The challenge
The Trust had already made considerable progress toward decarbonisation, achieving a 43% reduction in its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over the past decade from travel, waste, buildings, and energy. It also developed a region-wide sustainability programme, a core initiative to drive sustainability in tandem with delivering high-quality patient care across the region.
However, as with many NHS trusts, some of its indirect (Scope 3) emissions are difficult to tackle, especially while also prioritising its duty of care to patients. These include staff commuting, patient and visitor travel, construction, and the procurement of essentials like medical devices, IT hardware, walking aids, catering, and furniture.
Our solution
Eunomia began with a process of discovery to ensure we thoroughly understood the Trust’s carbon footprint, current plans, policies, priorities, and progress to date against sustainability goals and net zero targets. We conducted a deep dive into the data to establish a clear baseline to inform our recommendations.
The region-wide sustainability programme team led stakeholder engagement to clarify the Trust’s specific needs and strategic priorities. Eunomia then developed a high-level NHSCF+ strategy that aligned with insights from the engagement.
The strategy sets out high-level objectives and priorities to support all the NHS Trusts in the County as they work to meet the 2045 NHSCF+ target and the Greener NHS interim targets. It outlines decarbonisation interventions – rated red, amber, or green according to Trust’s influence over them – along with the indicative costs and emissions impacts, implementation readiness, and potential co-benefits.
Building on the strategy, we developed a detailed delivery plan for the Trust that integrates lessons from the region-wide sustainability programme’s projects at other local trusts as well as good practice nationally and internationally. The delivery plan outlined a detailed approach to meeting targets. It highlighted 13 emission hotspots that form the focus of decarbonisation projects – from reducing unnecessary usage of gloves and medical equipment to tackling food waste and sustainable travel planning. For each project, it details the likely carbon and cost savings as well as co-benefits, such as improved clinical efficiency and accessibility.
The outcome
Our collaboration with region-wide sustainability programme team has given the NHS Trusts in the county a clear framework to continue progress towards net zero, including guidance on monitoring and reporting decarbonisation efforts. Our detailed delivery plan for the large Foundation Trust sets out achievable initiatives to bring down indirect emissions and take further steps towards net zero by 2045.
By working in an integrated way with the Trust, we were able to act as a critical friend, complementing the knowledge embedded in the region-wide sustainability programme’s team with our decarbonisation expertise to develop practical, bespoke pathways to net zero.