Carbon emission trends and sustainability options in Austrian health care

Weisz, Ulli; Pichler, Peter-Paul; Jaccard, Ingram S.; Haas, Willi; Matej, Sarah; Bachner, Florian; Nowak, Peter; Weisz, Helga

doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.104862

Cited by 57 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 64 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Per-capita results for the NHS in England (plus social care and public health) of 540 kg CO 2 e per capita compared with similar national studies of healthcare sectors place it in proximity to results for Japan (566 kg CO 2 e per capita in 2015) but less than those for Austria (799 kg CO 2 per capita in 2014, CO 2 only), Canada (899 kg CO 2 e per capita in 2015), Australia (1,495 kg CO 2 e per capita in 2015), and the USA (1889 kg CO 2 e per capita in 2013). 5,7,9,10,12 Among previous national studies, only Nansai and colleagues 7 for Japan have provided results by activity (and also by disease type and age cohort), and only Weisz and colleagues 9 for Austria have made use of bottom-up data. Other international studies have evaluated the UK health-care carbon footprint; these use aggregated health expenditure data and environmentally extended MRIO models without bottom-up data and are not directly comparable to the results presented here.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To this end, carbon footprints have been published for health-care systems in Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Japan, and the USA, alongside international estimates. 1,2,[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] These studies have identified general patterns of contributions among health-care activities in each country, which can form a baseline for long-term mitigation planning.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Health care's response to climate change: a carbon footprint assessment of the NHS in England

Tennison¹,

Roschnik²,

Ashby

et al. 2021

The Lancet Planetary Health

429

268

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background Climate change threatens to undermine the past 50 years of gains in public health. In response, the National Health Service (NHS) in England has been working since 2008 to quantify and reduce its carbon footprint. This Article presents the latest update to its greenhouse gas accounting, identifying interventions for mitigation efforts and describing an approach applicable to other health systems across the world. Methods A hybrid model was used to quantify emissions within Scopes 1, 2, and 3 of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, as well as patient and visitor travel emissions, from 1990 to 2019. This approach complements the broad coverage of top-down economic modelling with the high accuracy of bottom-up data wherever available. Available data were backcasted or forecasted to cover all years. To enable the identification of measures to reduce carbon emissions, results were disaggregated by organisation type. Findings In 2019, the health service's emissions totalled 25 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, a reduction of 26% since 1990, and a decrease of 64% in the emissions per inpatient finished admission episode. Of the 2019 footprint, 62% came from the supply chain, 24% from the direct delivery of care, 10% from staff commute and patient and visitor travel, and 4% from private health and care services commissioned by the NHS. Interpretation This work represents the longest and most comprehensive accounting of national health-care emissions globally, and underscores the importance of incorporating bottom-up data to improve the accuracy of top-down modelling and enabling detailed monitoring of progress as health systems act to reduce emissions. Funding Wellcome Trust.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Health care's response to climate change: a carbon footprint assessment of the NHS in England

Tennison¹,

Roschnik²,

Ashby

et al. 2021

The Lancet Planetary Health

429

268

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This general lack of transparency regarding methodological design and outcome reporting poses challenges for both study reproducibility and comparability. Separately, results of LCA studies are also prone to considerable variability arising from a combination of both data collection- and processing-related decisions and assumptions, alongside methodological and background inventory data choices, that are made by researchers while operating within LCA standards of practice ( Weisz et al. 2020 ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although top-down, expenditure-based EE-MRIO analyses provide a useful indication of sector-level environmental impacts, process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) is the most established approach for both quantifying impacts of specific health care activities and identifying effective mitigation strategies ( Weisz et al. 2020 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Operating in a Climate Crisis: A State-of-the-Science Review of Life Cycle Assessment within Surgical and Anesthetic Care

Drew

Christie

Tyedmers

et al. 2021

Environ Health Perspect

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BACKGROUND: Both human health and the health systems we depend on are increasingly threatened by a range of environmental crises, including climate change. Paradoxically, health care provision is a significant driver of environmental pollution, with surgical and anesthetic services among the most resource-intensive components of the health system. OBJECTIVES: This analysis aimed to summarize the state of life cycle assessment (LCA) practice as applied to surgical and anesthetic care via review of extant literature assessing environmental impacts of related services, procedures, equipment, and pharmaceuticals. METHODS: A state-of-the-science review was undertaken following a registered protocol and a standardized, LCA-specific reporting framework. Three bibliographic databases (Scopus ® , PubMed, and Embase ® ) and the gray literature were searched. Inclusion criteria were applied, eligible entries critically appraised, and key methodological data and results extracted. RESULTS: From 1,316 identified records, 44 studies were eligible for inclusion. The annual climate impact of operating surgical suites ranged between 3,200,000 and 5,200,000 kg CO 2 e. The climate impact of individual surgical procedures varied considerably, with estimates ranging from 6 to 1,007 kg CO 2 e. Anesthetic gases; single-use equipment; and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system operation were the main emissions hot spots identified among operating room-and procedure-specific analyses. Single-use equipment used in surgical settings was generally more harmful than equivalent reusable items across a range of environmental parameters. Life cycle inventories have been assembled and associated climate impacts calculated for three anesthetic gases (2-85 kg CO 2 e=MAC-h) and 20 injectable anesthetic drugs (0:01-3:0 kg CO 2 e=gAPI). DISCUSSION: Despite the recent proliferation of surgical and anesthesiology-related LCAs, extant studies address a miniscule fraction of the numerous services, procedures, and products available today. Methodological heterogeneity, external validity, and a lack of background life cycle inventory data related to many essential surgical and anesthetic inputs are key limitations of the current evidence base. This review provides an indication of the spectrum of environmental impacts associated with surgical and anesthetic care at various scales.

show abstract

“…Currently, 55% of the world’s population lives in cities, which—although they occupy less than 3% of the surface of the Earth—account for 75% of the total carbon emissions [ 2 ]. Global warming, which is caused by the impacts of increasing carbon emissions, has become one of the most serious environmental problems facing humanity today [ 3 ]. A recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report shows that more than 90% of the current global warming is due to the warming effect of greenhouse gases emitted by human activities [ 4 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining the Effects of Land Use on Carbon Emissions: Evidence from Pearl River Delta

Zhao

Jian-hong

et al. 2021

IJERPH

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Land-use change accounts for a large proportion of the carbon emissions produced each year, especially in highly developed urban agglomerations. In this study, we combined remote sensing data and socioeconomic data to estimate land-use-related carbon emissions, and applied the logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) method to analyze its influencing factors, in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) of China in 1990–2015. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The total amount of land-use-related carbon emissions increased from 684.84 × 104 t C in 1990 to 11,444.98 × 104 t C in 2015, resulting in a net increase of 10,760.14 × 104 t (16.71 times). (2) Land-use-related carbon emissions presented a “higher in the middle and lower on both sides” spatial distribution. Guangzhou had the highest levels of carbon emissions, and Zhaoqing had the lowest; Shenzhen experienced the greatest net increase, and Jiangmen experienced the least. (3) The land-use-related carbon emissions intensity increased from 4795.76 × 104 Yuan/t C to 12,143.05 × 104 Yuan/t C in 1990–2015, with the greatest increase seen in Huizhou and the lowest in Zhongshan. Differences were also found in the spatial distribution, with higher intensities located in the south, lower intensities in the east and west, and medium intensities in the central region. (4) Land-use change, energy structure, energy efficiency, economic development, and population all contributed to increases in land-use-related carbon emissions. Land-use change, economic development and population made positive contributions, while energy efficiency and energy structure made negative contributions. At last, we put forward several suggestions for promoting low-carbon development, including development of a low-carbon and circular economy, rationally planning land-use structure, promoting reasonable population growth, improving energy efficiency and the energy consumption structure, and advocating low-carbon lifestyles. Our findings are useful in the tasks related to assessing carbon emissions from the perspective of land-use change and analyzing the associated influencing factors, as well as providing a reference for realizing low-carbon and sustainable development in the PRD.

show abstract

Carbon emission trends and sustainability options in Austrian health care

Cited by 57 publications

References 64 publications

Health care's response to climate change: a carbon footprint assessment of the NHS in England

Health care's response to climate change: a carbon footprint assessment of the NHS in England

Operating in a Climate Crisis: A State-of-the-Science Review of Life Cycle Assessment within Surgical and Anesthetic Care

Examining the Effects of Land Use on Carbon Emissions: Evidence from Pearl River Delta

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About