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Program Seeks Energy-Efficient Hospitals

By George Pyle

August 06, 2010

 Hospitals are heavy electricity users, with the lights on around the clock and energy-intensive diagnostic machines, computers and heating and cooling systems in regular use.

To help cut back on that usage in New York hospitals, a $10 million program to increase energy efficiency —with benefits to pass through to patients, insurance companies and taxpayers — was formally launched Thursday outside Buffalo General Hospital.

National Grid, the area’s primary electric utility, and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, a state agency charged with developing and promoting energy alternatives and efficiencies, launched what they called Energy Efficiency for Health at an event hosted by the Kaleida Health network’s Buffalo General Hospital.

The program will distribute $10 million in grants over the next two years to help as many as 100 hospitals evaluate their energy needs and to find practices and technologies that will help them reduce their need for power. The target for each facility is to cut their energy consumption by 20 percent.

The money will come primarily from the existing system benefit charge, a state-mandated addition to New Yorkers’ electric bills that is collected by the utilities, passed on to NYSERDA and used for research, development and assistance to low-income utility customers. Together with a related energy efficiency fund charge, the pass-throughs add about

$30 a year to the typical New York residential customer’s electric bill. The fee raises $600 million a year through taxing every electric bill, including businesses.

Susan Crossett, National Grid’s vice president for economic development, said hospitals were a prime candidate for energy efficiency efforts due to their heavy electricity demands.

Kaleida managers had already tapped the energy-efficiency experts at National Grid and NYSERDA in designing the recent expansion of their Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital, as well as the design of the Kaleida/University at Buffalo Global Vascular Institute under construction next to Buffalo General, said Kaleida Chief Financial Officer Joe Kessler. He said he expects Kaleida to make use of the new program as well.

“When I can save money, using other people’s money to do it, I’m happy about it,” Kessler said.

He said that pressure from government and insurance providers for health care operations to cut their costs wherever possible was a driver for the energy efficiency programs.

NYSERDA chief Francis J. Murray said the program will help New York meet its goal of getting 45 percent of its energy needs from renewable sources and efficiency by the year 2015.

Also on hand to congratulate program managers were state Sen. William T. Stachowski, D-Lake View, and Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples- Stokes, D-Buffalo. Stachowski said the program showed how NYSERDA deserved to be maintained as an independent agency. Peoples-Stokes agreed.

“Not everything that comes out of Albany is good,” the assemblywoman said. “This is good.”