Emissions Disclosures and Energy Use Reporting by Hospitals in the United States

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:This paper provides a baseline estimate of US hospital emissions disclosure rates, useful for studying health-sector decarbonization and disclosure accountability.

🏢実務担当者:Hospitals and health systems can benchmark their own reporting practices against national requirements and voluntary programs highlighted in the paper.

🏛政策担当者:The paper reveals gaps in mandatory reporting coverage, informing policy design for expanding hospital emissions disclosure.

BackgroundAs the impacts of climate change mount and pose greater threats to human health, it is imperative that the health sector, which accounts for approximately 8.5 percent of US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, enhances its climate resilience and reduces its emissions (Eckelman, et al., 2020).Within the health sector, hospital care makes up the greatest portion of the sector's emissions at 35 percent, and according to the American Hospital Association (AHA), there were 6,120 total hospitals nationwide as of 2022 (AHA, 2024; AHRQ, 2022).A critical and foundational step in health sector emissions reduction is the tracking and public reporting of annual GHG emissions related to health care delivery (Downar, et al., 2021).A number of health systems have been estimating and tracking their GHG emissions privately in the interest of their organizational sustainability and cost-savings goals.The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tracks that approximately 3,500 hospitals use the EPA ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager to estimate GHG emissions and energy use through a practice known as benchmarking (EPA, n.d.a; EPA and HHS, 2023).However, the extent to which health systems are sharing emissions data publicly has remained uncertain.With the growing interest in climate action in the health sector, as well as more broadly across all sectors, there is increasing need for health care delivery organizations to share their emissions estimates publicly for transparency, accountability, and standardization of the practice.The recent introduction of a voluntary Decarbonization and Resilience Initiative from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) Innovation Center offering technical assistance on decarbonization and, for the first time, collecting voluntarily submitted emissions data also demonstrates interest in GHG reporting at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).The Greenhouse Gas Protocol, a globally-accepted reporting standard, defines three categories, or "scopes," of GHG emissions.Scope 1 constitutes direct emissions from the organization's facilities; Scope 2 comes indirectly from energy uses that generate GHG emissions; and Scope 3 comprises emissions associated with supply chains, client use of products, and organizational investments (WBCSD and WRI, n.d.).Portfolio Manager incorporates facility data from on-site fuel combustion (Scope 1) and purchased utilities (Scope 2) to produce a value of Energy Use Intensity (EUI) in units of kBtu/ft2, which is a measure of total energy ABSTRACT | The health sector accounts for approximately 8.5 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions, and hospital care makes up the greatest portion of the sector's emissions.As the impacts of climate change intensify, it is imperative that the health sector reduces its emissions.Tracking and reporting annual building energy use and emissions data is a critical first step toward reducing emissions.Across the United States, there are various federal, state, and local reporting requirements along with voluntary commitments that organizations have made to regularly disclose their emissions.This discussion paper summarizes reporting requirements and provides, for the first time to our knowledge, an estimate of the total number and percent of US hospitals that are required to or are voluntarily reporting their emissions on a regular basis.These data provide insight into the current state of health sector decarbonization and the nationwide programs that are holding them accountable.

• openalex https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/11875545first seen 2026-08-02 17:56:46