In a Consulting-Specifying Engineer article, a group of engineers discuss sustainability issues

CSE: Energy efficiency and sustainability are often a request from building owners. What net zero energy and/or high-performance systems have you recently specified on a hospital?

We have recently employed heat pump chillers and group-source heat pump technologies to reduce the energy footprint of our hospital designs. A hospital is one of the few building programs with simultaneous heating and cooling loads in all seasons, allowing us to harvest the heat being removed and use it for reheating and to produce hot water, thus reducing the cost of utilities and achieving both natural gas and domestic water make-up savings by not using cooling towers to reject heat. We have not yet designed a net zero hospital, but we are using PVs and solar water heating on a hospital project that is the closest thing to net zero energy that we have done., said Nolan Rome, Senior Vice President, WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff Co., Phoenix.

There is a growing trend to explore the feasibility of net zero; however, for a hospital function it is very difficult to achieve. The consumption level is very high, which makes it difficult to produce that high of energy to offset. Our team has done numerous studies and provided options to help achieve net zero energy for office-building and commercial function. Implementing HVAC strategies and on-site renewable energy systems are the foundations to developing an appropriate system, according to Kunal G. Shah,  President, PBS Engineers, Glendora, Calif.

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