Health Care Organization Greenhouse Gas Emissions Counting Tool For Strategic Management

The health care sector has critical roles to play in addressing climate change, through serving affected populations, and by tackling its own contributions to emissions. Health care represents 8.5% of carbon emissions in the United States, and nearly 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions (a quarter of which stems from the U.S. alone). However, there is currently no granular accounting around specific health care activities, necessary to identify and re-design carbon-intensive clinical service, while maintaining or improving quality and safety. And there is no current open platform in place for tracking and reporting health care supply chain emissions. The aim of this project is to address these gaps by developing a carbon accounting tool to aid health care organizations in tracking and strategically managing their carbon emissions. Given the size of the health care industry — 18% of U.S. gross domestic product — success in this area has the potential to transform other industries as well.