ThedaCare Sustainability Assessment

Transcription

1 ThedaCare Sustainability Assessment Household Carbon Footprint Results Prepared by Nikki Kuhn Nick Lange Rabi Vandergon Noah Pollock 10/1/2014

2 1. Background In late February, 2014, Healthcare Without Harm (HCWH) partnered with ThedaCare to conduct a workshop with 80 ThedaCare nurses on the connection between sustainability and healthier communities. At this gathering, titled Climate Change, Health, and You: How We Can Be Part of the Solution, nurses viewed presentations and engaged in discussions on a range of topics such as Climate Change and Human Health, ThedaCare s Sustainability Journey, Removing Operating Room Waste from the Landfill, and Pediatrics Community Garden. At the end of the event, participants completed a survey to rate the workshop and offer feedback. The responses showed that participants clearly understand the connection between environmental degradation and poor health outcomes and the critical role of the hospital and health care providers as community leaders in improving sustainability. Furthermore, respondents indicated a desire to get involved. As one workshop participant responded when asked what they are most concerned about, How can we protect the future of our children and grandchildren? In March, HCWH organized a phone call with ThedaCare and Vermont Energy Investment Corporation (VEIC) with whom HCWH has been working on employee engagement strategies focused on sustainability. The goal of the conversation was to find the best way to respond to the enthusiasm exhibited by ThedaCare s nurses by identifying pathways that ThedaCare and its staff could take towards greater organizational sustainability. The result was an agreement to work together to develop and distribute an employee sustainability assessment that would gather and analyze actual employee household data in order to: Better understand the opportunities specific to ThedaCare and its employees. Provide a baseline upon which to measure the success of future actions. Identify individuals interested in taking steps to reduce their climate footprint. This report describes the results of that assessment and recommended next steps for ThedaCare. 2. Project Description VEIC led the development of ThedaCare s employee sustainability assessment based on its years of providing a similar annual survey to its staff. VEIC worked collaboratively with HCWH and ThedaCare to develop an assessment that would meet ThedaCare s needs and achieve the goals of the project. The assessment was designed to provide a comprehensive overview of employee energy consumption including energy sectors such as home energy use, transportation and travel, and food and waste disposal. The assessment also collected information to gauge employee awareness and attitudes about climate change and how to reduce their impact on the environment. The survey was developed as an online submission and was rolled out to ThedaCare employees in coordination with Earth Day activities in April. Over the course of the following month, over 500 employees participated in the survey, and more than half provided household-specific data which allowed VEIC to produce personalized household sustainability reports. VEIC hosted a

3 webinar to train ThedaCare staff on how to help employees understand and use the reports to help prioritize and plan opportunities for savings. 3. SUMMARY OF RESULTS Notable findings from the survey are as follows: ThedaCare s role in environmental stewardship is important to employees. 90% of survey respondents said that working at an environmentally responsible employer is important to them. ThedaCare employees want to help their communities be more sustainable. 76% of survey respondents are interested in taking actions to improve community sustainability. ThedaCare employees don t know enough about ThedaCare s sustainability efforts. Over half of the respondents said they were not familiar with ThedaCare s sustainability efforts. Addressing sustainability may be best served through economic and social justice framing. ThedaCare employees overall care more about the economy and poverty than climate change, so sustainability goals and initiatives should address the benefits of such actions on economic and poverty issues (e.g., local job creation, economic growth, and lower utility costs). ThedaCare employee households have slightly higher emissions than the average Wisconsin household. Per household greenhouse gas emissions averaged 27.3 tons of CO 2 equivalent (tco 2 e) 1. This is 12% higher than the average Wisconsin household (24.5 tco 2 e). The higher emissions average is driven by higher than average emissions from electricity usage, personal vehicle travel, and food consumption. These represent significant near term opportunities for ThedaCare employees to create goals and initiatives to reduce the impact of these activities. 1 Ton of CO 2 equivalent (tco 2 e) Carbon dioxide is the baseline compound for measuring greenhouse gas potential or the ability trap warm air within Earth s atmosphere, which leads to global warming and climate change. Other compounds may have a higher or lower greenhouse gas potential, and these are converted to tco 2 e to convey accurate weight of certain emission sources.

4 4. DETAILED RESULTS In this section we discuss the results of the assessment for each energy sector. Figure 1 below shows the assessment results for ThedaCare employees compared to average household consumption data for the state of Wisconsin. Figure 2 illustrates the relative intensity of energy consumption by sector. Food, electricity, and personal vehicle are the largest drivers of energy consumption for ThedaCare households, and for Wisconsin households in general.

5 Electricity Consumption Emissions resulting from home electricity usage averaged 7 tco 2 e per household. The typical household purchased 10,548 kwh of electricity a year, about 25% more than the state average. A small handful of employees are embracing renewable energy: 3.5% own their own solar photovoltaic array, and 2.3% purchase green power from their utility. Eastern Wisconsin is part of the RFC West region, and power production in this region relies significantly on coal powered generation. As such, greenhouse gas emissions are 22% higher per kwh of electricity consumed compared to the nation s average. Therefore, efforts to reduce the electric consumption of ThedaCare s households significantly impact the region s greenhouse gas emissions from home energy use.

6 Heating Fuels The usage of home heating fuels was responsible for an average of 4.1 tco 2 e per household. 2 This is similar to the state average (4.3 tco 2 e). Natural gas was the primary heating source for survey respondents, and is used by 66% of households. 30% of households also use electricity for heating. This includes baseboard and radiant space heaters, as well as air-source heat pumps. Other sources of heat were relatively minor (Figure 4). Personal Vehicles Emissions from the use of personal vehicles averaged 8.3 tco 2 e/year. Nearly all survey respondents own motor vehicles; 85% owned two or more. The typical employee s primary vehicles averaged 25 miles per gallon (mpg), which is above the nation s fleet average of 23.2 mpg. However, this average has room for improvement. For example: Most employees (91%) indicated they commute to work by driving alone. This is well above the Wisconsin average (79.5%) 3. A minority of trips were made by walking (3%) or carpooling (3%). Cycling (1%) and telecommuting (2%) were even less frequent. Among those surveyed, no trips were made by bus. 2 Caution is needed when interpreting these results, as only about 43% of participants provided heating fuel use data or estimates of their annual heating bills. 3 Caution is needed in interpreting this comparison, as this figure is based on the 2000 census.

7 Figure 5 below shows the ThedaCare employee results regarding commuting. Long Distance Travel Emissions from long distance travel averaged 1.4 tco 2 e per household. ThedaCare employees were relatively light long-distance travelers, averaging a total of 6.2 long distance bus, train, or air person-trips in the last year. A single flight can add one ton of carbon to the atmosphere. Therefore, this sector can have a disproportionately high impact on households that travel frequently. Food and Waste Food and waste related emissions averaged 6.5 tco 2 e per household. As expected, food was a significant emission source in the survey. Per household emissions in these sectors are 15% higher than the estimate for a typical Wisconsin household. This may be driven largely by household sizes - the typical ThedaCare household has 2.9 members, compared to 2.4 across Wisconsin. Meat consumption is a key driver of food related emissions. 61% indicated they include meat in their diets most days, or at most meals. It is important to note that emissions from food and waste should be considered indirect due to their diffuse, life-cycle nature. In other words, the individual purchasing a food product does not have direct responsibility over the emissions generated by the development and transportation of the food item. However, individuals can make more informed, sustainable food choices which will impact their household s overall energy consumption.

8 While waste related emissions are a relatively minor portion of a typical household footprint (an average of 0.4 tco 2 e per household in this assessment), they are easy to manage by encouraging recycling and composting. While employees have embraced recycling (91% indicate they recycle whenever possible), composting is less frequently practiced, with only 18% composting whenever possible (Figure 6). 5. DISCUSSION OF RECOMMENDATIONS & NEXT STEPS Based on the results of the assessment and our understanding of ThedaCare s interests in building sustainable communities, we propose the following next steps: Promote ThedaCare s commitment to sustainability with top-level communications that celebrate initiatives and emphasize the value and importance of sustainability goals to the success and mission of the organization. The survey results indicate that even the self-selecting respondents were not sufficiently aware of the sustainability activities of the organizations. Increase awareness and build broader buy-in through executive level validation and recognition of sustainability as a priority. Develop sustainability teams comprised of interested individuals who will identify and implement actions and initiatives that will help ThedaCare achieve its goals. For these teams to succeed, it is necessary for them to have the appropriate resources and executive level support. 4 The first step toward showing this level of support is to provide 4 Promoting environmental behaviour in the workplace: A survey of UK organisations

9 paid time to work on a sustainability team. In addition, it may be useful to include an organization s human resources department to help coordinate and communicate the sustainability team s efforts. 4 In a broad sense, each team should have a defined set of goals and measurement criteria, and be charged with developing a plan to achieve their goals. The team members should have clearly developed roles established and communicated, and the teams should have autonomy to define their pathways to success. Research also shows that employee-led sustainability initiatives may be more successful when provided with training opportunities. 5 This can help to establish the intent and focus of the sustainability team. Primary training opportunities may consist of basic conceptual training that covers core environmental concepts. Secondary training opportunities may be more focused on specific activities that the team wants to engage in such as a home weatherization program or a bike-to-work campaign - showing a team how to use these opportunities to drive towards their goals. 5 Lastly, each team will need to effectively communicate its efforts across a variety of channels throughout the organization. 4 We recommend the sustainability teams be focused in the following manner: o Employee Personal Savings This team would be focused on providing support for employees in the development of personal goal statements to improve sustainability. The hope is that the team could support the activities of helping each person who took the survey to set one personal goal over the coming year to reduce his or her environmental impact, and then track the success of employees in meeting their goals. The results of the survey indicate that the highest impact areas initially would be in the areas of electricity, transportation, and food; however, the team may also support individuals in identifying solutions in other areas. o Community Internal This team would focus on raising employee awareness of corporate sustainability initiatives. This team may also identify resources (internal or external) which could be utilized to help employees achieve sustainability goals based upon their needs. A central goal of this team could be to increase employee participation in the sustainability assessment next year. o Community External 5 Green teams and the management of environmental change in a UK county council

10 This team would focus on how ThedaCare can improve sustainability measures outside of its facilities. The results of the survey demonstrate that helping local communities is important to ThedaCare employees. This team could identify and develop projects and initiatives that improve local community sustainability efforts and organize the implementation of such projects. This team could also help identify the internal and/or external resources necessary to carry out such projects (e.g., community benefit resources, utility funds, affinity organizations/programs). Use the Sustainability Assessment on an annual basis to benchmark progress towards individual, team and organizational goals, and to identify ways that ThedaCare can better support individual and corporate sustainability goals. This report provides a baseline assessment for future comparison measurements. Measuring progress on a regular basis will show ThedaCare employees that this is a high priority for the hospital, and it will provide a mechanism to gauge the effectiveness of the sustainability teams. Celebrate Success! Using the assessment as a benchmarking tool can help to call out significant progress made at the individual and corporate level. This tool may be used to highlight the efforts of ThedaCare employees and the effects on their communities. This will inspire further actions at the individual and community levels. In setting up your efforts for success, also be prepared for challenges and learning along the way, recognizing that building sustainable communities takes long-term commitment, persistent effort, and setting goals that are reasonable and attainable. 6. CONCLUSION ThedaCare is a leading example for hospitals nationwide by taking community and global citizenship to the next level. This project has shown that ThedaCare employees are concerned about their organization s environmental impact and are willing to participate personally and at a community level with efforts toward positive change. This employee sustainability assessment is an initial step toward change and engagement. Engaged employees are more likely to be retained by an organization, preventing institutional brain drain. 6 Following the guidance above to develop sustainability teams is a key next step to effective and on-going engagement of ThedaCare s employees, and regular re-assessments will help to effectively measure progress and celebrate success in areas of positive change. Employee engagement teams can dovetail their initiatives with organizational efforts to improve efficiency and reduce waste, such as ThedaCare s server room optimization efforts, which have yielded significant savings. 7 The combination of engaged employees, outreach within ThedaCare s hospital communities, and the reduction of energy usage in hospitals is powerful and will lead to significant impacts on the health and wellness of people, communities and the 6 Business-Unit-Level Relationship Between Employee Satisfaction, Employee Engagement, and Business Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis 7 ThedaCare Health System Leaner Energy Server Room Optimization

11 planet. This example provides a model for change at hospitals nationwide which are looking to take measurable steps towards greater sustainability in their communities.