The healthcare system is one of the largest CO2 emitters in the world, putting out GHGs at a rate 2.5 times higher than the commercial real estate sector. Add it up and it totals about 4.4 percent of global emissions. In the United States, emissions from healthcare are continuing to grow despite the widespread acknowledgement that society must take definitive steps to address the factors driving climate change.
At SHIFT Energy, we are doing our part to help with the climate transition. That’s one reason we have been named a Sustainability Champion by the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care. Our platform helps cut energy consumption and carbon emissions in hospitals and other healthcare facilities. We worked with the sustainability and operations teams at Alberta Health Services (AHS), Canada’s largest healthcare system, to improve the performance of its Fort Saskatchewan Community Hospital.
Located 25 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, the Fort Saskatchewan Community Hospital offers a wide range of services to area residents. But like other healthcare facilities, it faced considerable energy usage driven by its 24/7 operations and the very specific heating and cooling needs for clinical services and patient care. To meet its sustainability objectives, the hospital needed to cut energy consumption.
SHIFT Energy uses an energy intelligence platform to provide optimized energy management for HVAC systems, usually the most energy-intensive part of any building’s operations, helping cut energy consumption while maintaining the comfort of patients, visitors and staff. SHIFT works with existing Building Automation Systems (BAS) and HVAC equipment, including chillers, boilers and air handling units. This boosts building performance, meaning improvements of 10 to 20 percent can be quickly realized without spending money on new equipment, ensuring an ROI of only one to two years.
SHIFT’s HVAC optimization at Fort Saskatchewan included space-based scheduling for clinical space conditioning. The deployment also identified control improvements for air handling units and recommissioning opportunities, including sensors, reheat value issues and design flow adjustments.
The results were immediate.
Thanks to the SHIFT platform, the Fort Saskatchewan Community Hospital saw its carbon emissions cut by 148 tCO2eq annually. Electricity consumption was cut by nearly 900,000 kWh per year and natural gas consumption was also reduced by 4,500 m3 per year.
SHIFT didn’t just hit our energy savings targets – we blew the doors off, exceeding the annual goals set by AHS by 75 percent.
And all of this while ensuring comfortable conditions for hospital occupants were consistently maintained and without requiring expensive new equipment upgrades.
Lower energy consumption, lower costs, and lower emissions – what’s not to love about that? Interested in learning more about how SHIFT can help your hospital, campus, office tower or sports venue? Just drop us a line.