SUSTAINABILITY


be translated into healthcare. Some healthcare office staff don’t need to be on site, while ‘hot-desking’ or dedicated office space, which is considerably more carbon-efficient, might be a better long- term solution than refurbishing aged buildings.”


Aged infrastructure I asked where Trusts might be facing the greatest Green Plan challenges. Beth Goodwin said: “The condition of the healthcare estate is key. Everyone is aware of how aged some of the existing infrastructure is. We’re not going to get new hospitals for every existing one; we have to adapt the current stock.” In her view, the most significant current NHS carbon challenge was ‘heat’; the service has stringent targets to reduce its carbon footprint, and to reach them, will need to remove its reliance on natural gas. Beth Goodwin said: “There is no way for most Trusts to meet their carbon reduction targets over the next 5-7 years without coming away from natural gas, and as a country we’re not where we need to be on this. Some of the things that will need to change for our electricity network are huge shifts, requiring significant central funding, at a very rapid pace.”


A move to hydrogen Beth Goodwin felt the most ‘tempting’ way to heat a larger acute site historically heated via CHP would be to transition to a hydrogen CHP. However, to be Net Zero, the fuel would need to come from hydrolysis plants, of which there were currently none in the UK. She explained: “Where we are looking at hydrogen currently, people are still testing carbon capture, and most of the hydrogen projects planned will still not be Net Zero. Where hydrolysis comes in is really interesting – there is a long-term project just off the east coast of England in the


transform water into hydrogen and oxygen; it emits oxygen as by-product. She said: “It must be from renewably sourced electricity, and we already need a significant amount more renewable electricity, so we’re talking about a really big project being needed. What hydrolysis can do is balance the grid. Currently, we require something like nuclear or gas- fired power to do this, so, as things stand, getting the grid down to zero will be incredibly challenging, and we need other methods to balance it. Something like this – where if we are oversupplied, we can turn on hydrolysis – would work.”


EV charging points are appearing in increasing numbers at hospitals and other healthcare facility sites.


Humber Estuary, which will be looking at offshore wind turbines with on-board hydrolysis. “Currently,” she continued, “the timescales involved won’t be suitable for the NHS – where we need to reduce to Net Zero quickly – but ramp them up, and, significantly fund them, and they could potentially become a great solution. What they’re essentially looking at is at times of over-generation of wind, turning on the hydrolysis plant, using the renewable electricity and treated sea water to create hydrogen, and pumping that back to shore.” I asked about the ‘scaling up’ potential. Beth Goodwin said: “Currently, large-scale hydrogen production via hydrolysis is impractical. We don’t generate enough renewable electricity, and so the hydrogen produced would still not be a Net Zero fuel.” In simple terms, she explained, hydrolysis entails using electricity to


Insufficient renewable electricity Looking at the proportion of renewable electricity used in the UK via the Grid Emissions Factor, Beth Goodwin said the grid average fuel mix in 2021/2022 was 40.3 per cent renewables, but that this needed to ‘jump significantly’. She said: “It’s challenging, because I think realistically the NHS needs to go beyond REGOs; NHS organisations could also ensure that their supplier has more than the grid average renewables mix. That puts more pressure on the grid to continue to ‘green’, because the more volume you place with a ‘green supplier’, the more they go out and buy. “Longer term, we may need to use


Power Purchase Agreements, which essentially involve purchasing direct from a generating source. They are still generally facilitated by suppliers. Essentially for a PPA, your interest in buying from a generation source can help it secure the funding to be built. That’s where your buying power comes in.” I asked whether there needed to be more renewable energy generating sources. Beth Goodwin replied: “Yes, predominantly via wind and solar. We’ll see a lot of onshore solar and offshore wind; the UK tends to rely more heavily on wind than other nations.” How complex and / or expensive might it be to build a plant that would use one of these sources to produce renewable energy?


Inenco thinks we will see a lot of onshore solar and offshore wind power in the future. 40 Health Estate Journal May 2022


Building a renewable electricity plant Beth Goodwin said: “Funding them is not that difficult; there are many specialist companies geared up to build them – some associated with suppliers. If you’re seeking funding, it will usually be with an independent company. You would go and investigate who is talking to their local councils, discussing planning permissions, and seeking funding, or identify a company doing this that wants to build ‘X’ amount of generating power within a region. You’d then discuss with it what you’re willing to commit to, and the business would take your commitment to their funders to leverage against them borrowing money. That is a PPA at its core.” She continued: “For solar, it might take two years to then get from that stage to actually generating power.”


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