Combating the impact of the climate crisis in the built environment

Combatting the impact of the climate crisis in the built environment
Home Insights Combating the impact of the climate crisis in the built environment

The climate crisis is having a devastating impact on the world around us and our physical wellbeing.

Without immediate and bold action, it will define the health of current and future generations and will challenge already overwhelmed health systems.

Health system themselves have a huge role to play in supporting ambitions to limit global warming, mitigating risks, be that from poor air quality, extreme weather conditions or a loss of food security.

The NHS’ carbon emissions are 4% of England’s total carbon footprint and make up 40% of the UK’s public sector emissions.

In 2020, its carbon footprint was 6.1 metric tonnes a staggering figure equivalent to the whole of Denmark. It plans to reduce this drastically, aiming to achieve zero carbon for direct emissions by 2040 and the same for the emissions it indirectly influences in the supply chain by 2045. There is, however, a long way to go.

The scale of the challenge is enormous and successful decarbonisation will need to take the full range of NHS services and facilities into consideration. Finding the resources to tackle this is not going to be easy and so we must work together to find viable, cost-effective solutions.

Three key ways the private sector must work with the public sector to address the impacts of the climate crisis.

WE MUST:

Decarbonising our built environment and in particular the NHS estate – must not be overlooked when facing the climate crisis and the associated physical and mental health backlog confronting the NHS. And, within the private sector, we need to take a step back, work closely with our public sector partners to bring solutions to the community, collect as much data as possible and share learnings, to deliver a more sustainable future that still puts planet and patient health front and centre.