Hospitals are in top quartile of national energy efficiency program
Bon Secours Mercy Health (BSMH) and seven of its hospitals have recently earned national recognition for energy efficiency through the United States Environmental Agency’s Energy Star Certification Nation program that recognizes hospitals performing in the top quartile of all hospitals in the national program.
“The Energy Star program is a measurement of how energy efficient our hospitals are compared to other hospitals that voluntarily participate in the benchmarking,” said Ann Walston, vice president, acute care facilities management, Bon Secours Mercy Health. “Because utility consumption is a key contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, this program is a measure of how our health system is working to reduce the impact of our operations on climate change.”
While there are currently seven hospitals earning recognition in the program, BSMH is actively working on reducing energy consumption across all of its U.S.-based hospitals. This effort is one component of BSMH’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) program, which includes a long-standing commitment to safeguarding the Earth and serving its people.
“This special recognition speaks to our commitment as a health system, in addition to our individual locations,” said Walston. “This is a great way to express gratitude for the many actions and decisions that our care site teams make every day to mindfully reduce our energy consumption and maintain that success over time.”
Certification Nation brings visibility to initiatives that are not often seen by patients or community members, such as optimizing chiller plant operations, resetting thermostats, turning off lights in vacant rooms or submitting work orders to fix dripping faucets. When these things are done on an ongoing basis, by hospital employees and facility management teams, they add up to significant changes in energy consumption that impacts the environment. Noah Dunlap, co-chair of the BSMH Sustainability Council noted that Earth Day is a time when we can join with others in highlighting the importance of environmental efforts, but it isn’t the only day we do so. “Bon Secours Mercy Health will do its part to mitigate environmental impact every day. As our efforts move forward, we will continue to find and implement new and better ways to meet environmental challenges.”
