Meeting green targets in public private partnerships

The complexity of decarbonisation in public private partnerships is often a reason cited for not making progress, but establishing a clear and simple long term road map can help. Sustainable buildings expert Steve Dam explains.

“In 2022, the NHS in England became the first health system in the world to embed net zero into legislation, through the Health and Care Act 2022. This gave NHS premises around the country some tough targets to meet on the journey to net zero, and yet this is also an exciting challenge that can focus NHS organisations on the benefits of decarbonisation to both the planet and their own bottom line.

I was asked by Hull Citycare to draft a green plan for their buildings, aimed at supporting them to meet their goals, developing a holistic understanding of their current carbon emissions, and developing an actionable roadmap to decarbonise their entire portfolio of 13 buildings.

My first step was to baseline and model the net zero pathways for all the health centres, identifying which required significant interventions to achieve the statutory NHS goal of becoming net zero by 2040.

As some retrofit interventions had already been carried out, I found that the Citycare portfolio was ahead of other comparative areas. The investment from the private sector means that Citycare buildings have a source of funding that isn’t subject to NHS budget restrictions. For example, the Citycare buildings recently replaced all 6,800 traditional light fittings in their buildings for energy-efficient LEDs, a project which will not only reduce energy costs by 40%, but will also save £1.4m in energy bills across the buildings’ lifetime.

Once baselines of all the buildings were established, I produced a simple roadmap to net zero for each building, highlighting any ‘easy win’ low-cost options, including behavioural change, plus more extensive options that would require more disruption to the building’s activities.

It’s often said that the aim of building management is to keep buildings in ‘day one’ condition, but I believe that through improving technology and retrofitting we can actually bring buildings to a status that’s better than when they were originally constructed.

The longer we wait to make interventions into decarbonisation, the more difficult it will be to reach net zero by 2040. Once the low-cost, simple modifications are complete, funding will be needed to move onto next steps such as looking at photovoltaic panels, building fabric improvements and battery storage. That’s why PPP schemes are so important – they allow our health estates to be made fit for the future now.”