Med school campus embarks upon decarbonization planning effort

Facing challenges of resiliency for a critical care facility, the medical school and hospital campus are innovating a path toward zero emissions through decarbonization planning.

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In the spirit of Health Care Without Harm, decarbonization planning has become an effective tool for medical institutions to align their values. Thinking broadly about its role as not just a world-class research facility but as a community institution, GreenerU’s client—a medical school based in New England—acknowledges the negative contributions that the healthcare field has made to the environment and undertaken the challenges of sustainable operations—all with the understanding that climate change affects vulnerable populations disproportionately.

In an effort to cultivate a culture of sustainability, educate the public, and prepare for an uncertain future, this medical school campus first hired GreenerU to facilitate conversations and develop its sustainability and climate action plan. The plan focused on four topic areas: transportation, buildings and energy, grounds and water management, and materials and resource management.

Starting in 2022, this institution again called on GreenerU to assist with plan implementation efforts and serve as its owner’s project manager throughout a stakeholder-engaged decarbonization planning process.

Decarbonization planning with stakeholders

While the School’s sustainability and climate action plan laid out substantial commitments to environmental sustainability, additional efforts were needed to support ambitious statewide emissions reduction targets set out through Massachusetts Executive Order 484: “Leading by Example—Clean Energy and Efficient Buildings.” This drove a decarbonization planning effort that began in 2022 and concluded in 2024.

Decarbonization planning provides strategic direction for how an institution can reduce its carbon intensity by lowering the amount of greenhouse gasses the institution produces and/or is responsible for. Decarbonization planning can address any of these emission types. For this school, the focus of decarbonization planning is on Scopes 1 and 2 emissions. Scope 1 emissions include anything the campus produces directly: burning fossil fuels for heat, for example, or using gas-powered vehicles for its fleet. Scope 2 emissions primarily include purchased electricity.

Operating in island mode

For decades, the school’s power plant has been seen as a source of strength and stability, providing virtually uninterrupted electricity, steam, and chilled water to sustain the health care, educational, and research operations on the Worcester campus.

This medical school currently operates a central utility plant that uses natural gas to generate steam for the heating, cooling, and electrical loads on campus, with oil as a back-up fuel. Resiliency is embedded in the current configuration, with the central utility plant as the primary source and the grid serving as a back-up power source. Resiliency against power outages via power supply redundancy is crucial for continued operations at the institution’s critical care facilities and laboratories. The school needs to continue to operate in “island” mode—i.e., independent of the electric grid, which can be disrupted during weather-related power outages.

When focusing on decarbonization efforts, the school’s options are challenged by a need to maintain these levels of operational continuity during grid electrical outages, high energy demand, and a reliance on steam for maintaining the correct relative humidity levels in hospitals to avoid the spread of viruses, mold, and bacteria. Even with a lower-power steam replacement such as low-temperature hot water, the campus would still need to produce a significant amount of steam to sanitize equipment to meet the facility’s high standards of cleanliness and sterilization.

Thus, replacement of the central utility plant with more common decarbonization methods, such as electrifying operations via air- or ground-source heat pumps and using renewable electricity, would be unable to maintain the necessary functions that the current central utility plant serves—and thus the school and its teaching hospital would fail to meet its primary mission of improving the health of its community.

The decarbonization planning process

The institution’s personnel recognized from the get-go that the road to a decarbonized campus would require both technical solutions and a facilitated stakeholder engagement process to gain campus and community perspectives, support, and buy-in. Hiring Arup for engineering analysis and design, the school again enlisted GreenerU’s help as owner’s project manager to guide the process with the community.

Starting with a kickoff event in November 2022, GreenerU worked with a task force made up of the school’s sustainability, facilities, administration, students, faculty, and staff, as well as representatives from the Commonwealth’s Leading by Example program at the Department of Energy Resources and the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM), who oversee the process of decarbonizing state-owned facilities. One of the first tasks was to establish a set of criteria by which to weigh decarbonization decision-making.

Based on discussions with the task force and a weighted ranking exercise with the project management team, priorities and goals emerged to assist the school in striking a balance in developing its path to decarbonization:

  • Scope 1—Strategies must address reducing Scope 1 emissions, which account for the vast majority of campus emissions. The plan includes technologies that displace current on-site fossil fuel usage.
  • Resilience—Resilience is mission-critical. The plan includes maintaining continuity of critical operations in island mode.
  • Stewardship—We must make financially responsible recommendations in alignment with the mission of the institution. Proposed strategies are financially responsible.
  • Integration—New systems must be able to integrate with the campus over time. The plan allows for feasible and technical pathways for integration of new technology into existing campus systems.
  • Efficiency—Energy efficiency is the “first fuel.” Reducing energy consumption is a key component of emissions mitigation. The plan includes reductions in building energy use to the greatest extent possible.
  • Innovation—The school values responsible, informed innovation in the use of technologies. The plan is based on technologies that are commercially viable, allowing for flexibility to make decisions as technologies mature.
  • E.O. 594—Alignment with the Commonwealth’s Executive Order 594 is a responsibility of the institution. The plan provides a roadmap to support the Commonwealth’s 2050 carbon reduction target.
Getting buy-in from across campus

Decarbonization planning provided a unique opportunity both to gain multiple campus perspectives and priorities and to educate the campus community on options toward a carbon-zero campus. Working closely with the school’s energy and sustainability manager, GreenerU coordinated a series of stakeholder events, including:

  • An open house—the school hosted a campus-wide open house in January 2023 at a central activity hub. The event featured opportunities to weigh in on key sustainability and decarbonization priorities on campus, discuss the decarbonization planning process with Arup and GreenerU, and get free cookies, coffee, and wildflower seed giveaways.
  • Earth Month webinar series—In April 2023, the school hosted a webinar series on potential decarbonization pathways that would use alternative fuel options such as micronuclear, electrification, hydrogen, and biofuels. These webinars provided the latest information on the safety, viability, and availability of emerging alternative fuel sources that may eventually reduce or eliminate the need for fossil fuels. Guest speakers included:

  • Green Labs—Research laboratories can be major energy users, requiring a balance of safe fume hood air exchanges with a need for energy conservation in reconditioning fresh air to meet the existing room temperature. In April and July 2023, GreenerU facilitated conversations with individuals representing Environmental Health & Safety, capital planning, laboratory users, and campus sustainability gathered to identify barriers and potential solutions to greener laboratories on campus. The discussions also featured a talk by Quentin Gilly, former Assistant Director at the Harvard Office for Sustainability and Vice President of the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL) New England Chapter.
Results of the decarbonization planning process

In the end, the school identified a road ahead to eliminating its Scope 1 emissions—without transferring those emissions to Scope 2. Extensive research, exploration, discussions, and lengthy reporting led to a clear strategic pathway for decarbonization with the following steps:

  1. Implement energy conservation measures to reduce demand across campus
  2. Electrify all chillers
  3. Install on-site solar voltaic arrays on campus where possible
  4. Switch from fossil fuels to a cleaner energy source to operate the central utility plant, which could include options such as green hydrogen or micronuclear
  5. Explore offsets

 

Thinking about campus decarbonization planning? It’s a long road, but an important journey. GreenerU can help guide and support you through this process and understand the key stakeholders and decision makers along the way. Contact us today.


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