Grumman/Butkus Associates has released Part 1 of the results of its 2014 Hospital Energy and Water Benchmarking Survey, focusing on usage and costs for fossil fuels and electricity.
Part 2, covering water/sewer usage and trends, carbon footprint, and general benchmarking information, will be released on March 13.
The G/BA Hospital Benchmarking Survey has provided a no-cost benchmarking resource since its initial release in 1995. Hospitals are invited to participate without charge by submitting responses to a short list of questions regarding their usage of electricity, natural gas, oil, purchased steam, purchased chilled water, and domestic water/sewer. This year’s information, covering usage patterns in calendar year 2013, was provided by a total of 102 hospitals located in Illinois (54), Wisconsin (29), Michigan (7), Minnesota (4), Indiana (3), and several other states.
The G/BA survey provides data on energy costs ($/square foot, $/kWh, $/therm). As far as we know, this data is not available anywhere else.
Since we started our survey 20 years ago, we have observed some long-term trends. Hospitals’ overall fossil fuel use is trending downward, but electricity use isn’t declining much. Water usage is also trending downward, currently averaging just over 50 gallons per square foot per year (compared with nearly 70 gallons/sf/year a decade ago).
“Hospitals are investing in efficiency measures and making progress, but have much further to go,” says G/BA Chairman Daniel L. Doyle. “Some of the low-hanging fruit is gone, but there are still many cost-effective opportunities remaining for reducing energy usage and costs.”
To read the Part 1 report, click here.
For information about participating in the 2015 survey (compiling data from calendar year 2014), as well as download links to all the charts from the 2014 survey, visit our website’s HES page.
