A SUSTAINABLE NHS
Hitting Net Zero without harming patient safety
Anil Madan, Non-Residential Marketing manager at Ideal Standard UK and Armitage Shanks, discusses one of the key modern-day challenges for the NHS – the imperative to reach Net Zero, but to do so without harming patient safety, and some of the key ways this might be achieved.
One thing that’s often forgotten in the constant public discussion around the NHS is the service’s sheer size. Our health service is the biggest single employer in Europe – comprising more than 1.7 million highly skilled professionals up and down the UK. When it comes to sustainability concerns, this of course doesn’t exclude it from the need to decarbonise, but it’s crucial context when looking at the scale of the challenge of achieving an 80% emissions reduction between 2028 and 2032. However, the same thinking applies when celebrating
the progress made so far – for an organisation that now makes up 4% of the UK’s total carbon emissions, cutting its carbon footprint by 62% between 1990 and 2020 is huge achievement. The NHS’s Net Zero goal in 2040 for the emissions it directly controls is fast approaching, and this affects everything from the fuel that goes into NHS vehicles, to how it uses water.
Meeting a stricter set of rules While the drive to a sustainable health service is a top priority for NHS leaders, it isn’t the only focus, and its efforts to reduce emissions in healthcare must meet a far stricter set of rules to ensure that they don’t undermine safeguards on hygiene and patient safety. When it comes to water, the challenge is particularly acute. A huge proportion of the NHS’s emissions come from heating and hot water, making it a prime target for sustainability initiatives, but the health service consumes millions of litres of hot water for a reason: it’s vital for keeping vulnerable patients safe from infection. The NHS isn’t just big – it’s also broad and complex,
which means the collaboration needed to hit emissions targets goes far beyond clinicians and facilities staff. It starts at the very beginning of value chains for medications and PPE, before ground is broken on construction projects, and continues long after a product or facility’s use life. At every stage, and with every stakeholder, there needs to be a competence-based approach where everyone has an instinctive understanding of how their role contributes to sustainability, patient safety, and how they interact with one another. Ultimately, the challenge is a compromise of no
compromise – the NHS must reach Net Zero, but it needs to do so without harming patient safety. The NHS still has significant challenges to overcome to meet its 2040 goal, and, as mentioned, water is one of its biggest. Heating water to high temperatures, and flushing systems, are vital parts of infection control plans across healthcare settings; processes which naturally consume huge amounts of energy and water.
It is for this reason that Water Safety Groups must take an active role in the decarbonisation process, both as a resource in finding solutions, and as a constant guardian of infection control. Work on this problem has already begun, but, as detailed in a previous issue of Looking Deeper, the journal published by Armitage Shanks, many of the potential answers discussed so far are largely imperfect.
Heat pump ‘challenges’ Heat pumps are a prime example of this unique challenge. The heat pumps that are set to ‘transform’ the domestic heating market have a Coefficient of Performance (CoP) of 3-3.5. However, to meet the required flow temperature of 60 °C, and a return temperature of 55 °C, increasing to 70 °C if sampling has indicated an increased microbial risk, means they have huge electricity demands in healthcare settings. It’s
October 2024 Health Estate Journal 87
Heating water to high temperatures, and flushing systems, are vital parts of infection control plans across healthcare settings; processes which naturally consume huge amounts of energy and water.
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