healthcare, ‘disrupting care, with poor environmental health contributing to major diseases, including cardiac problems, asthma, and cancer’. Against this backdrop – and with growing evidence of the impact that human activity is having on the planet, it has become increasingly evident that, as a major carbon emitter, the NHS needs to further step up its efforts to reduce its own carbon footprint. In the past 5-10 years, indeed, many NHS Trusts have taken action to reduce their carbon emissions. Delivering a ‘Net Zero’ National Health Service, however, warns that the NHS as a whole will only meet its Net Zero commitments in the timeframes set out ‘if every part of the service is working together’.
Delivering a ‘Net Zero’ National Health
Service thus not only details some of the key NHS carbon reduction initiatives to date, but also sets out the Net Zero challenge for the service over the next two decades, including the key actions required to meet two key emission reduction targets – for the NHS across England to reach Net Zero carbon by 2040 for the emissions it controls directly (the ‘NHS Carbon Footprint’), and by 2045 for those ‘it can influence’ (such as those embedded within the supply chain – the ‘NHS Carbon Footprint Plus’).
Where do Green Plans fit? Where, however, do Green Plans fit in? The 2021/22 NHS Standard Contract set out the requirement for NHS Trusts across England to develop a Green Plan to detail their approaches to reducing their emissions in line with the national trajectories. The subsequent NHSE / NHSI guidance document, How to produce a
Green Plan: A three-year strategy towards Net Zero, makes clear that, given the ‘pivotal role’ of the (new) Integrated Care Systems (ICSs), each ICS will also be expected to develop its own Green Plan.
Areas a Green Plan should cover How to produce a Green Plan explains how NHS organisations should construct their Green Plan, and the areas they should cover, adding that ‘a three-year timeframe should allow Green Plans to strike an appropriate balance between immediate carbon reductions in some areas, alongside strategic development of capability in others’. As per the NHS Standard Contract, every Trust and ICS in England must now have put together and published a Board or governing body-approved Green Plan. Trusts had to have the Plans finalised and submitted to their ICS by 14 January this year. Having received the Green Plans for their regional Trusts, the ICSs were then tasked with
Delivering a ‘Net Zero’ National Health Service warns that, ‘left unabated’, climate change would have a highly detrimental impact on both health and healthcare.
The Green Plan chapters and areas of focus. May 2022 Health Estate Journal 37
Courtesy of NHSE/I
Courtesy of Inenco
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