NYC Hospitals Outline Resilience Gains

5/21/2025

What does one year of sustainability and resilience improvements look like? Institutional and commercial facilities often set long-term goals for minimizing their impact on the environment, from cutting greenhouse gas emissions to curtailing water use in the next 20 or 50 years. In the case of one healthcare organization, Earth Day offered an opportunity to see how much progress is possible in one year. 

NYC Health + Hospitals recently announced its systemwide climate resilience and sustainability achievements since Earth Day 2024, including a reduction in the public health system’s annual operational carbon emissions by nearly 6,000 metric tons and nearly $2.5 million in annual energy cost savings. 

Over the last year, NYC Health + Hospitals completed two important climate resilience projects: a floodwall protection system at its Metropolitan facility and stormwater drainage upgrades at its Jacobi facility. Other measure the public health system took to make its hospital facilities more sustainable and efficient include: 

• appointing its first chief decarbonization officer 
• completing its first-ever solar panel installation at its Elmhurst facility 
• completing energy efficiency upgrades at its Queens and Lincoln facilities 
• a 52 percent annual reduction in carbon emissions in its anesthesia practice by deactivating its central piped nitrous oxide and optimizing its anesthetic gases. 

Together, these achievements help the organization meet the goals outlined in its climate resilience plan announced on Earth Day 2024. NYC Health + Hospitals now has achieved a 31 percent reduction in operational carbon dioxide emissions since 2006 and is continuing to advance efforts to achieve a 50 percent reduction by 2030. 

Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.?