The boilers at Cheshire Medical Center/ Dartmouth Hitchcock Keene in Keene, N.H., that had been burning fuel oil is now pumping natural gas trucked in from Pembroke, according to an article on the Insurance News Net website.
The switch to natural gas is part of a years-long initiative to decrease the hospital's energy use, hospital Vice President of Clinical and Support Services Paul Pezone said in the article.
Using trucks to transport gas from compressor stations connected to pipelines is a new, and still rare, approach to bringing energy to businesses, the article said.
Using gas, the hospital will go down by an estimated 30 percent, or $400,000 a year, Pezone said. The campus' carbon dioxide emissions are expected to decrease by 20 percent.
Drivers will take the gas in two trucks per day about 60 miles from the company's compressor station in Pembroke to Keene, depositing the gas into newly converted equipment in the hospital's rear parking lot.
While the natural gas trucks will arrive at the hospital twice a day — more frequently than the weekly fuel oil deliveries — the station will be farther from the hospital and less intrusive, Pezone said.