The Ottawa Hospital was Ottawa’s largest provincial sector producer of greenhouse gas emissions in 2011, according to data provided by the Ontario Ministry of Energy.
The Ottawa Hospital is comprised of four campuses – the Civic, the General, the Riverside and the Vanier campuses. Each campus has separate emissions data that together add up to almost 72 million kg of greenhouse gas emissions. Brock Marshall, director of engineering at the Ottawa Hospital, says that while emissions are high, it’s a big operation, and he’s always looking for ways to reduce.
In comparison, the City of Ottawa’s total emissions in 2011 were less than 48 million kg. In the same year, Canada’s total emissions in CO2 equivalent – a measurement that adjusts for the different warming effects of greenhouse gas emissions – were 702 megatons, or 702 billion kg.
The Ottawa Hospital’s four campuses are around four and a half million sq. ft. in total area. In addition, some areas of the hospitals – operating rooms, intensive care units, post-anesthesia care units and patient rooms, to name a few – have to be ventilated around the clock, even when they’re empty, says Marshall.
“What really impacts us is the CSA, the Canadian Standards Association, sets the ventilation rights for our occupancies,” says Marshall. “It’s very prescribed.”
The CSA sets standards not only on ventilation, but temperatures and humidity as well, explains Marshall, which affects emission levels.
The Green Act, 2009 dictates that all Ontario municipalities, service boards, public hospitals, school boards and post-secondary education institutions report their energy use and emissions data to the Ontario Ministry of Energy. The 2011 data is the most recent available on their website.
Antoni Lewkowicz, professor of geography and dean of the faculty of arts at the University of Ottawa, warns that without substantial reductions to global greenhouse gas emissions, major problems are on the horizon. Infrastructure is built and maintained to deal with the specific climate of its location, and as the climate slowly shifts due to climate change, some areas are not going to be prepared for their new reality.
“We all adapt to the climate. The governments adapt, the societies adapt, the way we build adapts, the way the roads look, the way the drains look, all of those things are adapt to our current climate,” he says. “With climate change, there will be period where we are badly adapted to what we’re starting to experience.”
Marshall says research and lab areas also tend to contribute disproportionately to greenhouse gas emissions. He adds that he’s not really allowed to make adjustments or changes to ventilation or heating systems in those places.
“Those are all standardized,” says Marshall. “There’s a certain amount of rates that we have to have.”
Where they can, like in office areas, the Ottawa Hospital shuts off ventilation systems at night. “We do a lot of things to our building automations to reduce,” says Marshall.
Lewkowicz uses skating on the Rideau Canal as an example of climate change and adapting. He imagines a winter where during one weekend of Winterlude the Canal is slushy, not frozen. Then, perhaps, he continues, it will be fine for a few years. Eventually, it will be two slushy weekends. His point, he says, is how many failures will it take us to acknowledge that our new reality may not include Winterludes in Ottawa.
“And that is likely to happen,” he says. “And not necessarily very far into the future as the winters warm.”
The Civic and the General – the two largest campuses – were by far the Ottawa Hospital’s two largest greenhouse gas emitting sites, comprising 93 per cent of the hospital’s total emissions. The Civic can be especially bad on emissions, said Marshall, just because it’s a very old building – it was built in 1924.
“Those projects range from a heat recovery system, to changing our lights, to installing a building automation system, to upgrading numerous pieces of equipment,” he says.
The net effect of the program has been a cumulative reduction of 121,372 tons of emissions, he added.
“Had we done nothing, we’d be even worse,” says Marshall.
The best part, says Marshall, is that these changes have helped patients at the hospitals. The program has saved the Ottawa Hospital $28.3 million – money that has gone right back into direct patient care.
“We’re not done, we’re never done,” says Marshall, talking about energy saving practices and technologies. “We’re always looking.”
A recent announcement from the federal government outlined plans to transfer land from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to the National Capital Commission, to make room for a brand new Ottawa Hospital campus. Marshall says the plan is to try to make the new facility “as eco-friendly as possible.”
He envisions the facility doing things like recovering grey water for reuse in toilets, using biomass for heat, and using ground source heat pumps. Anything to make the new campus energy efficient.
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Lewkowicz stresses that reducing emissions is the responsibility of everyone, because we all share the same planet.
“The atmosphere is the sink for everything that everybody around the world does,” he says. “It’s a global commons, just like the oceans.”