The Decarbonizing Healthcare Guidebook: A Living Resource for Emerging Energy Efficiency Equipment and System
Mazzetti, Inc.
Recipient
Irvine, CA
Recipient Location
37th
Senate District
73rd
Assembly District
$1,000,000
Amount Spent
Completed
Project Status
Project Result
This project is completed, and the final report was published in April 2025. The project successfully develop and deployed the Decarb Healthcare Guidebook and corresponding interactive website. The guidebook and website serves as a critical resource for healthcare organizations to leverage as they navigate through their journey towards decarbonization and meeting statewide and health sector goals and is available at https://decarbhealthcare.com/
The Guidebook for Decarbonizing Healthcare provides guidance for owners and designers of healthcare facilities to apply existing and emerging technologies to reduce energy consumption and cost, eliminate the use of natural gas, and ultimately build a plan for decarbonizing the healthcare industry.
The Issue
Hospitals are the second largest user of energy per unit of floor area of all building types. Healthcare-related GHG emissions have increased 30% between 2006 and 2016, while other sectors have made progress to reduce emissions. Hospitals, engineers, and other stakeholders currently do not have a comprehensive tool to easily identify and select emerging technologies and engineering designs for hospital retrofits. Instead, each project must search through an array of separate reference materials that have generalized, outdated information that typically is not specific to California hospitals and regulations, slowing the adoption of energy efficient technologies in California hospitals.
Project Innovation
This project developed the Decarb Healthcare guidebook, which provides a comprehensive and interactive online guidebook on existing and emerging energy efficiency technologies and customized design improvements to help hospitals reduce fossil gas consumption, increase energy efficiency, and provides a plan to decarbonize the healthcare industry. The interactive platform facilitates collaboration by allowing users to post new knowledge, ask questions, and report progress; enabling the guidebook to be updated continuously with leading technologies, lessons learned from real world applications; and ensuring the guidebook maintains its relevance as a living resource.
Project Goals
Project Benefits
This comprehensive guidebook highlights existing and emerging energy efficiency technologies and design improvements to reduce natural gas consumption, increase efficiency, and provides a plan for decarbonizing the healthcare industry.
Affordability
The guidebook identifies emerging technologies and customized design improvements to reduce energy use and save costs. Hospital owners, building operators, architects, and engineers can use the guidebook as a convenient and trusted source of best practices and emerging technologies to design and incorporate energy efficient solutions.
Safety
By reducing the need for natural gas, California hospitals will be better equipped to withstand shortages from natural and man-made disasters and provide uninterrupted care for patients.
Key Project Members
Austin Barolin
Subrecipients
Charge Bliss, Inc.
Swenson He
Match Partners
Mazzetti, Inc.
Kaiser Foundation Hospitals
