Powering the NHS towards Net-Zero - Event Write-Up
The Sustainability Day of Action
The NHS is facing a constant challenge to deliver cost savings whilst ensuring a high standard of patient care, yet, with growing budget constraints and lack of resources, the NHS needs to find savings and cut its environmental impact down.
The annual Sustainability Day of Action celebrates the importance of sustainable development in our national health care system. This day illustrates and promotes sustainability across all 223 NHS through a variety of platforms where the sharing of ideas and collaboration aims to inspire and provide insight.
The 2021 Sustainability Day of Action went live with three webinars on the 4th of June. We invited industry leaders, sustainable business developers and influencers for sustainable development to discuss new technologies, innovations and strategies that we should implement within the NHS to become a more sustainable organisation.
Part Three: Powering the NHS towards Net-Zero
With emerging digital technology allowing for greater power, optimization and analytics, energy efficiency is evolving. The NHS can reduce energy costs, increase resilience and meet sustainability goals by implementing effective energy management. For this webinar, we invited an expert panel of sustainable energy innovators, leaders and suppliers to discuss the future of powering the NHS towards net zero.
Procuring Energy
Our first guest speaker was Bethany Goodwin a Senior Account Manager and NHS specialist for Inenco. Inenco’s core business has been in procuring gas and electricity for clients, they have been working with the NHS for a long time and more recently they have been bringing their private sector sustainability knowledge into the sector to help with net-zero, and the wider greener NHS mission.
“Procuring energy well the first step that’s often overlooked in the net-zero journey”
For this webinar, Beth focused on how the NHS can best reduce its costs and meet sustainability goals in relation to the procurement of electricity.
“You want to look at installing as much on-site generation on-site as possible. And what this is going to do is it’s going to reduce not only your emissions, but also your Trusts costs”
Beth stated that it’s important to move to a REGO backed green energy tariff but when looking at a supplier it is important to choose a supplier with a better than grid average renewable mix too as this will increase demand for renewable energy and drive the grid in the right direction. Once you have looked at how you are procuring your electricity you can then start to look at the feasibility of installing renewables on your site.
The relative benefits of private wire and corporate PPA’s were also discussed.
Beth highlighted the importance of understanding your consumption by having the correct DC/DA and submeters in place so you can effectively identify the most energy-intensive parts of your Estate, “what gets measured, gets managed”.
Procuring green energy is a relatively easy and immediate first step to lowering Trusts emissions and one that NHSi are pushing for but picking the right supplier is key at this stage to ensure your buying power has a real impact.
“Here at Inenco we are dedicated to the net-zero journey, and to broader sustainability improvements. And for us, we see that we can have the greatest positive impact by reducing the impact of our clients’ organisations”
“What we’re looking at is utilising those modern technologies with fast switching arrangements to provide an alternative to traditional Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)”
Power Resilience for a Net-Zero World
Our Second guest speaker was Ricky Higgins, Business Development Manager at Powerstar. Powerstar is a manufacturer of bespoke battery energy storage systems that is using modern lithium-ion technologies to provide energy store on site
Ricky gave us an insight into power resilience for a net-zero world, concentrating on UPS. So, in essence, this is a fast-switching power source that can give electricity to your downstream demand if your grid supply is disrupted. Traditional UPS is currently installed in hospitals which works effectively if maintained, however, as mentioned by Ricky in this webinar, they are actually very inefficient as they convert a lot of energy.
“Costing 200,000 pounds a year, not to mention also generating carbon loss for the business, alongside the concerns to where the energy is being bought from”
Powerstar’s solutions are not “off the shelf solutions, they are designed bespoke for individual sites”. By increasing in renewable generation, businesses are able to harvest energy when it's not needed and deliver it back when the demand is there. The implementation of new and smart technologies provides the flexibility to build smart networks onsite which will assist in meeting net-zero targets.
The NHS can reduce energy costs, increase resiliency, and meet sustainability goals by implementing effective energy management. If you would like to find out more please contact us here.