Our progress so far

Our sustainability progress to date has been productive – we have cut significant amounts of carbon (alongside benefitting from a ‘greening’ of the national power grid) and reduced operational budgets whilst contributing to CUH being an even better place to work.

Environmental Sustainability work to date

We have been working to make our services more environmentally sustainable for many years.

Statistics

4 in 10 people drive to campus
2,000+ bike parking spaces
25% of staff cycle to work
2,700 tCO2e reduction from 2010
36% reduction in direct emissions since 2014
LOW emissions car club, bio-digestion for catering waste
10,000 light fittings and all street lights LED
60 buses an hour in and around the site
15% heating recovered from waste incineration
24 recycling streams for approx 30% of all waste
Central boiler upgrades
33 teams participating in Think Green Impact
100 kWp+ solar PV panels.

Highlighted below are some of the projects we are currently working on and scaling up to deliver real benefits and savings.

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Richard Hales being interviewed by BBC Look East in front of solar panels on the CUH campus

New technology leads to significant carbon savings at CUH

26 Oct

Energy and Sustainability Manager Richard Hales shares how CUH is helping the NHS lead the fight against climate change with ground-breaking new technology

Link: https://youtu.be/N_Qz4n1wHm8

Video transcript

00:00:03:09 - 00:00:04:14

My name is Richard Hales,

00:00:04:14 - 00:00:07:05

I’m energy and sustainability manager here at the Trust.

00:00:07:17 - 00:00:10:17

I’m going to talk to you today about some work we’ve been doing here

00:00:10:17 - 00:00:15:03

at the Rosie as part of our overall drive to reduce the carbon footprint

00:00:15:15 - 00:00:19:08

of the whole of our estate in terms of energy use.

00:00:19:23 - 00:00:22:23

What we've been doing here up on the roof, is putting

00:00:22:23 - 00:00:25:20

some photovoltaic solar panels up there.

00:00:26:14 - 00:00:27:16

We put up

00:00:28:03 - 00:00:31:24

quite a few panels two years ago, around 33 kilowatt output.

00:00:31:24 - 00:00:34:00

We've connected those directly

00:00:34:00 - 00:00:36:21

to the chiller plant, one of the chiller plants is up there.

00:00:37:08 - 00:00:40:09

It runs by a direct current route through to that chiller

00:00:40:13 - 00:00:44:13

where it is controlled by a very clever bit of power electronics

00:00:44:23 - 00:00:47:23

that allows us to either store some of that energy, if the chiller plant

00:00:48:08 - 00:00:50:05

doesn't need it, in some batteries.

00:00:50:05 - 00:00:54:03

And also it controls the energy coming from the mains

00:00:54:03 - 00:00:57:06

grid, which it would normally be powered by.

00:00:58:02 - 00:01:01:19

So that we get the right mix, the optimum, the lowest carbon

00:01:01:19 - 00:01:05:03

mix possible to run that chiller as efficiently as possible.

00:01:05:11 - 00:01:08:04

We really are squeezing every kilowatt hour

00:01:09:08 - 00:01:11:18

to the most efficient way we possibly can.

00:01:12:17 - 00:01:15:03

We did that a couple of years ago and that's worked really well.

00:01:15:21 - 00:01:18:06

It's been a great bit of kit and very successful for us.

00:01:18:17 - 00:01:22:16

It's probably reduced the energy demand and lowered

00:01:22:16 - 00:01:26:10

the carbon footprint about 40% on that bit of plant.

00:01:27:09 - 00:01:31:02

About a year ago, we put it in for some public sector

00:01:31:02 - 00:01:33:17

decarbonisation scheme money from government,

00:01:34:05 - 00:01:36:12

we were successful in that, and so we've taken

00:01:36:12 - 00:01:39:09

the same type of technology, but this time used it

00:01:39:21 - 00:01:43:11

to run a heat pump down on level one of the Rosie.

00:01:44:03 - 00:01:47:13

Again, we put some more photovoltaic panels up on the roof

00:01:47:21 - 00:01:50:17

to provide some green power to it.

00:01:50:17 - 00:01:54:04

The great thing about the heat pump is that it's replacing a chiller unit.

00:01:54:15 - 00:01:58:08

So that will provide us with chilled water

00:01:58:18 - 00:02:01:12

for air conditioning within the Rosie.

00:02:01:23 - 00:02:05:04

But when you produce chilled water, you also end up

00:02:05:17 - 00:02:08:13

generating some heat because you've cooled it, you've taken the heat out of it.

00:02:09:07 - 00:02:12:15

What we've done there is take that heat and used it

00:02:12:16 - 00:02:15:14

to warm up the domestic hot water going into the Rosie,

00:02:16:01 - 00:02:19:11

so again, we really are squeezing every single bit of energy

00:02:19:11 - 00:02:22:07

we can out of the electricity that's

00:02:22:17 - 00:02:25:23

going into that heat pump.

CUH Action 50 Green Plan

pdf 2.8 MB

Our Action 50 Green Plan takes CUH’s learning and experience into a fully reframed response to what and how we consume.