Energy sub group regional workshop to support the ICB NENC Green Plan template
Decarbonising energy use across NHS estates is a key part of delivering a Net Zero health service. Energy makes up the largest share of each Trust’s controllable carbon emissions. The North East North Cumbria Integrated Care System has an established provider collaborative energy group, where energy leads for each Trust meet to share information about what they’re each working on, benchmark performance and generally support collaboration between healthcare organisations.
HI NENC have, and are continuing to facilitate and support ‘The ICB NENC Green Plan’ through workshops for the sustainability leads, stakeholders and subgroups to establish common priorities, establish action plans and identify owners of the activities to deliver positive regional environmental impact.
Through prioristisation workshops the group were able to find commonalities and discrepancies between Trusts which led to multi-Trust collaboration to find effective solutions.
Contact Details
- Pete Lillie - Sustainability Manager
- HI NENC
- [email protected]
Project Dates
Project Start 02/05/2023
Project End Ongoing
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In early 2023 HI NENC facilitated a workshop for the group, using a range of interactive exercises to aid our shared understanding of the challenges, and to highlight opportunities to maximise collaboration and innovation. By the end of the workshop, we agreed key priorities for the year ahead. These priorities became the focus for our regular meetings throughout the year and the workshop prompted the group to arrange dedicated carbon accounting training for energy leads, after realising there were knowledge gaps in this area and a lack of a common approach between Trusts
Almost half of NHS Plus emissions are produced by 3 areas (medicines and chemicals, building energy and travel), with another third coming from the next 3 highest emitting areas (business services, medical and non-medical equipment).
The ICB NENC Green Plan supports the NHS provider Trusts implementation of sustainability strategies, which are in line with the NHS England drive to Net Zero. Further, it set the ambitious target to be England’s greenest region by 2030 .
The project highlighted knowledge gaps and a lack of a common approach between Trusts.
HI NENC delivered a series of facilitated interactive workshops focussed upon the prioritisation of potential solutions that address the Net Zero goals and aimed to:
- Assist sub-groups and trusts in establishing clear reporting mechanisms between HI NENC, the Provider Collaborative Sustainability NENC Team and sub-group leads, to determine and evaluate the priorities, the readiness of current solutions, and identified use cases, to achieve the Net Zero ambitions.
- Support prioritisation of multi-trust solutions to enable quicker implementation of individual Trust Green Plans.
- Facilitate the creation of ICB sub-group reports and evaluate from a RAG perspective the implementation of any associated deliverables.
- Help stakeholders agree mobilisation plans and review with to assess viability and fit to proceed to delivery
HI NENC created a prioritisation workshop for the Regional Energy Sub Group team that has enabled them to identify and address knowledge gaps.
By the end of the HI NENC workshop, three key priorities for the year ahead were agreed:
- Energy procurement
- Heat decarbonisation planning
- Carbon reporting
These priorities became the focus for regular meetings throughout the year and the workshop prompted the group to arrange dedicated carbon accounting training for energy leads, after realising there were knowledge gaps in this area and a lack of a common approach between Trusts.
The carbon accounting training course led to:
- Better understanding of the technical reporting requirements of the Green House Gas Protocol and ability to approach carbon reporting in a consistent way across the ICS
- Demonstrating a more robust and transparent reporting of carbon impact, improving their ability to benchmark and continually learn
Ensuring progress towards net zero goals was accurately captured.
The workshop encouraged discussions around common ways of working. This resulted in a more collaborative approach between multiple Trusts with a common aim to find ways to reduce environmental impact in a standardised and comparable way.
HI NENC supported and facilitated the energy sub group in understanding their prioritisations and needs and found common ground and a way to work together collaboratively going forward.
The workshop helped the group understand priorities and the direction they’d like to go in. They are clear of what needs done in relation to the ICS target of developing good practice relating to biodiversity and have identified that site surveying and having an action plan will be the best way forward for this. This would not have been possible without the HI NENC workshops.
Further workshops are planned for April 2024.
HI NENC facilitated a series of workshops using a range of interactive exercises to aid the group’s shared understanding of the challenges, and to highlight opportunities to maximise collaboration and innovation. The amongst the list of prioritisations uncovered was the realisation from delegates that they needed to undertake further training to standardise and align carbon reporting across the region.