NHS Foundation Trust
Customer case study
Energy & sustainability management software for Estates & Facilities managers
< 2 Weeks
Initialise all data & onboard the NHS facilities team
> 90%
Reduction in energy & carbon data management time
160,000 m2
Hospital estate seamlessly managed across multiple sites
1
Central, searchable, & secure location for all energy & sustainability data
Project overview
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is the world’s first public healthcare system to embed net zero into legislation, in response to the profound and growing threat to human health posed by climate change. Using an iterative and adaptive approach, the NHS is committed to cutting carbon emissions while building capacity and resilience into the way healthcare is provided.
Its route to net zero emissions is guided by two evidence-based targets:
- For the emissions they control directly (the NHS Carbon Footprint), they aim to reach net zero by 2040, with an ambition to reach an 80% reduction by 2032
- For the emissions they can influence (the NHS Carbon Footprint Plus), they aim to reach net zero by 2045, with an ambition to reach an 80% reduction by 2039
Under the umbrella of the NHS is a complex system of interconnected organisations with different roles, responsibilities, and specialities. An NHS Foundation Trust (‘Trust’) is one such type of organisation. Part of and committed to the NHS, a Trust follows the same national guidelines, targets, standards, and principles, but operates independently of central Government controls.
Aligned with the Greener NHS initiative – a national framework for the NHS to achieve its goal of becoming the world's first net zero carbon health service – the Estates and Facilities team of a typical Trust is required to reduce the environmental impact of the organisation’s service and promote sustainable healthcare across the hospital estate under its management, often across multiple sites.
This is how one Estates and Facilities team used EnergyElephant to achieve significant reductions in energy costs and consumption, and related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, allowing the Trust to redirect savings toward improved patient care and facility upgrades.
Key Sustainability Priorities for the Trust:
Integration of energy-efficient practices to multiple sites across the hospital estate.
Clear reporting to monitor progress and ensure actions are delivered.
Compliance with ERIC (Estates Return Information Collection) – a national framework for all NHS Trusts, which includes benchmarking information for Estates and Facilities.
Managing DECs (Display Energy Certificates) – a mandatory annual assessment and certification process for any public building in the UK with a total useful floor area of more than 250 m2.
Mandatory data collection for the Greener NHS initiative.
Key sustainability initiatives implemented by the Trust:
A Green Plan aligned with the Greener NHS initiative.
A clear leadership structure, including the appointment of a Green Council and Climate Emergency Response Leadership group.
Partnering with a software supplier to drive improvements in operational efficiency and sustainability performance across the Trust’s vast hospital estate.
The challenge
With a wide range of reporting and compliance requirements, the Trust faced difficulties collecting, tracking, and analysing energy and carbon data across all their sites and needed an automated, cloud-based solution that could streamline these processes.
To facilitate regular reporting, they wanted an easy and efficient way to collect, track, and analyse all of the Trust’s energy and carbon data in one central, searchable, and secure location.
The EnergyElephant Solution
The Trust partnered with EnergyElephant to create, store, organise, analyse, report, and act on all of their electricity, gas, and water data.
The system was set up to automatically pull data from over 50 electricity, gas, and water meter points across geographically distributed operations in the Trust’s estate.
The Estates and Facilities team has the option to manually upload documents related to each building, including those used to verify building attributes.
The platform provides users with instant executive-level insights from easy-to-understand dashboard data, including scientifically accurate monitoring and reporting on GHG emissions.
Easy-to-use, audit-ready reporting tools allow the Trust to export data in various formats required for national frameworks.
Results
EnergyElephant provided initial virtual set-up assistance and basic training for the Estates and Facilities team, with ongoing support where required, including recommended quarterly review calls to ensure users get the most value out of the platform. This partnership approach greatly enhances the Trust’s ability to manage the direction, scale, and pace of change across the hospital estate, in alignment with the NHS’s net zero targets.
Key outcomes include:
EnergyElephant provides tools, data exports, and template reports, ready to support reporting standards, audits, and management systems.
Automated processes allow the Trust to make faster, evidence-based decisions, and has helped to greatly reduce the Estates and Facilities team’s energy and carbon data management time versus manual processes.
The system has improved corporate knowledge retention and helps provide continuity when staff changes in the energy/sustainability area occur.
The system provides all the data needed by DEC assessors to calculate each building’s operational rating (from A to G) based on its actual energy consumption and carbon emissions, and the Trust can use these assessments to identify areas for improvement, adopt energy-efficiency measures, and advance their Green Plan.