The built envi­ron­ment con­sists of all the human-made aspects of people’s sur­round­ings, includ­ing hos­pi­tals, facil­i­ties, roads and oth­er con­nect­ing tran­sit sys­tems. Build­ings con­tribute to cli­mate change through their con­struc­tion, main­te­nance and dai­ly oper­a­tion. This includes the mate­ri­als they use; their loca­tion; and elec­tric­i­ty, gas and water usage. It is esti­mat­ed that cap­i­tal expen­di­ture for health care build­ings alone, includ­ing expen­di­ture on the build­ing of new hos­pi­tals and retro­fitting or upgrad­ing of estab­lished hos­pi­tals, rep­re­sents 8% of total Aus­tralia health care emis­sions. How­ev­er, this fig­ure only con­sid­ers emis­sions from phys­i­cal con­struc­tion and upgrades and not build­ing ener­gy use.
Join Jack to learn about health facil­i­ty life­cy­cle emis­sions and envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able design prin­ci­ples from both a new build (i.e. SA’s new Women’s & Children’s Hos­pi­tal) and exist­ing facil­i­ty perspective.
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