How replacing fossil-fuel boilers with heat pumps and grid renewables can transform energy use in acute care.
The health care sector generates roughly 4–5 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. In Australia, health care is among the highest per-person emitters, producing about 35.8 million t of CO₂-equivalent each year (approximately 7 per cent of total emissions).
With high continuous energy requirements including heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and 24/7 operations – hospitals are some of the largest energy consumers in most Australian states and territories.
Most large health care organisations, be they government or private, are therefore putting robust strategic plans for decarbonisation in place, said Stephen Milliken, Solution Architect for Healthcare at Schneider Electric in the Pacific region.
“What we’re finding is that the key driver for many of these institutions is the push toward sustainability and actioning net zero targets,” he said. “And reporting on their Scope 1 and 2 emissions – which in a typical hospital, are roughly 30 per cent of overall energy consumption.”
Electrification of heating, ventilation, air-conditioning (HVAC), and hot-water systems offers the fastest, most measurable impact in Scope 1 and 2 emissions – with up to a 70 per cent reduction.
“In the short term, it’s really about degasification,” Milliken said. “You’ve got access to cleaner power via renewable energy from the grid, whether that’s from wind, solar, or future energy opportunities such as hydrogen power.”
Beyond that, infrastructure resilience is key. “You’re reducing your dependence on fossil fuels when you’re pushing towards an all-electric facility.”
Planning the switch
Electrification isn’t as simple as unplugging boilers, Milliken cautions.
“You need to have excellent capital planning,” he said. “The big changes for most of these facilities comes down to where the equipment can be installed.”
There’s a difference between building a greenfield hospital, where every pipe and conduit can be laid with sustainability and electrification in mind, versus retrofitting a brownfield site – navigating cramped mechanical rooms, changes to distribution systems and ripping out legacy gear. Add in the need to phase work around 24/7 patient care, there’s a logistical puzzle that demands tight coordination between architects, engineers, facility managers and clinical teams.
“You’ve got to remove existing coal-fired plants and you also may need to find space for new equipment,” Milliken said. “There are many different stakeholders to engage with.”
The existing infrastructure needs to be evaluated from a mechanical perspective to ensure that changes to equipment selection won’t impact other elements of the day-to-day operations of the facility.
“There are also potential impacts on the live operation,” he said. “A 24/7 critical facility needs to be planned in a way that minimises impact on the existing care of patients.”
A blueprint for electrification
In a case study of an 800-bed acute care facility in Australia – serving 500,000 patients annually – Schneider Electric analysed the impacts of electrifying the hospital.
The first surprise was just how much more power it would need – with full electrification doubling the facilities’ power needs.
“We had a baseline load of 16 MVA and the total impact we observed was a doubling of the required incoming load, pushing demand up to 32 MVA,” Milliken said.
That jump meant revisiting the substation design. “The existing electrical infrastructure and supply from the grid side isn’t currently available for use by the facility, so the initial impact is a reevaluation of the infrastructure that can supply the facility,” he said.
“And perhaps redesigning the main incoming supply – or diversifying incoming supply sources – to ensure we have sufficient power to support electric vehicle charging, the transition to heat pumps, and the conversion of gas-powered steam cleaning facilities to electric steam cleaning.”
To smooth out peaks, rooftop solar and batteries were added. “The total impact of adding renewable energy had a positive impact on the MVA of additional supply,” Milliken said. “Without the renewables, we would have been at 2.25 times the initial baseline load.
To arrive at a back-up power solution, diesel, batteries, and hydrogen were compared. “Battery energy storage systems are now becoming very commercially available, and we’re finding there’s a transition toward lithium iron phosphate batteries away from slightly more volatile cell types,” Milliken said.
Yet existing diesel generators still form a reliable backbone. And while hydrogen fuel cells hold long-term promise, they are still high in cost and sourced from fossil fuel generation.
Post-analysis, a hybrid solution was chosen: new batteries alongside legacy diesel sets, with an eye on cleaner options as they mature.
“For brownfield sites, where the infrastructure is already installed, we have to look at this holistically in design,” he said. “Removing existing generators isn’t necessarily a green option – it’s waste. So taking a practical approach is usually the best approach.”
Balancing the hospital’s parking bays meant choosing the right mix of charger numbers and capacities, determined by projected parking demand and the urgent needs of emergency vehicles.
“Of 2,200 parking spots for staff and visitors, this has been estimated against 330 total chargers for visitors, patients and staff,” Milliken said. “And we’ve got ten emergency response vehicle bays as well.”
To ensure rapid charging, Schneider’s mix of AC and DC chargers, combined with software-based load management, will support current and future operations.
“We anticipate that over the next 10 years we’ll see a fairly consistent transition in Australia towards electric vehicles for emergency use,” he said.
Prioritising patient care through smart systems
When designing all-electric facilities, patient care is the fundamental primary objective.
At Schneider Electric, every decision – from choosing transformers and switchgear to specifying the software that monitors equipment health – is guided by the four pillars of sustainability, efficiency, patient care and resilience.
“Using specialised software, we can even understand and anticipate when we’re likely to see early failure of equipment,” Milliken said.
“You can detect anomalies through analytics early. And we can design to minimise impacts from challenges on the grid side, with improved power quality for the site.”
Redundancy is built into the design, ensuring critical systems remain online at maximum efficiency – whether the region faces extreme weather, natural disasters or other emergencies. And once the infrastructure is implemented, the long-term operating costs actually can be lower.
“These large facilities can then invest better in their staffing, which is absolutely top of mind,” he said.
Burning fossil fuels to operate health care facilities is also having a negative impact on the community and environment.
“Holistically, the faster we move away from fossil fuels, the better it will be for people, hopefully keeping them out of the hospital altogether,” Milliken said.
To learn more about optimising efficiency, reliability and safety in your health care facility, download Schneider Electric’s Healthcare 800-Bed Hospitals AS/NZS Electrical & Digital Reference Architecture Guide.
