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Project Director: Richard C. Armstrong, Jr., Director of Engineering
Partner Since: 1994
Total Committed Square Footage: 492,000
Over the past five years, St. Joseph Hospital faced a challenge shared by healthcare facilities nationwide: the need to maintain total energy costs at manageable levels despite rising utility prices and increased utilization of hospital facilities.
St. Joseph Hospital, a 309-bed hospital in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and member of the Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) - the largest notfor- profit health system in the country, joined ENERGY STAR with the goal of stabilizing its energy costs.
After the successful completion of a small pilot project, St. Joseph Hospital completed a hospital-wide study and upgraded nearly 6,500 lighting fixtures with energy-efficient lights. Having met with remarkable success in its own facilities, St. Joseph Hospital recommended ENERGY STAR to five other CHI-East Region hospitals. By June 1996, four of the five additional facilities successfully completed upgrades. Cumulatively, the five CHI-East hospitals are saving more than $1 million in annual energy costs.
Since embarking on this energy-efficiency initiative, St. Joseph Hospital has doubled its laundry service, opened Delp Pavilion, a 55,000 sq. ft. out-patient/surgical facility, and added new services in several renovated areas of the hospital, while maintaining virtually flat energy costs over the past five years. In recognition of the hospital's achievement, EPA honored St. Joseph Hospital as the 1998 ENERGY STAR Hospital Partner of the Year.
Total Expenditures: $ 390,225
Dollars Per Square Foot: $ .88
Total Square Footage Upgraded: 442,800
Annual Dollar Savings: $ 175,643
Dollar Savings Per Square Foot: $ 0.86
Internal Rate of Return (IRR): 47.6 %
kWh Savings: 2.9 million
Carbon Dioxide (lbs): 4.6 million
Equivalent Cars*: 457
* Carbon dioxide reduction is equivalent to removing 457 cars from the road.
“ENERGY STAR is definitely a win-win project. We're being good stewards of the environment, which is part of our heritage, and we're saving money at the same time.”
—Richard C. Armstrong, Jr., Director of Engineering