Leading the way in reducing energy use

The UK’s healthcare sector spends £400 million on energy and accounts for 8 tonnes of CO2 per year or 3 per cent of the UK’s carbon emissions. According to LessEn partner the Carbon Trust, a huge proportion of this could be saved with the implementation of behaviour change and by investing in building energy efficiency technology. Unfortunately, this also means that a significant proportion of healthcare funding is wasted, indicating that energy saving has largely been overlooked.

In 2010, the LessEn initiative launched the world’s first energy map showcasing building energy efficiency across the UK. The LessEn Energy Map is based on Display Energy Certificates (DEC) and supported through a free smartphone application that displays building energy ratings through augmented reality. As a result of the energy map, a healthcare service in Burnley, Lancashire has proven that not all of the UK’s healthcare services have been blind to potential savings.
 
The St Peter’s Health Centre is a combined state-of-the-art leisure and primary health care facility, located in the centre of Burnley, Lancashire and a shining example of how a healthcare service can make significant energy savings. A joint project between Burnley Borough Council and East Lancashire NHS Trust was designed and constructed by Preston based developer The Eric Wright Group. Annual energy saving measures have resulted in a 27 per cent reduction in its DEC rating.

A UK first
The mix of health and leisure facilities is thought to be the first of its kind in the UK and was procured under the LIFT model (Local Improvement Finance Trust). The total cost of the building refurbishment was £29m. The Eric Wright Group will deliver facilities management services to the health centre for the remaining 23 years of the lease period while the borough council maintains the leisure centre.

The leisure centre includes two swimming pools, a fitness suite, a health suite, a café and sports halls. The primary healthcare centre houses a wide range of services over nine floors, including an out-of-hours GP service, clinics ranging from orthoptics, occupational therapy, physiotherapy and musculoskeletal through to dentistry, speech and language therapy, sexual health, retinal screening and audiology. District and school nurses, community matrons and visitors for the area are also housed within the centre.

Energy efficiency was a key consideration when the centre was built. The project was designed and constructed within a very short timescale to meet the requirements of external grants and, as a result, the project team were faced with some financial and programme restrictions. Construction commenced in January 2005, with the leisure element completed by March 2006 and the health element by September of that year. In 2009, the health centre received a Display Energy Certificate (DEC) rating of 112, which put it in the E category.

Changing energy behaviour
Key to achieving a high level of energy efficiency at St Peter’s Health Centre has been the team’s dedication to reviewing possible energy efficiency opportunities. As a result it was clear that, although highly efficient lighting and plant had been installed, one of the biggest challenges would be to change the mindset of the people using the building every day.

The Eric Wright team, led by Blair Fotheringham and his assistant Paul Truby, set up a user group within the health centre involving employees from all departments. Regular meetings to discuss operational issues were organised and a campaign to reduce energy across the healthcare facility was started with further support from the Carbon Trust in terms of providing ‘please switch off’ stickers and posters.

The stickers and posters provided an engaging action for all staff and were very effective. Many of the 500 staff at the health centre use a computer, and by reminding them to switch it off at the end of the day, the team were already starting to make an impact. They also installed additional PIR motion sensors to minimise lighting usage and once again the response was very positive, which suggested that placing responsibility with staff increased their commitment to the initiative.

To increase the support for the facilities management group, Blair Fotheringham’s team further enhanced the building management software allowing them to fine-tune the controls for heating, ventilation and lighting. These measures have allowed the FM team to gain a greater control of the building’s core temperatures, improve indoor air quality and the ability to optimise room settings according to changing weather conditions.

One finding has been that judging the optimum set points for heating and ventilation levels in any building takes a lot of time and effort and it is important to keep reviewing the settings as operational changes take place on a weekly basis. The team had to be particularly careful due to the building’s health centre function in which people are under regular clinical assessment. The key is to find the right balance between internal and external air temperature so as to maximise natural temperature conditions.

The results
St Peter’s Health Centre started with an initial DEC rating of E (112), however, this has been improved to a DEC rating of 88, putting it firmly in category D, and well above the average rating for a building of this size.
Blair Fotheringham’s team used the DEC rating as a showcase to the user group and gave them a like-for-like comparison over the previous assessment. Working collectively across the healthcare centre towards an achievable energy efficiency goal had captured people’s attention and continues to lead energy efficiency for the centre.

Interestingly, during the time since the last DEC rating, the operating hours of the centre have significantly increased. This has slightly distorted the rating but it is still an accurate assessment of the building’s energy performance.

Throughout 2010, Blair Fotheringham’s team, in conjunction with the East Lancashire NHS management team and building users, continued to make improvements, resulting in an energy savings of over £36,000 with 154,047Kwh of electricity and 12,862 Kwh of gas saved versus 2009.
Gas savings achieved for the first three quarters of 2010 were 13.17 per cent for St Peter’s Health Centre, however, severe temperatures heavily impacted their excellent energy saving results. With temperatures regularly dipping below -5 degrees C during the day, much of their year’s gas savings were unfortunately lost.

What is next?
The aim is to continue to improve the energy efficiency of the building with the objective of improving the DEC rating still further. Moving up a DEC level has been a great achievement and it will be interesting to see how far St Peter’s Health Centre can go in achieving higher energy certificates.

Technical energy saving measures being considered at the centre include the installation of LED lights in specific areas, voltage optimisation and solar panels to make the most of the current feed-in tariffs.

An additional benefit that saving energy has brought to St Peter’s Health Centre is that it will be better placed to take the lead in the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme (CRC) as it enters its first reporting year at the start of April this year. The CRC will result in a huge shift in the UK healthcare service to improve its energy efficiency, and organisations that fail will be taxed and shamed through the public league tables produced on an annual basis after each reporting period. Blair Fotheringham’s initiatives at St Peter’s Healthcare are a shining example that energy savings can be realised and working with organisation-wide strategies can make significant savings.

About LessEn
The name LessEn emphasises the focus on lessening the confusion that surrounds the issue of energy efficiency, lessening energy consumption and lessening energy costs.

LessEn is a global resource initiated by The Urban Land Institute (ULI), the global not-for-profit research and education organisation for the real estate industry. LessEn is supported by the investment and resources of Arup, Chelsfield, Hines, Philips, ECE, Union Investment, Lutron and Gensler.

LessEn represents the successful development of an 18-month beta pilot project on European energy efficiency, called the ULI Energy Efficiency Exchange. This was initially funded by ULI life trustee Sir Stuart Lipton, who donated the $100,000 prize that was awarded to him as winner of the J.C. Nichols prize for Visionaries in Urban Development given by the Urban Land Institute.

For more information:
Web: www.less-en.org