Mercy Health has worked to establish the organization’s full carbon emission baseline across health and aged care divisions including Scope 3 (indirect) emissions. This carbon inventory work has identified Mercy Health’s top carbon hot spots, allowing targeted interventions to address climate change at organizational, divisional, and site levels.

Starting in 2015  the Associação Paulista para o Desenvolvimento da Medicina (SPDM) conducted extensive greenhouse gas inventories and implemented sustainable strategies throughout its facilities. They achieved a significant reduction in emissions (nearly a 50% reduction in emissions in tCO₂e  per FTE from 2018 to 2022.), expenses (savings of USD 62,000 in 2020), and increased awareness and acceptance of health care sustainability and environmental impact among staff, health care leadership, the government, and the communities served. 

This case study reports on the challenges and path that a large public hospital in Brazil faced to reduce GHG emissions by 33.40% in five years. Goals included measuring emissions with GHG protocol tools creating indicators, and assessing risks, as well as strengthening climate leadership, resilience, and mitigation with training and education for professionals and students.

To set greenhouse gas reduction targets and commit Hospital do Rocio to the Race to Zero campaign and the Health Care Climate Challenge, a strategy will be employed using the marginal abatement cost curve (MACC) as a tool to analyze the efficiency of each project, considering emissions reduction and their costs in tCO₂e.

Hospital Sírio-Libanês decarbonization program (HSLPD) focused on mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as part of their 2019 commitment to become a carbon-neutral organization. The program included actions to measure GHG emissions, manage consumption that impacted carbon emissions, and compensate for what could not be reduced.

This case study presents the journey of the Sociedade Beneficente Israelita Albert Einstein, a large and highly complex hospital, in relation to climate change, focusing on its actions to mitigate emissions through energy efficiency projects and initiatives to adapt to the effects of climate change.

Energy consumption in hospitals has a direct connection to lighting, air conditioning, heating, water pumping, elevators, and medical equipment. Through the efficient use of energy and pursuit of autonomy, Rede D’Or aims to minimize the energy impact on its processes.

As part of Apollo’s sustainability action plan, the group is tracking monthly energy consumption, total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water withdrawal, waste generation, and commensurate emissions for 40 of its largest facilities, which account for 90% of the group’s total energy consumption, in efforts to set and measure improvement goals.

The implementation of satellite-assisted telemedicine centers provides subsidized primary eye care to peri-urban populations who previously did not have any eye care facilities in their region. This increases access to primary eye care, cures needless blindness, and reduces the carbon footprint by reducing patient travel to big tertiary care hospitals in nearby cities.

Together with SmartCarbon Ltd, the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UK) created a bespoke SmartCarbon calculator platform for the health care sector and a five-step program for a net-zero supply chain. This will address the shortcomings of previous methods to calculate supply chain emissions and actively involve and support suppliers.

Ascension’s commitment to reducing its environmental footprint and achieving sustainability is rooted in their mission, which calls them to advocate for a compassionate and just society in their actions and words. A comprehensive inventory of carbon emission data in 2020 provided the insights needed to reach milestones in their Race to Zero. Reducing waste and natural gas through innovative strategies have contributed to carbon reduction goals while saving valuable MMBTUs.