Paul Brockway, senior sustainability consultant at Arup, reports on a carbon footprint study undertaken at the Barts and the London NHS Trust which set out to “understand carbon hotspots and identify actions that can save both money and carbon”.
The completion of the Barts study, believed to have been the first such initiative involving an NHS Trust, follows a national, Sustainability Development Unit-commissioned footprint study led by the author in 2008, and described in detail in the article, “Assessing the full carbon impacts of healthcare”, in the IFHE Digest 2010.
The UK’s Climate Change Bill1 in 2008 set a target for an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 from 1990 levels. In addition, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has proposed the first three carbon budgets from 2008-2022, and has set an intended target of a 42% reduction in GHG emissions (reported in CO2e) by 2020 from the 1990/1995 baseline levels.2 Rapid global cuts are required to GHG emissions, and in particular CO2 emissions, which globally make up around 85% of the “basket” of six Kyoto GHG gases.3 The NHS – as the largest public sector organisation – is expected to lead, and is doing just that. NHS England became the first public sector organisation in the UK (and possibly the world) to publish a strategy based around the measurement and reduction of its consumption-based carbon footprint. The strategy, Saving Carbon, Improving Health,4 is based on two consumptionbased carbon footprinting projects,5,6 undertaken by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and Arup in 2008-09. The emissions research found that most of the emissions caused by the NHS actions emerge from the procurement of goods and services, as shown in Figure 2.
At the forefront of modelling
Log in or register FREE to read the rest
This story is Premium Content and is only available to registered users. Please log in at the top of the page to view the full text.
If you don't already have an account, please register with us completely free of charge.
