Gundersen Health, based in LaCrosse, Wis., is the first hospital to offset all fossil fuel use with locally produced, green energy, according to an article on the Healthcare Finance website.

“We did an energy audit in February of 2008 and it revealed some pretty stunning opportunities as far as cost savings and reducing our energy consumption,” said Jeff Rich, executive director of Envision, Gundersen’s energy subsidiary.

After Gundersen’s $2 million dollar one-time spend on conservation, they had reduced energy costs by $1.2 million each subsequent year.

Gunderson has installed green systems including biomass boilers that replaced natural gas ones, wind turbines farms on several farms, geothermal heat pumps to replace traditional heating and cooling systems, two dairy digesters that turn cow waste into biomass fuels that it can use in other systems and a landfill energy program that turns methane captured in a nearby landfill into an energy source.

Read the article.