It may not surprise you to learn that the healthcare sector is one of the largest carbon emitters in the country. It accounts for 10% of the nation’s carbon emissions and 9% of the nation’s non-greenhouse air pollutants that harm health. And that’s ironic for community assets focused on health. More frequent and intense climate-related disasters threaten the ability of hospitals, in particular, to take care of their patients.
We don’t have to look to the future to imagine what those threats would look like. Several hospitals across the country and U.S. territories have already lived through dire situations during wildfires and hurricanes in places such as California, Louisiana, and Puerto Rico.
Some hospitals had to evacuate. Other healthcare workers had to pump ventilators by hand to keep their patients alive. During Hurricane Maria, blocked roads prevented doctors and people who needed care from getting to hospitals. If it was difficult for doctors to get to hospitals, you can imagine that transporting diesel in the middle of a crisis would also be tough, expensive and unsafe. These disasters underscore the risks of relying on fossil-fuel backup generators and the need to increase the energy resilience of hospitals.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Health care systems can bear the brunt better by enhancing their resilience with solar power and large capacity battery storage.
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