OhioHealth Climate Pledge Impact Study
HEAPY worked with several partners to provide an initial study of the impacts of OhioHealth signing the “Health and Human Services Climate Pledge.” The study had two primary goals: to educate the OhioHealth real estate, construction, and facilities group on the “Climate Pledge”, a commitment to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, as well as to identify a path to meet the intent of the pledge.
OhioHealth pledged ongoing action to decarbonize the health care sector and make their health care facilities more resilient to the effects of climate change. Their goal is to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions produced by their facilities by 50 percent by 2030 and achieve zero emissions by 2050. This pledge, in turn also commits OhioHealth to producing a detailed plan to prepare their facilities for both chronic and acute catastrophic climate impacts.
OhioHealth has a network of 12 hospitals, 200+ ambulatory sites, hospice, home-health, medical equipment and other health services spanning a 47-county area. As a part of OhioHealth’s environmental stewardship, their goal is to reduce greenhouse emissions by focusing their efforts on five key areas: purchasing, design and construction, waste, transportation, and energy.
HEAPY and industry partners provided sustainability and resiliency services with initial benchmarking and emissions calculations, departmental education, cost benefit analysis to 2050, as well as on an annualized basis, a detailed roadmap – and options therein, considerations for future technology evolutions, as well as risks (regulatory) and opportunities (financial), to provide as comprehensive a picture as possible for further consideration and socialization amongst OhioHealth stakeholders.
The team was able to illustrate preliminary costs, while also highlighting accrued benefits while providing invaluable context for departmental leadership and ongoing change management within the organization.
