Practical resilience to climate change

 A three-year research project, which builds on the conclusions of two recent academic papers examining low energy design and refurbishment strategies for NHS buildings, and the opportunities for low energy ventilation and cooling, is investigating practical ways to adapt the NHS Retained Estate to increase its climate change resilience while simultaneously reducing its carbon footprint.

The pressure on UK healthcare estates personnel to reduce their facilities’ energy consumption, and thus help their Trusts save money that can then be devoted instead, for instance, to improving clinical care, has mounted year-on-year – a situation only likely to be exacerbated given the stringent public spending cuts forecast for the next 2-5 years. However, coupled with facing increasing pressure to, for instance, significantly reduce their estates’ electricity and gas consumption for financial reasons, EFM teams must now also work continuously to ensure that their buildings comply operationally with some of the toughest environmental legislation the UK has seen to date. For example in April 2001 the then Minister for Health John Denham tasked the NHS in England (in line with the Government’s Climate Change programme) with achieving a 15% reduction in its energy use in the period from March 2000 to March this year. English NHS Trusts today, meanwhile, are committed under Department of Health stipulations in HTM 07-02 to achieving a target of 35-55 GJ/100m3 energy performance for all new capital development, and 55-65 GJ/100m3 for the refurbishment of existing healthcare buildings. Such daunting targets are largely a result of the UK Government’s broader environmental obligations under international accords. Following the Kyoto Protocol’s signing in 1998, for instance, the Government adopted an initial commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 12.5% below 1990 levels by 2008/2012, a target subsequently tightened to a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions from 1990 levels by 2010. In the 2007 Energy White Paper, a more ambitious domestic target was set for the UK to reduce its CO2 emissions by 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. Against such a challenging backdrop, and with the UK having seen nine of its 11 warmest years in the 20th Century between 1985 and 2000, the goal of the new three-year “Design and Delivery of Robust Hospital Environments in a Changing Environment” (DeDeRHECC) project is “to investigate the design and delivery of economical and practical strategies for the adaptation of the NHS Retained Estate to increase its resilience to climate change whilst meeting the onerous targets set for the NHS”.

 A multidisciplinary team