Abstract
Objective: To evaluate the environmental impact from home visits the ESD team carry out and the implementation of electric vehicles to reduce the carbon footprint.
Methods: Travel expense data of the ESD team across the last 2 weeks of April was collected and CO2 emissions from each team member was derived. A focus group was conducted to gather the team’s stance on electric vehicles for home visits.
Results: A significant amount of CO2 is produced daily, with the total across the two weeks being close to that of a small-to-medium enterprise. Introducing an electric vehicle would help reduce the CO2 emissions, with a 62% reduction seen in week 1 if the person with the greatest emissions were to have the vehicle.
Conclusion: Although there are disadvantages, implementing an electric car into a department where multiple home visits are carried out in a day would help significantly in reducing the carbon footprint and help NHS Wales reach their environmental targets.
Comments
Environmentally conscious project
Good piece of work. I like that you have raised awareness of this issue.
I wonder whether a longer period of time would be more representative and account for fluctuations in activity.
A lot of publications are starting to surface and there is a standardised way of reporting carbon footprint with kg CO2 being utilised. It would be good to know how you calculated the CO2 emissions for each vehicle too.