NHS Trust announces new “Green Plan” supported by decarbonisation grant

An NHS trust has recently announced the launch of a new Green Plan supported by a £26.9m grant, a recent news report can reveal.

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust has launched an ambitious 'Green Plan', setting out its response to tackling climate change. It comes as the trust has been awarded a £26.9m government grant to help improve the energy efficiency of its buildings and operations.

The Green Plan sets out a framework for how the trust will reduce the impact of climate change and pollution on health, reduce reliance on unsustainable services and medicines, and embrace 'green' learning and innovation. The plan is underpinned by 12 green goals for the organisation, including achieving cleaner air, a reduction in energy use, and smarter travel.

The decarbonisation grant — secured as part of the government's Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme — will be used to reduce emissions by more than 15% at the trust's Charing Cross and Hammersmith hospital sites.

Professor Tim Orchard, Chief Executive at the trust, said: "The climate change crisis has real implications for the health and wellbeing of our staff, patients and local communities. We embarked on our carbon reduction journey back in 2009 and have already invested £10.4 million across a range of energy efficiency projects which have helped to reduce our carbon emissions by nearly 25%. Securing the decarbonisation grant is a huge boost to our efforts and a great start to implementing our first comprehensive Green Plan.

"We know many of our staff are really concerned about climate change and engaged in developments with a sustainability focus, from transforming our renal services to enable dialysis at home, to our cycling-to-work scheme and going paper-free. We want the Green Plan to harness that energy and mobilise everyone involved with the trust to support more, high impact initiatives."

HeatingSave Building Management System (BMS) — the best solution to help the NHS reduce energy consumption

The HeatingSave Building Management System BMS can help drive down energy emissions across the NHS facilities by both optimizing the way in which heating and HVAC systems work, but also by making it a lot less likely for employees to tamper with the controls — and thus waste energy.

HeatingSave has a number of features to prevent employees from adjusting the heating controls and leaving them in setting that can waste fuel. The keypad and display on the front of the controller has two levels of password protection.

These passwords can be changed by authorized personnel locally or centrally using the PC software. The password programming meets the requirements laid down by the Carbon Trust, and the PC software is user ID and password protected too.

Naturally, employees do have the right to set the ambient temperature at a value that best suits their needs, and HeatingSave manages this situation by firstly getting the temperature right so people don't feel too hot or cold. If employees do feel too cold, they can hit a button to increase the room temperature. The heating will be turned up for a while BUT will then automatically turn back — keeping the employee at the right comfort temperature — and saving the employer on their fuel bill. If you'd like to find out more about the savings enabled by the HeatingSave Building Energy Management System, just contact our dedicated product team, they'll be more than happy to answer all of your questions and queries.