Hospital drills into car park for green energy scheme
Engineers have already drilled 54 boreholes at the Queen's Medical Centre
- Published
A Nottingham hospital has been given £100m of government money to go green by tapping into geothermal energy under a car park.
Engineers are drilling 64 boreholes, each 250m deep, to reach water warm enough to provide renewable energy for the Queen's Medical Centre all year round.
Four electric heat pumps at a new centre will take energy from the air and from the borehole water to operate the hospital's heating and cooling systems.
German energy giant E.ON says the partnership project should reduce the QMC's carbon footprint by 10,000 tonnes each year.
E.ON operations director Richard Spencer says more cash is needed to hit targets
But hospital bosses will continue to rely on fossil fuels unless they succeed with a bid for more money.
Currently the hospital relies on a gas-powered combined heat and power system to warm its buildings in winter and cool them in summer.
"We're trying to reduce the need for fossil fuel on site and increase [the system's] thermal capacity," says E.ON's operations director, Richard Spencer.
Eventually the hospital hopes to shrink its carbon footprint by up to 40% but before they can switch off the gas altogether, the project will need another two heat pumps.
That will require more funding from the next phase of the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme., external
Mike Soroka said it was a huge challenge to retrofit green measures in a working hospital
The heat pumps will run off the National Grid with the expectation that eventually, despite current problems, the UK's electricity supply will become carbon neutral.
The project is also replacing 12,000 windows in wards and offices with energy efficient thermal glazing.
It is the first time most have been replaced since the hospital accepted its first patient in 1978.
Staff say the new windows are a big improvement.
"Before they were very draughty, you could hear everything outside. Pigeons might come in," said ward sister Korrina Woollams.
"Now they're fabulous. Lovely and draughtproof. The ladies on the ward love them."
Mike Soroka, head of estates for the QMC, says the biggest headache has been logistics.
"Everything we do has to be done around our patients, staff and visitors," he said.
"The infrastructure is old and it takes a lot of hard work behind the scenes to pull a scheme of this size together and deliver it on time."
The NHS has pledged to become the world's first net zero health service, external by 2045.
The QMC's new energy centre and heat pumps are expected to be up and running by March 2025.
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