Baystate Health Receives Inaugural 2022 Mass Save Climate Leader Award

Baystate Medical Center/Baystate Health has been selected by the Sponsors of Mass Save as a 2022 Mass Save Climate Leader. As one of 19 inaugural recipients, Baystate Health is recognized for “ongoing efforts to curb energy use and lead the Commonwealth to a net zero future.”

Commitment to Climate

“Your commitment to our climate is clear,” Richard Kazarian, Director of Energy Efficiency for Eversource, wrote in a letter to BMC. “Through your facility’s pursuit of energy efficiency updates over the years, you’ve achieved substantial year-on-year reduction to your energy consumption.”

The news was announced by the Sponsors of Mass Save, a collaborative of the state’s natural gas and electric utilities and energy efficiency service providers, including Eversource, Berkshire Gas, Cape Light Compact, Liberty Utilities, National Grid, and Unitil. 

An Example of Energy Conservation in Healthcare

“Baystate Health recognizes our impact on the environment and our need to support the community by ensuring hospital operations are not impacted by increasingly adverse weather events,” says David Brown, Vice President Facilities, Planning and Engineering at Baystate Health. “We are committed to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2050 and continue to harden our infrastructure to better serve our community into the future.”

“Baystate Health has done great work to drastically reduce their overall energy consumption since 2017, an accomplishment they should be very proud of,” said Paul Giguere, Energy Efficiency Engineer on behalf of Berkshire Gas. “We hope that by honoring them with this award, it will inspire other hospitals and life sciences to follow suit in making energy efficient changes within their own organizations, for the betterment of our planet.”

Baystate Health is committed to minimizing our impact on the environment and continuing to reduce our energy usage through conservation, optimization of building systems, and higher efficiency lighting and equipment. Over the last decade, Baystate Health has participated in numerous energy conservation programs resulting in an average 5 percent annual reduction in electricity usage. 

Baystate Health’s Energy Conservation Efforts

In 2018, Baystate Medical Center began generating electricity at its cogeneration plant. As part of that process, the waste heat, which is a byproduct of electricity generation, is captured before it enters the atmosphere and used to produce thermal energy (heat in the winter and cooling in the summer). This reduces the amount of fossil fuel combusted and decreases the resulting greenhouse gases by approximately 10,000 metric tons, or roughly the equivalent of removing 2400 vehicles from the road per year.

In 2019, Baystate Health began installing Electric Vehicle (EV) chargers for patients and employees, and on May 16, 2022, Baystate Health signed the Healthcare Climate Pledge to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2050.

Baystate is committed to reducing its Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) to net zero by 2050. This will require the elimination of tail pipe emissions by electrification of our vehicle fleet, utilization of high efficiency heat pumps to replace heating sources currently utilizing fossil fuel and an investment in solar and energy storage systems.

Learn More About Environmental Sustainability in Healthcare

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, climate change can influence human health and disease in numerous ways. Hospitals can do much to decrease their own carbon footprint.