KSHE Update
 

Energy To Care - New Year's Resolution - Lose Those Unwanted BTUs (And Reduce Your Operating Costs)!

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Michael D. Roberts, PE, SASHE, CHFM,  CHE Director - Energy, Facilities Management Group, Corporate Support Carolinas HealthCare System

KSHE is participating in the ASHE Energy to Care initiative through promoting benchmarking of facilities energy use and by joining in on the ASHE Chapter Challenge.  KSHE was been designated an Elite ASHE chapter for 2016 and has positioned itself to be designated an Elite Chapter once again for 2017.  Winners will be announced at the ASHE annual conference in July 2018.

Make it your 2018 New Year's resolution to benchmark your facilities energy data and share it with the Energy to Care program.  This does  a number of things: it helps KSHE achieve national recognition as a leader in healthcare engineering education and programs through the Elite designation, it helps each facility maintaining/reduce the operating budget as benchmarking and reporting has shown an average of a 3% reduction in energy use through awareness and it positions each facility to evaluate the potential for promoting value to the C-Suite through sound business cases for capital projects and infrastructure upgrades.

Energy awareness and management has never been more important to Kentucky hospitals.  Some major electrical utilities are requesting rate increases in 2018 of over 10% for commercial buildings.  If this happened at your facility, is your budget ready?  If you haven't started an energy program, it has been show that energy reduction of 15%-20% is achievable.  Think about it - if you can absorb a 10% increase in electrical rates with no increase in budget this will really show value to your C-Suite.  There has never been a year like 2018 to start, re-start of accelerate your energy management initiatives.