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Home / News & Insights / Healthcare’s Drive to Net Zero: Evolving for a Green, Resilient Future
The effects of climate change on healthcare and the effects of healthcare on climate change are inextricably linked. At the same time, health systems are being forced to harden against the frequency and severity of weather events, they must also seek solutions to curtail their significant carbon emissions.
The importance of achieving each of these goals grows by the day. Extreme weather and health crises caused by climate change are increasing in frequency and severity. Concurrently, the U.S. health sector is responsible for an estimated 8.5% of national carbon emissions, the highest rate among industrialized countries.
Hospital systems are being urged to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030, reach net zero by 2050, including supply chain emissions, and publicly report on their progress. Industry leaders have said they expect the forthcoming regulatory changes could link Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to health systems’ energy efficiency, just as the Affordable Care Act tied reimbursements to patient outcomes and patient satisfaction.
As the industry searches for solutions, Haskell Healthcare’s consultants, designers and construction professionals often discuss clients’ environmental challenges and goals. After many conversations, they have found that a necessary first step is defining the relevant terminology and understanding when it does and doesn’t overlap.
It is essential to understand four main terms, each of which is critical in healthcare settings:
“We need to level-set at the beginning,” said Kevin Meek, Haskell Vice President of Advisory Services. “In my experience, in healthcare, the term sustainability is used, and people think, ‘How do we respond when a hurricane rolls in? I need to make sure we've got generators and provisions.’ No. That’s resiliency.
“I think we can help by delineating which conversation we're having. There is the resiliency conversation. Then there's sustainability, and then there’s the reduction process. We need to work with the project owner so that everyone understands the goal. The approach to each of those can be drastically different.”
While each is a distinct concept, they can also be viewed as complementary and can relate functionally to the others. Accordingly, healthcare facilities can be designed and constructed to meet resiliency, sustainability and decarbonization goals.
This is particularly true in the case of energy consumption and efficiency. Maintaining habitability during an interruption of a facility’s energy supply is a fundamental aspect of resiliency, and a National Resources Defense Council report states that the main tools needed to accomplish decarbonization are also keys to habitability.
Other areas of intersection include:
“Coming out of the COVID era and hearing about budget pinches, health systems want a resilient building. They want a versatile building,” said Bryan Smith, Director of Engineering in Healthcare Design. “They want flexibility to accommodate all sorts of different scenarios. But they have to do it within budget constraints.”
There are no blanket solutions. Each geographic location is unique, as is each facility. Designated by Engineering News-Record (ENR) as a top green design and construction firm, Haskell has partnered with health systems across the country to address wide-ranging resilience and environmental goals.
“We have done alternate energy,” Smith said. “We have done rainwater capture. We’ve addressed resiliency with different selections of equipment and configurations. With owners trying to implement it on an existing fleet, every situation is very different, and that’s before you get into coastal applications versus mountain applications.
“People want a resilient building. They want a versatile building. They want flexibility to accommodate all kinds of different scenarios. We work with them, to reach resiliency and sustainability measures that are functional and cost-effective.”
Contact Haskell Healthcare to discuss realistic strategies for addressing your health system’s environmental goals.
Haskell delivers $2± billion annually in Architecture, Engineering, Construction (AEC) and Consulting solutions to assure certainty of outcome for complex capital projects worldwide. Haskell is a global, fully integrated, single-source design-build and EPC firm with over 2,400 highly specialized, in-house design, construction and administrative professionals across industrial and commercial markets. With 25+ office locations around the globe, Haskell is a trusted partner for global and emerging clients.
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