CO2 emissions from healthcare in the world's largest economies account for about 5% of their national carbon footprints.

Increasingly, leading health organizations are looking to decarbonize facilities, improving health outcomes and reducing utility costs. The presentation integrates architecture and building engineering aspects of the process to reduce carbon in facilities, including both operational and embodied carbon. Key principles begin with designing for the patient experience and thermal comfort. This approach focusses on managing peak solar loads, eliminating the need for air changes beyond minimum code required ACH. This model saves first costs, and creates flexibility for alternate comfort delivery systems, like chilled beams. Control systems that integrate process loads enable a new way to manage annual thermal resources. This is consistent with next generation central plants based on pumping energy like heat recovery chillers or ground source heat pumps. These plants provide a thermal regime consistent with chilled beams, enabling the lowest energy use outcomes. Design tools that architect and engineers share are demonstrated as part of a design methodology to achieve this paradigm.

Presented by various experts on behalf of Medical Construction & Design.