Worcester Business Journal

16 Worcester Business Journal • April 13, 2015 www.wbjournal.com GREEN BUSINESS << One local hospital that's investing in a CHP system is Heywood Hospital in Gardner. Ravanesi said Heywood has an "ambitious vision" for renewable energy adoption, which includes the 2-mega- watt CHP system as well as a 1-megawatt solar field, which the hospital will soon build on its campus. Ravanesi said Heywood is aiming to generate a third of its energy from the solar field, and the remaining two-thirds from the CHP system, which will cut energy costs significantly. According to a spokesman, Heywood currently spends about $2 million a year on energy. "With the pressures on hospitals to reduce costs, there's not a lot of things they can control, but this is one of the areas they can," Ravanesi said. Adding to the appeal of reducing spending and becoming "greener" is the fact that Massachusetts is a leader in offering state incentives to adopt CHP and solar energy systems through the Department of Energy Resources, Ravanesi said. The agency's program, Mass Save, provides financial incentives to residential and commercial users that upgrade to energy-efficient power systems. These incentives have led UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester to zero in on a deal with an investor to build a solar field somewhere in Central Massachusetts that would deliver solar power to its Worcester campuses through the grid. In return, the investor would receive renewable energy incentives from the state, according to Gary Valcourt, associate vice president of facilities for UMass Memorial Medical Center. Valcourt said that if the agreement goes through (it's still being finalized), the project would save the hospital about $300,000 a year in energy costs, which total about $6 million between the Hahnemann, Memorial and University campuses. Valcourt noted that money saved through energy investments has a real impact on the hospital's budget. "If we can save $100, $100 goes right to our bottom line," he said. The medical center, which already uses a "state-of-the-art" CHP system, according to Ravanesi, will no doubt help set the pace for renewable energy investment in the region by virtue of its size. Valcourt said the system recently began working with Health Care Without Harm to evaluate other renew- able energy prospects. UMass Memorial is also working with major consulting firms to deter- mine how to retrofit its facilities, which total around 3 million square feet, for efficiency. Relieving the energy "bottleneck," which refers to the swell of demand for power in the middle of the day — which can cause delivery problems — is anoth- er reason these measures are important, Valcourt said. To that end, hospitals can make small- er, less expensive changes outside energy infrastructure upgrades (which can be difficult to finance, according to Ravanesi) that can save money and reduce the carbon footprint. Physicians as champions? Dr. Amy Collins, an emergency room physician at MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham and Natick, launched a hospital-wide sustainability campaign in 2009 that included energy-saving mea- sures such as the installation of LED lighting, and behavioral changes, such as getting employees to power down their computers at night. Collins, who now works part time for Health Care Without Harm, said the bigger projects must include a good return on investment to catch the inter- est of administrators. And she thinks doctors, who know the impacts of car- bon emissions on human health, can play an important role in pushing for greener hospitals. "I think there is gigantic opportunity to engage physicians, because I think physicians have a powerful voice," Collins said. Q How a combined-heat-and-power, — or CHP — system works. CHP systems are considered alterna- tive-energy generators because they 're more efficient than standard systems. They use both water and fuel to generate energy for a building. Heywood Hospital in Gardner is investing in such a system. Hospitals go green to help meet energy demand D I A G R A M / U . S . E N V I R O N M E N T A L P R O T E C T I O N A G E N C Y >> Continued from Page 12

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