Northampton General Hospital awarded £20.6 million Government grant to replace fossil fuel heating

Northampton General Hospital (NGH) has been awarded a multi-million pound Government grant to replace fossil fuel heating with more renewable sources.

The Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy announced the £20.6 million grant as part of its public sector decarbonisation schemes, which aim to reduce emissions from public sector buildings by 75 percent by 2037.

University Hospitals of Northamptonshire NHS Group – which runs both Kettering and Northampton General Hospitals – is aiming to be carbon net zero by 2040 in line with national NHS targets.

Group director of operational estates and facilities Stuart Finn said: “The investment for Northampton General Hospital is a major step forward in our plans to completely remove fossil fuels for power on our hospital sites. Essentially at NGH we are introducing renewable electricity and reducing our reliance on fossil fuel, which for us is gas.

“In addition we are installing further energy efficiency measures such roof-mounted solar panels, LED lighting, insulation and more efficient motors and fans used in hospital heating and ventilation.

“We have already worked-up designs for how we use the Government grant and start the work on the improvements this Summer to complete them before March 2024.”

The hospital also recently received £15.9 million of capital funding from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to upgrade and improve NHS buildings, which has been used to build a new state-of-the-art critical care unit.

Other environmentally friendly initiatives at NGH include:

NGH has replaced a petrol pick-up van with an electric one In 2019-2020 Both Kettering and Northampton hospitals signed up to a national NHS Plastics Pledge to eliminate avoidable single use plastics – such as water cups and cutlery NGH has created a ‘Weeds for Bees’ scheme whereby some areas of its grounds have been allowed to grow wild Both hospitals have plans for an e-bikes-to-work scheme for staff to start this summer Twelve electric vehicle charging points have been installed in NGH’s car park with more to come NGH has successfully reduced the use of the anaesthetic gas desflurane to 0.4 percent of all of its anaesthetic gases – better than the NHS target