C09 -- A Roadmap to the Carbon Neutral Hospital

In 2019, European Union committed to become a Carbon Neutral continent in 2050. Any activity developed in any EU country shall then be CO2-emissions neutral. This includes construction and operation of buildings, also hospitals.

Hospitals are one of the most energy consuming building types. This paper presents a strategy to move towards this very challenging objective: design, build and operate carbon neutral hospitals: buildings which their construction, operation and future de-construction will not release greenhouse gases, measured in equivalent CO2 tons.

The three steps towards this objective are: reduce energy demand (load), reduce energy consumption and use renewable energy sources. Starting from an average annual energy spending for a medium size hospital in the Mediterranean region of 320 kWh/m2 (102 kBtu/ft2) we propose to reduce this value by 40% and then provide the remaining 190 kWh/m2-yr (60,7 kBtu/ft2-yr) with renewable energy sources.