Decarbonisation Action Plan: How we can all play our part in reducing the Health Board's carbon footprint

Cardiff and Vale University Health Board is calling on all colleagues to play their part in reducing the organisation’s carbon footprint.

NHS Wales has set the Health Board a target of achieving a 16% reduction in carbon emissions by 2025 and a 34% reduction by 2030.

A new Decarbonisation Action Plan published by the Health Board issues a ‘call to action’ to health board employees, setting out a few simple steps colleagues can take to reduce their carbon footprint including:

switching off lights and equipment when not in use;
disposing of waste correctly;
using sustainable forms of travel where possible;
using the previous three asks, thinking about how individuals can deliver work in a way which limits their impact on the environment.

Calum Shaw, Environmental Sustainability Improvement Manager, said: “Although these may seem small, we have seen instances of large savings being delivered from seemingly benign actions. For example, switching off one medical device in our dental hospital out of hours has avoided over £15,000 per year in energy costs.

“We have a significant workforce with more of them than ever performing an active role in reducing our emissions. Though to achieve our ambitions and targets we will need to do more to galvanise everyone into playing their part.

“As an organisation, we recognise that unless we make changes to how we deliver care, climate change will continue to exacerbate our ability to deliver services. This is not just a climate emergency, it’s a health emergency.”

According to the Decarbonisation Action Plan, in 2022-23 alone the Health Board’s carbon emissions were an estimated 217,000 tonnes – an increase of 7% in the last year. That is the equivalent of all of our 16,000 staff flying around the world three times each.

An estimated 80% of these carbon emissions were made up of products and services that the Health Board buys to deliver healthcare services. Perhaps surprisingly, only around 16% of emissions were created via the energy we consume to run equipment, heat buildings and light up rooms.

The emissions the Health Board is able to control - such as gas, electricity, petrol and diesel - have continued to reduce since 2018-19 thanks to energy efficiency measures. But the rising demand of health services, along with our population growth, mean trying to keep our carbon footprint down remains a significant challenge.

“It’s a crude measurement, but one of the ways you can tell the carbon footprint of something is based on how much money you’ve spent,” explained Calum.

“We’re spending more money on healthcare products and services, and therefore our carbon footprint is going up as well.

“Put simply, our carbon footprint is directly related to the amount of healthcare that we deliver, and as patient activity is also increasing we’re facing an uphill battle.”

Despite these significant challenges, there have been several recent success stories within the Health Board, including:

A 500-tonne annual carbon reduction in annual nitrous oxide use thanks to a collaboration between anaesthetics, pharmacy and estates teams.
ICU staff eradicating the unnecessary use of sterile water and, with the approval of infection, prevention and control, offering tap water instead - saving 600kg of carbon and £11,000 in the process.
As part of the grant-funded Re:Fit programme, which includes installing more energy efficient lighting and lagging on pipes, there has been a further carbon saving of 300 tonnes a year.

Thankfully, many of the organisation’s priorities help to avoid carbon, including ongoing work around financial sustainability, length of stay, the six goals for urgent and emergency care and the prevention agenda.

“The best form of sustainable healthcare is healthcare that doesn’t need to be delivered at all, which is why we really need to orientate ourselves around that prevention agenda,” Calum added.

“We also need to come up with a plan around adaptation. We know Cardiff and the Vale will get milder and wetter in winter and warmer in the summer over the coming years, and we need to react to that in terms of how we heat and cool our buildings. We also need to assess what those changes mean for our population’s ealth.”

To read the Decarbonisation Action Plan in full please go here.