Friday the 10th November marked the official opening of the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Energy Project. This £14.8 million project was opened by the Oxford East MP, Anneliese Dodds. A lso in attendance at the official opening event was the OUH Chairman, Dame Fiona Caldicott, CEO Dr. Bruno Holthof and Vital Energi’s Ashley Martin.
The 10th November was also the day that the Trust announced that they have received their first month’s figures on energy usage at the John Radcliffe and Churchill Hospitals, for the first full month’s operation of the new CHP and Energy Link. These newly released figures did not include the PFI estates. These figures show that in October 2016, the OUH’s energy bill for the John Radcliffe and the Churchill Hospitals was £484,175.03. However, it has been revealed that the bill for the same month in 2017 came to the significantly lower £252,832.27. This is great news for the hospitals so far and represents a saving of around £7,462 each day across both of the hospitals.
This Hospital Energy Project consisted removing the 20 and 40-year-old boilers in use at the Churchill and John Radcliffe hospitals and replacing them with a Combined Heat and Power, or CHP, engine as well as new combi boilers and the associated upgrades and replacement of more than 6,000 light fittings.
This new energy infrastructure across the two Oxford hospitals will cut the Trust’s CO2 output by 10,000 tonnes each year. It is thought that their saving is the equivalent of 4,000 homes’ CO2 emissions and should save the Trust £461,746 net each year on their energy bills for around 25 years. The Energy Link work that has been carried out throughout the Headington area of Oxford has caused some disruption to local residents and the companies working on the upgrades have expressed their thanks for the residents’ support while this work was carried out.
