CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION LEENA SETÄLÄ – SUSTAINABILITY DIRECTOR, HOSPITAL DISTRICT OF SOUTHWESTERN FINLAND
Climatechangemitigation and adaptation in Finland
Finland’s national Climate Change Act mandates carbon neutrality by 2035. However, the Finnish government’s plans for decarbonisation of the healthcare sector have been lacking because recent focus has been on tackling COVID-19 and its impacts. Here, Hospital District of Southwestern Finland sustainability director Leena Setälä sets out a vision for a roadmap to reduce carbon emissions in the healthcare sector.
It is the year 2030. Imagine a healthcare system that provides high-quality medical services in specialised hospitals, which are working in close co-operation with a network of primary care facilities located at a moderate distance from people’s homes. Universal digital services are widely available and accepted by all age groups, providing 24/7 guidance and easy access to preventive care, self-monitoring and personal health data. Remote services have replaced much of the need for visiting doctor’s and nurse’s offices, saving the patients’ time to travel. Even experts located hundreds of kilometres away can be reached this way. Travel to health care services has decreased more than 20 per cent compared to 2020, and some hospitals have succeeded in reducing office and ward space. While the hospitals in 2030 are fewer in number than in 2020, they are modern and built to be energy-efficient. All hospitals have their own fossil-free energy production – providing heating in the winter and cooling in the summer, covering most of their needs. During peak consumption, electricity, heating and cooling supply relies on local power plants that offer 100 per cent carbon-free energy for the area. Many hospitals claim to be carbon-neutral in their own energy usage.
Figure 1. The Lighthouse Hospital is built above a highway and a railway to decrease distance to other buildings on the university hospital campus and to increase efficiency in using shared support services.
Hospital supply management,
meanwhile, is semi-automated and data- driven, guiding the purchasing and storage of materials and items, thus decreasing waste. Waste management systems support separating used products – immediately after use – to different streams of high-quality reusable waste materials. In addition to paper, cardboard, glass and metal, several
Leena Setälä Leena Setälä, MD, PhD is a specialist in plastic surgery and
executive master of business administration. Leena has worked in different hospitals for more than thirty years as a consultant and since 2005 in various administrative positions. Her present position is sustainability director of Hospital District of
Southwest Finland. Since 2019, she has been responsible for the design and implementation of the Sustainability Programme in Hospital District of Southwest Finland, including environmental, economical and social sustainability. She also works with other hospitals, municipalities, universities and national institutes to increase sustainability awareness. In addition, Leena works as a director of development at Health Campus Turku.
IFHE DIGEST 2022
different plastics are collected as materials for new products, including some that return to be used in the hospitals. The amount of paper waste has also
decreased considerably. Transport robots take care of logistics and communicate with the staff to guide and maintain high- quality waste management streams. Hospital waste water is managed so that no significant amounts of harmful pharmaceuticals enter natural water sources and soil. Most of the wastewater heat is recovered with efficient heat pumps at the wastewater treatment plant.
Present state Since 2015, the national Climate Change Act has set a goal to reduce Finland’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 per cent by 2050 from the levels in 1990. The Act also lays down provisions for a climate policy planning system and on monitoring its achievements, both in climate change mitigation and in adaptation.
Under Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s 21
©Architect Group Reino Koivula and Schauman Architects
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