Healthcare Design - December 2013 - 12

G GREEN | 12.13
A concerted effort
Hospitals in Chicago are working toward energy efficiency improvement
and joining together to share the results with peers
By Peter Locke
For years, Chicago hospitals have implemented
various projects to conserve energy, including
retrofitting countless lamps and exit signs, adding variable frequency drives to pumps and fans,
installing occupancy sensors, tuning up boilers,
installing pipe insulation, and developing LEEDcertified buildings. The energy savings associated
with these activities, as tracked by utility energy
efficiency programs, resulted in the ballpark of
241,000,000 kBtus conserved, $3 million in incentives from utility programs received, and $3 million
in energy costs saved.
However, to accelerate the pace of energyefficiency improvements and achieve greater reductions in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions,
more comprehensive approaches are needed-
approaches that allow hospitals to identify the full
range of opportunities available and take action on
them.
Many of the Chicago hospitals that have undertaken these initiatives have recently been sharing
their experiences and successes as participants
in the Chicago Green Healthcare Initiative (CGHI;
www.chicagogreenhc.org). CGHI was formed
in 2012 with support from a U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) grant to help accelerate
the implementation of energy efficiency activities
in the healthcare sector, and it continues with support from the Joyce Foundation. CGHI provides
technical support as needed, and it organizes peer
exchange meetings among facility managers who
are implementing or considering energy efficiency
improvements.
Among the solutions being explored by these
Chicago facilities, there are five major initiatives that
hospitals across the country could benefit from
pursuing.
Benchmarking
Benchmarking the energy performance of a building
tracks the building's energy use over time. It sets a
starting point from which to measure changes, and
allows building managers to compare the energy
consumption of their buildings to that of similar
buildings in the same community or across the
U.S. It's a key tool in energy management, because
building managers can't effectively manage what
they don't measure.
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HCDmagazine.com 12.13

In addition, more and more cities like Chicago are
passing benchmarking and disclosure laws, making
benchmarking mandatory for buildings of certain
classes, while underscoring the importance of benchmarking to facilitate a reduction in energy use.

The Chicago Green Healthcare Initiative
was formed in 2012 to help accelerate the
implementation of energy efficiency activities
in the healthcare sector.
From a broader perspective, benchmarking is
used because it allows facility managers to gauge the
magnitude of an opportunity available to them and to
help determine how much energy savings is reasonably possible. As managers chart improvements,
benchmarking can also help them justify spending for
energy efficiency projects or capital improvements.
Chicago hospitals have two benchmarking tools
available to them: the EPA's Portfolio Manager and
a local benchmarking survey from consulting firm
Grumman & Butkus Associates (G/BA; Evanston, Ill.).
Using Portfolio Manager, facility managers can enter
data about a building's characteristics, operational
use, energy expense, and energy consumption, and
the algorithms in the tool rank the building against
others in its class on a scale from 1 to 100. Buildings scoring, for example, a 35 could have many
opportunities left to improve energy efficiency. Those
scoring 75 or above qualify for Energy Star certification. Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center has
achieved an Energy Star certification for the past five
years and currently has a score of 98.
The G/BA survey enables hospitals to compare
their metrics with those of other participants, including cost/sq. ft./year, Btus/sq. ft./year,
kWh/sq. ft./year, cost/kWh, cost/therm, and
gallons/sq. ft./year.
These comparisons provide facility managers
and hospital executives with a range of insights. For
example, G/BA's 2013 study (for calendar year 2012
data) determined that the average Chicago area
hospital spends $3.30/sq. ft./year in utility costs, with
the median value of hospitals for the whole survey
at $2.81. From this region-specific data, a hospital
that scores in the average range will know that it can

Peter Locke

http://www.chicagogreenhc.org http://www.HCDmagazine.com

Healthcare Design - December 2013

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