{"id":81661,"date":"2024-03-06T12:12:41","date_gmt":"2024-03-06T17:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/?p=81661"},"modified":"2024-05-08T10:11:48","modified_gmt":"2024-05-08T14:11:48","slug":"we-never-thought-wed-save-this-much-big-win-for-sustainability-at-the-riverside-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/healthy-tomorrows\/we-never-thought-wed-save-this-much-big-win-for-sustainability-at-the-riverside-campus\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe never thought we\u2019d save THIS much\u201d: Big win for sustainability at the Riverside Campus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ron Drummond has spent nearly his entire career in energy and facility management. But even he\u2019s shocked at the sheer magnitude of the energy savings at the Riverside Campus over the past year and a half.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe never thought we\u2019d save THIS much,\u201d reports Ron, The Ottawa Hospital\u2019s Executive Director of Capital Projects and Facility Management. \u201cIn late 2022, we made some low-cost investments in our equipment to improve efficiency, and I\u2019ve never seen a low-cost initiative deliver results like these.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just how much is Ron talking about?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Riverside Campus, the smallest of The Ottawa Hospital\u2019s three main campuses, has reduced natural gas consumption by more than 55 per cent year over year ever since Ron and his team made some changes in November 2022. That\u2019s an annual carbon emissions savings of about 964 t-CO2e \u2014 or the equivalent of taking 229 cars off the road for a year. These savings have caused the Riverside\u2019s ENERGY STAR score to skyrocket from 69 to 87 \u2014 a score of 50 represents median energy performance, while a score of 75 or higher indicates that a building is a top performer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor me, this initiative is really about patient care,\u201d says Ron. \u201cWe\u2019re now saving about $160,000 a year on natural gas \u2014 and that\u2019s money that the hospital can invest in other areas to make sure our patients are taken care of.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what\u2019s the team\u2019s secret (green) sauce?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEmpowering your front-line workers to bring up issues is the crux of an environmentally sustainable and high-performing organization,\u201d Ron reveals. \u201cThey\u2019re the ones who are closest to the action.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this case, Ron saw that the campus wasn\u2019t as energy efficient as it could be and had questions for his team \u2014 and his front-line crew had some ideas on how to improve steam operations, if provided some funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon Taggart, Scott Wallace, and the rest of the engineering team know the systems the best, and they\u2019re the ones that identified those core pieces of equipment that weren\u2019t running efficiently,\u201d says Ron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Don
Don Taggart (left), Manager of Property Operations, and Ron Drummond (right), The Ottawa Hospital\u2019s Executive Director of Capital Projects and Facility Management, at the Riverside Campus.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe made some investments in repairing and fine-tuning the boiler system,\u201d explains Scott Wallace, Shift Engineer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe also replaced a previously inaccessible heat exchanger and automated its control to improve efficiency,\u201d reports Don Taggart, Manager of Property Operations. \u201cThe heat exchanger and the boiler were the big ones, but we also found a few other ways to improve efficiency \u2014 and we\u2019re always on the lookout for more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The boiler system (left) and the heat exchanger (right).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Modern sustainability in a new state-of-the-art hospital<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Sustainability is at the forefront of all design considerations for The Ottawa Hospital\u2019s new campus and will integrate into the design of the buildings, landscape and social spaces. Check out this article to learn more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With just a few simple fixes and replacements, our facilities team has massively reduced the carbon footprint at the Riverside Campus \u2014 the equivalent of taking 229 cars off the road for a year. So, what\u2019s the team\u2019s secret green sauce? Read this article to find out\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":81666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[121,404],"class_list":["post-81661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-healthy-tomorrows","tag-quality","tag-working-together"],"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}