Energy efficiency and decarbonisation pathways for Australian public hospitals

Hospitals are significant contributors to the carbon footprint of healthcare. Hospitals can be particularly energy-intensive as these facilities operate continuously, have strict space condition requirements and contain unique energy loads. Energy efficiency is a low-cost decarbonisation pathway for hospitals and offers co-benefits such as improved reliability and resilience, however the magnitude of this opportunity can be difficult to quantify. In this study, the energy efficiency potential of Australian public hospitals in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia is estimated using the NABERS Energy for public hospitals dataset. NABERS is an energy performance indicator that measures operational energy use in hospitals, and other large building types, and encodes information about the energy efficiency potential. In this study, the application of energy efficiency, electrification and grid decarbonisation is modelled from 2024 to 2040. We estimate that by 2040, energy efficiency has the potential to deliver a 15–20% reduction in energy consumption to the existing hospital stock. The combination of efficiency and electrification has the potential to reduce the energy intensity of hospital operations by about 40%. By 2040, emissions are projected to fall by 80% using the combination of decarbonisation strategies. The implementation of decarbonisation strategies is modelled probabilistically and a Monte Carlo approach used to derive uncertainty estimates for these predictions. This analysis assumes that hospital heating and cooling systems have the largest potential for efficiency savings. Quantifying the contribution of these healthcare decarbonisation strategies can assist policymakers in allocating appropriate resources for implementing efficiency and other decarbonisation measures.