There are plenty of interesting snippets about the health sector and its role in both contributing to and mitigating carbon emissions in the latest edition of the NSW Public Health Bulletin.
The general point is that the Australian health sector, with a few notable exceptions, has not yet started to get its act together in any systematic way.
The WHO made recommendations in 2008 for how the health sector might achieve carbon savings, and in the UK, the NHS (which is apparently one of the world’s largest employers) has established a Sustainable Development Unit to help drive such measures.
In Australia? We have a few area health services trying hard. Or, at a guess, there are a few key people in a few organisations labouring to drive change.
Some of the snippets:
• The NHS is the largest public sector contributor to climate change in England, producing 25 per cent of public sector emissions, which is equivalent to the emissions of an entire medium-sized country. Its carbon footprint is composed of energy (22 per cent), travel (18 per cent), and procurement (60 per cent).
• Health facilities in the NHS measure, monitor and display how much energy they are using, which helps to increase “carbon literacy and numeracy” and reduces carbon use.
• NHS contracts now include statements suggesting criteria about sustainability and low carbon emissions will increasingly be used in the commissioning of services and the procurement of goods.
• in NSW, health facilites account for 53 per cent of total NSW Government building energy usage. Many in the health sector are unaware of targets set by the NSW Government Sustainability Policy.
• Blacktown, Mount Druitt and Nepean Hospitals are now generating 40-50 per cent of their electricity onsite using cogeneration fired by natural gas, resulting in an average 15 per cent reduction in energy consumption across the Sydney West Area Health Service. The SWAHS has implemented a number of other measures to reduce carbon emissions, including lighting and energy upgrades, water recycling, and measures to encourage people to travel to its services by walking, cycling, buses and trains.
The authors (from the NHS, SWAHS, University of Sydney and Royal Australasian College of Physicians) conclude: “While the Australian health care system has not yet embraced the challenge of reducing its carbon footprint from a whole systems perspective as the NHS has done, there are many local examples of leadership in NSW.”
Are other States/Territories doing anything interesting in this area?
My suggestion is don’t bother to use the sort of talk in this article. Forget about carbon footprints, carbon literacy and numeracy, and other such tripe. Instead deliver services in the most cost effective way and forget about the rest. Do more cost/benefit analyses, and worry less about carbon savings. These are taxpayers dollars being spent here and the aim is to deliver cost effective health outcomes. The aim is not to deliver less health outcomes, but in some sort of feel good way.
I would question statements like ‘.. Hospitals are now generating 40-50 per cent of their electricity onsite using cogeneration fired by natural gas, resulting in an average 15 per cent reduction in energy consumption across the Sydney West Area Health Service.’
Is the power so generated cheaper than that provided by the grid? If so, turn the hospitals into power stations and sell power to the grid and put those nasty coal fired stations out of business. I simply don’t see how generating your own power reduces your own energy consumption. The two are unrelated. My experience of cogeneration (and I do have some) is that on-site generation is much more expensive but useful to have where loss of power is critical and an emergency source is essential.
By all means continue with lighting and energy upgrades, water recycling etc, but do the cost benefit analysis (remembering there’s still no carbon tax or cost).
I can imagine the mandarins sniggering about this one, ‘measures to encourage people to travel to its services by walking, cycling, buses and trains.’ Their minister would have loved them to spin the lack of car parking at hospitals into a positive thing. Head split open? Take an easy stroll to your nearest hospital and enjoy the view on the way.
I suspect the effort and $$$ expended in this pursuit would have been better spent on removing red tape not adding to it … or even tending the sick.