Redesigning way of using energy can help hospitals achieve 60% reduction in energy utility use

A new study presented at the CleanMed conference in Baltimore this week shows how hospitals, which account for four percent of all energy consumed in the U.S., can achieve a 60 percent reduction in energy utility use by redesigning the way they use energy. A newly constructed, code-compliant hospital can expect to save around $730,000 a year, according to the report.

All sectors of the medical industry are tackling issues of sustainability as care providers continue to be asked to do more with less. This week at CleanMed, over 800 healthcare industry professionals – including climate experts and top healthcare executives from some of the nation's largest hospitals – have gathered to address the critical environmental issues facing the health care sector. This study represents one of the latest findings in the ongoing push to green America's hospitals and build healthier communities.

The most salient outcome of this study is the identification of a process that brings together architectural, mechanical and central plant systems to deliver significant efficiencies. These strategies include heat recovery, daylighting, and thermal energy storage, which when integrated at the very beginning, can reduce up to 60 percent of a new hospital's energy use. This approach has been modeled for energy use as well as cost of construction and can be implemented for less than three percent of the total project's cost, a fee that is expected to be recouped through energy savings and utility incentives within the first five-to-eight years of a building's life.

The study, titled, "Targeting 100! Envisioning the high performance hospital: implications for a new, low energy, high performance prototype," is the result of the close collaboration of the University of Washington's Integrated Design Lab and NBBJ, one of the nation's leading healthcare architectural firms. The study was primarily funded by the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) through its BetterBricks initiative. NEEA advocates for changes to energy-related business practices in Northwest buildings. In addition to these parties, the research team also included engineers, general contractors, utilities, hospital CEOs and facilities managers.

Tackling energy reduction in hospitals, which use about 2.5 times the amount of energy as a similar-sized commercial building, is challenging due to a 24-hour operating schedule, health related guidelines and extra commitments on air filtration/circulation and humidity. A complete reassessment of the architectural systems, building mechanical systems and central plant systems was conducted in order to find a code-compliant path that could achieve the highest quality, lowest energy hospital design for the lowest additional capital cost.

"The goal of this research report is to provide hospital executives, architects and engineers with the latest tools available for moving energy efficiency goals forward toward the ultimate goal of carbon neutral hospitals. We also wanted to offer evidence that high energy efficiency goals do not require substantially increased capital commitments," said Duncan Griffin, NBBJ's healthcare energy specialist and one of the lead researchers on the study. "The research shows we can integrate these strategies into most new and renovated hospital projects with little cost implications, which eliminates the need for our clients to decide between reducing CO2 emissions and buying an MRI."

In addition, the study allows hospitals to address the growing demand to reduce their environmental impact and to provide their staff with a healthy workplace, something Geoffrey Glass, director of facility & technology services at Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia, Wash., says is a recruiting tool for physicians.

"Physicians get the connection between the environment and health. Doctors want to work in facilities that are achieving these kinds of energy and health performance goals," said Glass. "This research study sets specific, cost effective and achievable design principles for successfully reducing operational costs and carbon footprints. This report should be required reading for anyone planning to build or renovate a hospital in the future."

Through a three-year process of energy simulations, iterative hourly load testing, prototyping, cost analysis and peer review, the research team refined a series of energy-reduction design solutions that include strategies like solar and daylight shading controls, in-room environment tempering, vacancy air control, outdoor air supply and heat recovery, heat recovery systems, thermal energy storage and wall and window values.

The biggest breakthrough was addressing the re-heating of centrally-cooled air. It is the largest contributor to wasted energy in a hospital, representing around 40 percent of annual heating energy usage.

"Many of these concepts require departures from standard design and operations practices in hospitals, but they are not necessarily new design ideas, just new to hospital design. What makes the strategies novel is the way they are bundled together using an integrated design process," says Joel Loveland, director of the Integrated Design Lab at the UW. "The key is to bring design, engineering, utility and ownership teams together as early as the conception phase of the project. When everyone is around the table, from the very beginning, we can start to see the bigger picture of how everything connects and we can then leverage those connections in a way that decreases energy and avoids added risk for the lowest capital cost."

In terms of carbon dioxide emissions, one average-sized hospital emits approximately 18,000 tons of CO2 annually, so a 60 percent reduction in energy of the same hospital would save approximately 7,800 tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere every year, which is equivalent to taking over 1,300 passenger cars off the road or planting over 300,000 trees.