Professor Branka Dimitrijevic, director of CIC Start Online, a project funded by the Scottish Government and European Regional Development Fund combining the resources of seven Scottish universities that aims to embed sustainable building design and refurbishment into practice, reports on a conference jointly staged in Glasgow recently by the organisation and Health Facilities Scotland that considered this topical issue in some depth.
The conference, on ‘Sustainable refurbishment of healthcare estates’, was held late last year at The Lighthouse in Glasgow, and organised by CIC Start Online in collaboration with Health Facilities Scotland. Following 50 feasibility studies and 20 academic consultancies on sustainable building design and refurbishment, initiated in collaboration with Scottish businesses through CIC Start Online, a consortium of seven Scottish universities, led by Glasgow Caledonian University, is planning to expand collaboration with innovative businesses to test how innovations for sustainable transport, energy efficiency, energy generation from renewables within building estates, water saving and reuse, waste reduction and reuse, and ICT/BMS systems for the management of all of these, could be integrated into existing building estates (e.g. in healthcare, housing, and education). The conference aimed to provide a snapshot of the context, recent research, and current practice, in sustainable refurbishment of healthcare estates.
Scottish sustainability policy
Kathryn Dapré, energy and climate change manager at Health Facilities Scotland, gave an overview of NHS Scotland’s sustainability policy, targets, and results. NHS Scotland, she explained, operates in buildings whose total surface covers around 4.6 million m2, and employs around 154,000 staff (6.3% of Scotland’s workforce). Energy expenditure was around £85 million in 2011/12, and carbon footprint around 491,000 tCO2e. The legislative context, policies, and guidance, for reducing carbon emissions relevant to the management of healthcare estates in Scotland include the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009; Building Standards; BREEAM; the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme; CEL 1 (2012): Public Sector Sustainability Reporting Requirements; CEL 2 (2012): NHS Scotland Sustainable Development Policy; and individual Board and local planning policies. HEAT (Health, Efficiency, Access, Treatment) provides a core set of objectives, targets, and measures, for the NHS. One of these targets includes the requirement to reduce carbon emissions and energy consumption, indicating that, in relation to the 2009/10 baseline, the year-on-year reduction in energy consumption should be 1%, and in CO2 emissions from oil, gas, butane, and propane, should be 3%. Targets will be revised in 2014/15.
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