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In the UK, the NHS produces 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, and the healthcare sector's sizeable carbon footprint is not a problem specific to the UK. In the USA, for example, the healthcare sector is responsible for 8.5% of the country's total carbon emissions. Concerningly, the sector's carbon emissions increased by 6% between 2010 and 2018 across America, despite the drive for a green transition. Globally, in 2018 the healthcare sector's climate footprint was sufficiently large that if healthcare was a country, its climate footprint would have been the fifth largest in the world, bigger than both Japan's and Brazil's. Clearly, action needs to be taken by the healthcare sector on carbon emissions.

In response, the NHS has set two clear targets to reach Net Zero. For emissions it controls directly (the NHS Carbon Footprint), it aims to reach Net Zero by 2040, with an ambition to have achieved an 80% reduction in emissions by 2032 at the latest. For emissions it can influence (the NHS Carbon Footprint Plus) meanwhile, it aims to reach Net Zero by 2045, with a target of having reduced emissions by 80% between 2036 and 2039.

Action will need to be taken urgently if the NHS is to meet these pledges and become the world's first Net Zero healthcare service by 2040. However, decarbonising the healthcare system will not be a simple process. One of the biggest challenges facing the UK's health service is that, in the drive to decarbonise, the majority of the more straightforward steps, such as replacing diesel and petrol-powered vehicles with an EV fleet, have already been taken. As a result, the encouraging progress the NHS had been making has begun to stall.