Q: Against the backdrop of shrinking operating budgets and staff, hospitals around the country are faced with the challenge and opportunity of being more energy efficient. What sorts of energy efficiency improvements exist for hospitals and how can they implement these to improve their bottom lines?
Stewart A. Wood: Hospitals are experts at providing quality patient care, but when it comes to energy, engineering and environmental issues, they often lack the specific expertise to generate the optimal performance from their facilities. It is possible for hospitals to dramatically improve their operating risks, greenhouse gas emissions and operating expenses through partnering with outside experts. A number of areas within a hospital are a perfect fit: energy supply, including on-site power generation for critical areas such as operating rooms, neonatology and research and testing laboratories; steam for use in heating, sterilization and service water heating; mechanical refrigeration facilities for food service and morgues; and of course, more basic services such as HVAC, heating and cooling systems.
Q: In your experience, what are the benefits of using a new energy strategy, such as outsourcing facility operations and management, connecting to a district energy network or using combined heat and power on site? [Editor’s Note: Combined heat and power generation systems uses a fuel, such as natural gas, to produce heat and electricity simultaneously.]
SW: The primary benefit to hospitals of embarking on a new energy strategy is the transfer of operating risks to the parties that are best positioned to manage those risks. Partnering also provides healthcare institutions with access to best practices in terms of operations and technologies, and to emerging technologies in energy efficiency and renewable energy. In addition, improving how a hospital obtains its thermal and electrical energy, and reducing the amount of energy consumed results in a reduction in the hospital’s carbon footprint. Of course, there are also operating cost savings when you outsource facility operations and management. According to the U.S. Green Building Council, “every dollar saved on energy is equivalent to generating $20 in new revenues for a hospital and $10 for a medical office building.”
Q: Can hospitals that are not in major metropolitan areas use district energy and combined heat and power?
SW: District energy is a solution in which central plants produce steam, hot water or chilled water and distribute this thermal energy to nearby buildings instead of operating individual boilers and chillers within each building. Most district energy networks are located in densely populated metropolitan areas. As such, many large hospitals are situated near a network and can leverage the existing infrastructure for their thermal energy requirements. Combined heat and power is a very efficient technology in which the waste heat from power plants is recycled to permit the plants to produce power and thermal energy from the same volume of fuel. Large hospital campuses are essentially miniature cities in scale and scope, so they are ideal candidates for dedicated combined heat and power plants on-site, regardless of whether or not they are located in a major metropolitan area. Most importantly, by implementing a combined heat and power plant in a hospital setting, the risks associated with disruptions to the local power grid are mitigated, and the local grid becomes the source of back-up power.
Q: What is the future of combined heat and power in U.S. hospitals, and how does that compare to what you’ve seen in Europe?
SW: In Northern and Eastern Europe, combined heat and power plays a large role in energy production today. I believe that there is also a bright future for combined heat and power in U.S. hospitals. With the pressures for greater reliability, higher efficiency and the desire for greater ability to manage price volatility, many large hospital campuses have already embraced combined heat and power. It is also a key feature for smart grid initiatives, for which government incentive programs and subsidies have been established.
Q: What do you think the future looks like for hospitals in terms of energy management?
SW: The global trend that we have seen is that hospitals are partnering with outside experts for the operation of their technical infrastructure and transferring responsibility for non-medical activities to these specialists — ranging from energy and health risk management to general support services to sterilization of surgical equipment to maintenance of facilities. The combination of risk mitigation, environment performance improvement and cost savings is too compelling to ignore.
Mr. Wood is based in Veolia Energy North America’s headquarters in Boston. Veolia Energy is an international leader in operating and developing sustainable energy systems, with an array of solutions designed to increase customers’ energy efficiency and reduce their carbon footprints. Veolia Energy has extensive experience working in the healthcare environment, with more than 5,500 healthcare institutions and over 485,000 beds served across 42 countries. For more information, visit www.veoliaenergyna.com.
