Sustainable energy management is more important than ever before. For this very reason, the Free State of Bavaria has set itself the goal of becoming the first climate-neutral federal state by 2040. The State Ministries for the Environment and Consumer Protection and Health and Care are therefore continuing the Green Hospital Initiative launched in 2011. Read all about the initiative and why digitalization plays an enormously important role in the following article.
Hospitals are the focus of the appropriately titled Green HospitalPLUS initiative, as they already provide their inpatient care on a daily basis, taking into account climate and environmental protection and protecting the interests of patients, employees and third parties. The initiative aims to promote these services to an even greater extent so that sustainability can become and remain a core element in Bavarian hospitals in the long term.
What is the Green HospitalPLUS initiative?
At its core, the Green HospitalPLUS initiative is a sustainability concept for Bavarian hospitals and is based on three fundamental pillars: Energy, environment and people. The energy sector includes energy-efficient construction and the use of renewable energies. Saving and the overall management of a hospital’s energy also play a role. The environment pillar deals with measures relating to the conservation of resources and internal environmental management. The people component relates to improving the situation of employees and patients as well as external stakeholders such as suppliers.
Who can take part in the Green HospitalPLUS initiative?
All hospitals that want to review and adapt their internal and external processes in terms of sustainability can take part in the initiative. However, hospitals that have already fulfilled these points and meet the following requirements can also take part:
- 1. a legally compliant condition of the building and its installations is guaranteed
- 2. hospital operations are carried out in accordance with legal guidelines, e.g. social, hospital, data protection and care law, trade regulations, environmental law, etc.)
- 3. there is no threat of insolvency
- 4. there are no plans to close the hospital in the next five years
The Green Hospital Lichtenfels flagship project – a masterpiece in terms of building construction and digitalization
The Green Hospital Lichtenfels project is a role model for hospitals on their way to becoming environmentally conscious hospitals. When a new building was due to be constructed, the hospital was given a comprehensive sustainable orientation with the help of a planning, construction and operational concept. It was the first Bavarian hospital to be built to the passive house standard and is characterized by an optimized, ecological energy concept. To make the positive effects of this orientation more tangible, here are some key data:
- 60% electricity savings in lighting through optimized lighting control and the use of LEDs. This corresponds to a CO2 saving of 163 t/a.
- 56% heating energy savings through building optimization, reducing heating energy consumption to 10.1 MWh/(bed*a).
- 32% less primary energy requirement according to EnEV 2009, as the building envelope meets the passive house standard. The building’s base load operation is 100% renewable.
Numerous digital tools work in the background and manage the hospital’s entire energy management – from the LED lights to the heating system and electricity generation via photovoltaic systems.
Further information on the lighthouse project can be found here.
How sustainable is your own hospital? The Green Hospital Quick Check
Would you like to know how sustainable your hospital is and what you could improve or what savings potential there is? With the Green Hospital Quick Check, you can answer specific questions in the form of a questionnaire so that you can obtain initial evaluations in comparison with other hospitals in the shortest possible time.
Click here to go directly to the Green Hospital Quick Check.
Conclusion
Initiatives such as Green HospitalPLUS and lighthouse projects such as Lichtenfels set important milestones in the realignment of the construction and industrial sectors and, above all, show how effectively sustainable concepts can be implemented with the help of digitalization. Digital energy management has become an integral part of environmentally friendly concepts. Holistic software solutions such as KENEXOS® have set themselves the core objective of greatly simplifying energy monitoring and the associated digitalization and automation of internal and external processes so that sustainable concepts can be implemented even more easily and quickly. KENEXOS® has a unique, modular structure and offers a wide range of essential functions for networking machines, systems and employees, even in the basic version.
About KENEXOS®
With Kreutzpointner Business Software GmbH (KBS for short), Kreutzpointner is setting a significant milestone in the technical development of the entire group of companies. Kreutzpointner Business Software GmbH focuses on the special requirements and digital needs of industrial customers with an independent business model. The operational launch took place in October 2020.
With KENEXOS®, KBS offers corporate customers an individually expandable application platform with its own software products and focuses on the implementation of industrial applications. KENEXOS® offers modern web technology for access via a wide range of end devices and enables integration with existing systems via an API interface. The standard modules include, for example, construction site documentation, task and ticket recording, plant management and maintenance and many more. The application platform is available for in-house installation (on-premise) or as a cloud solution (SaaS).
The ideas and the technical basis for Kreutzpointner Business Software GmbH have been successfully developed in recent years as part of the company-wide “Research & Development” process. In addition to the IT systems division, the new digital unit ideally rounds off Kreutzpointner’s large portfolio.
