Low energy –bridging the Great Divide

Equally, he believes, designing hospitals that meet lower carbon consumption goals requires greater dialogue between clinicians and engineers so that the resulting clearer perspective on clinical processes can be leveraged to inform the engineering design, and achieve ‘a close coupling’ between the engineering design strategy and the working practice needs of users.

It is a salient fact that the overall energy performance of UK hospitals today is virtually no different to that in the 1990s. A study at that time¹ identified that typical energy consumption (thermal and electrical consumption) was about 400500 kWh / m2. A later study, in 2011,² identified that typical energy consumption in UK hospitals was within the same range. Why is this? After all, since the 1990s the regulatory environment, particularly that arising from the European Building Performance Directive, has required ever more stringent asset performance – brought about through greater efficiency in engineering systems and building fabric performance.

A second observation is the apparent performance gap between what the engineering design team forecast the Inuse energy performance to be, and that which is measured In-use – a continuing cause of much frustration to NHS estates directors. Rhetorically speaking, this concern has been characterised as: ‘I thought we were investing in what was to be a high-performing facility, with low energy – low carbon credentials, but the opposite is true, and in fact what we have is a facility that appears to haemorrhage energy.’ No doubt many readers will empathise.