Health & Social Care Trusts (HSC) in Northern Ireland have teamed-up with their energy provider and Strategic Sustainability Partner, SSE Airtricity, to celebrate this year’s NHS Sustainability Day, taking place on Thursday 22 March 2018.
Sustainability Day is a national day of action across the health sector. Each year NHS Trusts, Clinical Commissioning Groups, hospitals and HSC organisations take action to highlight the important role sustainable development can play in health service delivery.
For the last 24 months SSE Airtricity, the region’s largest provider of wind power and second largest energy provider, has been supplying ‘dual fuel’ natural gas and 100 per cent renewable electricity to the Belfast, Western, South Eastern and Northern Trusts as well as the Business Services Organisation. SSE Airtricity are also supplying natural gas to the Southern Trust.
Over the four-year lifetime of the partnership, SSE Airtricity is working with the Trusts to support their long-term vision towards ‘Making Life Better’ for health services in Northern Ireland, and in particular for dedicated HSC healthcare professionals and for the 1.5 million patients who use Trust services each year.
Working in partnership with the Trusts, SSE Airtricity has rolled out an innovative Sustainability Engagement Programme that includes a range of initiatives designed to meet the sustainability objectives of each of the Trusts. Initiatives undertaken include the provision of electric vans and electric vehicle charge points, as well as sponsorship of energy awareness weeks amongst many other initiatives.
Steven Ferguson, SSE Airtricity Corporate Sales Manager, said:
“At SSE Airtricity, we’re delighted to celebrate NHS Sustainability Day with the local Health & Social Care Trusts in Northern Ireland. Working together with the Trusts, we’re ensuring that the care and wellbeing provided to more than 1.5 million patients attending health and social care services facilities across the region, whether in hospitals or local health centres, are as sustainable as they can be.
“The tender to supply energy to Northern Ireland’s Health & Social Care Trusts was the first to contain a sustainability requirement, and as a company which places Sustainability as one of our core values, we are particularly proud that our innovative Sustainability Engagement Programme is making a real difference to the Sustainability objectives of each of the Trusts. Also, by providing the Trusts with clean, green electricity supply, SSE Airtricity is supporting the Trusts in dramatically improving their carbon footprints by working with them to help eliminate over 225,000 tonnes of harmful CO2 emissions*.
“NHS Sustainability Day is an ideal opportunity to look back at what we have achieved so far, and to look forward in partnership with the Trusts to build further strategic initiatives that support our shared long-term vision for a more sustainable future”.
Speaking about the partnership, the Health Trusts commented:
“We are delighted to be working with SSE Airtricity to deliver a more sustainable Health and Social Care service throughout Northern Ireland. We will be engaging with staff and visitors on NHS Sustainability Day to highlight the simple actions that each individual can take to improve energy efficiency such as closing doors, turning off lights and shutting down computers. By reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions, Trusts will in turn save money which can be used to improve services delivered.”
* 225,705 tonnes of carbon dioxide offset based on the projected electricity power load of 615,000MWh over the lifetime of the contract and calculated using latest published All-Island Average CO2 Emissions of 0.367t/MWh (Utility Regulator, published October 2017).
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