Hospitals Starting Trend toward Renewables

While the use of renewable energy is relatively uncommon in the healthcare sector, several healthcare systems are breaking away from the traditional fossil-fuel energy model, Modern Healthcare reports.

Boston-based hospital system Partners HealthCare, for example, will purchase about 26 percent of the energy its facilities use from renewable sources. Through a power purchase agreement with TransCanada, Partners has steadily increased the proportion of energy coming from renewable sources every year over the last few years.

George Washington University Hospital (GWUH) in Washington expects to get more than a third of its electricity from solar-energy sources by the end of 2015. The hospital partnered with George Washington University and American University to launch the Capital Partners Solar Project. Duke Energy Renewables will provide the institutions with 123 kWh of solar PV power generated from 243,000 solar panels at three sites in North Carolina. Under the deal, GWUH and its partners will pay a fixed price for the solar energy at a lower total price than they are currently paying for energy.

Main Line Health, Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals and Thomas Jefferson University, Aria Health, Magee Rehabilitation, Christiana Care Health System and the Albert Einstein Healthcare Network have purchased about 200 million kWh a year under a 10-year purchase agreement with the Locust Ridge II wind facility, one of Pennsylvania’s largest wind-power projects. Main Line and its partners also buy renewable energy certificates from the Locust Ridge II project.

Providence Newberg Medical Center in Oregon and Gundersen Health System in LaCross, Wis., get 100 percent of their power from renewable sources. Providence Newberg buys all of its electricity through Portland General Electric’s Clean Wind program, while Gundersen co-owns two wind turbine projects, pipes landfill gas to an engine that powers a large outpatient campus, creates steam energy with a biomass boiler and uses a dairy digester system to turn manure into electricity.

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