Novant Health announced Tuesday it is accelerating efforts to shrink its carbon footprint.
The system, based in Winston-Salem, is looking to slash more than one-third of its greenhouse gas emissions from its more than 800 facilities by 2030 compared to 2021 levels, and achieve “net-zero” status by the middle of this century.
The new targets match those set in June by Novant’s biggest competitor, Charlotte-based Atrium Health, the parent of Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
Novant also is setting a goal of identifying and quantifying at least two-thirds of emissions tied to its supply chain by 2030, and requiring those suppliers to set greenhouse gas targets of their own.
Those indirect, or Scope3, emissions don’t figure into Novant’s reduction goals, however.
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It’s a crucial distinction because Scope 3 sources — such as the production and transport of drugs and medical devices used at hospitals and doctors’ offices — account for 80% of emissions linked to the healthcare sector, according to a 2020 study in the journal Health Affairs.
That means medical systems have limited control over most of the pollution tied to them in one way or another.
“Net-zero for our entire health system is an ambitious goal which would require cooperation from multiple parties including suppliers and vendors, energy producers, transportation, etc.,” Matt Stiene, Novant’s senior vice president for construction and facility services, explained in an email. “A more likely possibility is developing a net-zero building, which would still require a significant amount of renewable energy production. “
Novant’s targets for suppliers will at least give the system some influence over two-thirds of its indirect emissions, however.
While the climate goals are based on 2021 levels, Stiene declined to reveal them.
“As a first step in the process, we are validating these values to ensure we are tracking correctly for all Novant Heath facilities,” he said.
Initiatives aimed at meeting the system’s goals include establishing “robust reporting dashboards” to track progress, retrofitting building to be more energy-efficient and adding solar systems at several facilities, Stiene added.
‘No vaccine for this threat’
Just 7% of health sector greenhouse gases are produced by facilities themselves, and another 11% come from the generation of electricity used to operate them, the Health Affairs study found. More than two-thirds of the facility emissions are from hospitals.
When factoring in Scope 3 sources, however, the healthcare industry overall accounts for 8.5% of all emissions contributing to climate change in the U.S., researchers reported in a December 2021 paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
That makes sustainability efforts of healthcare systems like Novant – which employs more than 35,000 people, including more than 1,800 doctors – all the more important, advocates say.
“Climate change, possibly the gravest threat facing humanity, is already taking a toll on people’s physical and mental health,” the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based organization that promotes patient equity, noted in a recent report. “While healthcare systems shoulder the burden of caring for individuals affected by climate change, they also contribute to the problem.”
Experts suggest the healthcare sector, still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, must adapt to protect its own health.
“There is a larger, even more ominous threat facing the medical community: our changing climate,” authors Stan Meiburg and Suzanne Lazorick wrote in the North Carolina Medical Journal. “There is no vaccine for this threat, and responding to it will require coordinated local and global action to a degree thus far unseen in human history.”
Meiburg, former deputy administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, now directs Wake Forest University’s graduate program in sustainability. Lazorick is a professor of pediatrics and public health at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University.
Medical systems must be prepared for the health impacts of catastrophic events such as floods, wildfires and severe storms, while also doing all they can to avoid contributing to the conditions that make severe weather more likely, Meiburg and Lazorick wrote.
“Health care practitioners have to become advocates for climate mitigation so that things do not get even worse, especially for our most disadvantaged fellow citizens,” they wrote. “COVID-19 has shown us that some parts of our society can change quickly when we feel the urgency to do so, but others struggle and produce needless suffering. Lessons from the weaknesses exposed in our response to the pandemic should inform our preparations for the daunting health threats of our changing climate.”