Cheltenham General Hospital – Donna Gibbs-Shutterstock
Gloucestershire Managed Services has secured £13.7 million to carry out a range of environmental projects at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
The in-house FM provider at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust will work on schemes at Cheltenham General and Gloucestershire Royal Hospital to help the NHS trust to achieve its carbon reduction targets and guarantee that Cheltenham General and Gloucestershire Royal Hospitals are more energy-efficient.
The funds will be spent on sustainability developments and all the works should be completed by the end of this year. These include:
- Heating-system upgrade and pipe insulation;
- Solar panels on the trust buildings’ roofs;
- Installation of a battery storage system for the trust’s electrical distribution network;
- LED lighting;
- Metering to monitor energy use;
- Upgrading the building management system that controls electrical and heating infrastructure at the hospital
- Installation of a heat pump to create heat from the environment
- Installation of energy-efficient fans for the trust’s ventilation system
Keith Hamer, managing director at Gloucestershire Managed Services (GMS) said: “This funding will enable us to make some important environmental upgrades to Gloucestershire’s hospital facilities. GMS helps to manage the estate for one of the largest NHS trusts in the country, and these projects will drive down the carbon footprint and make our operations as environmentally friendly as possible.’’
In December 2019, Gloucestershire Hospitals declared a climate emergency, recognising climate change as one of the biggest threats to public health. It plans to meet the target set for all NHS organisations to be carbon net-zero by 2040. This latest funding was awarded through the Public Sector Decarbonisation Fund managed by Salix Finance to provide government funding to the public sector to reduce carbon emissions and energy bills
The trust said that the projects would go a long way to achieving these goals in Gloucestershire and estimates that over the next seven years it will save the carbon equivalent of 24 football pitches’ worth of trees.
Professor Steve Hams, director of quality and executive lead for sustainability, said: “This is a real boost for our greener NHS agenda. Although Covid has been the focus for the past 10 months, the climate emergency has not stopped and projects like these will help to make our hospital more sustainable for the future.”