‘UK needs to be more self-sufficient on energy’

A Net Zero and Sustainability keynote session on the second day of Healthcare Estates 2022 included a chastening look at the energy generation challenge facing the UK in the short-to-medium term, by Dame Sue Ion, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. One of her key messages was a need for a considerable stepping up in the construction of renewable energy-generating facilities, although with some renewable technologies, and also nuclear reactor facilities, there remained cost and practical hurdles to overcome.

Dame Sue Ion presented her conference address before two other speakers in the session – Councillor Tracey Rawlins, Executive Member for Environment & Transport at Manchester City Council, and Annie Shepperd, CEO at Salix Finance, gave their own standpoints on some of the key sustainability and Net Zero challenges facing the healthcare engineering and estate management sector, the wider public sector, and the UK as a whole, and discussed some of the initiatives already in hand

She was introduced by the session chair, Ian Hinitt, an IHEEM Past-President, who chairs IHEEM’s Environmental Sustainability Technical Platform, and in his day-to-day professional role is Director of Estates & Facilities at the Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust. In setting the scene for the three presentations, he reminded delegates that the NHS has set itself the target that the emissions the service controls – the so-called NHS Carbon Footprint – will reach Net Zero by 2040, and that those it can influence – the NHS Carbon Footprint Plus – by 2045. The IHEEM Past-President said: “This afternoon’s discussion with key industry influencers and experts will consider how emissions can be addressed in healthcare and wider society, and how events since the launch of NHS Net Zero – including NHS waiting list recovery, the war in Ukraine, and the fuel, food, and cost of living crisis – are presenting challenges to decarbonisation.