Cleveland Clinic Earns Highest Energy Star Award

CLEVELAND — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded Cleveland Clinic with its highest Energy Star Award — the 2013 Energy Star Partner of the Year-Sustained Excellence Award — for the clinic’s leadership in protecting the environment through superior energy efficiency. An Energy Star partner since 2008, Cleveland Clinic will be awarded for its many environmental efforts at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., on March 26.

“Cleveland Clinic is committed to increasing energy efficiency through our partnership with Energy Star,” said Bill Peacock, Cleveland Clinic’s chief of operations, in a statement. “Efficient management of natural resources controls costs and helps us address and reduce environmental public health pressures. These are key concepts health care providers must embrace as we enter a period of rapid change in our industry.”

In December 2011, Cleveland Clinic CEO and President Toby Cosgrove, M.D., made a commitment to reduce energy intensity by 20 percent by 2020, as part of President Obama’s Better Buildings Challenge. This enhanced the hospital system’s commitment to energy conservation, improving the energy efficiency of its existing buildings by optimizing building systems, making targeted reinvestments, managing the energy consumed by electronic devices and engaging caregivers to change energy-related behaviors.

Prior to the commitment, the health system was already making strides in terms of green building. It received its first two LEED certifications in 2009 and now boasts 13 LEED-certified buildings and projects to date. All new major construction projects follow LEED standards, with certification as the system’s minimum requirement and Silver certification as the target. The health system’s Marymount Hospital Surgery Expansion, for example, recently earned LEED Gold.

Waste management is a big part of the health system’s sustainability plan; in 2010, the main campus’ recycling program diverted 30 percent of the total waste generated from landfills. In August, Cleveland Clinic announced that it would change how it uses and disposes of plastics, and it has drastically reduced PVC materials used in construction and renovation projects due to concerns of airborne phthalate particles. All of the construction debris from projects, large and small, are sent to be recycled, and the system is achieving 76 percent to 98 percent diversion rates.

Other green initiatives involve the staff’s commitment to Office for a Healthy Environment (OHE), a program created in 2007 that focuses on the organization’s impact on the regional environment and overall climate change. Employee-crafted green teams are available at all major facilities within the system, and the team leaders report to a system-level green team to share best practices and consistent approaches across the organization. Each team is accountable for progress, metrics and program implementation at its site.

The Cleveland Clinic adheres to the principles presented in the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), a policy initiative for businesses that are committed to aligning their operations and strategies with socially responsible principles. The UNGC has 5,000 stakeholders from more than 120 counties, and in 2008, Cleveland Clinic became the first health care provider in the U.S. and second in the world to become a signatory to the UNGC.