When it opens next year, the Canberra Hospital Expansion’s new Critical Services Building will be Australia’s first all-electric hospital building, leading the way in environmentally sustainable health infrastructure design, ACT health minister Rachel Stephen-Smith claimed.

Today, World Environment Day (5 June), the minister said that the government targets a five-star Green Star rating for the building.

The building will mitigate the release of an estimated 1,886 tonnes of carbon emissions each year, the equivalent of removing 760 cars from Canberra’s roads, Ms Stephen-Smith said. It incorporates the latest environmentally sustainable design features such as a high performing façade and new technology that automatically monitors and controls heating, ventilation, and cooling.

The first of 21 massive heat pumps have been delivered to the Critical Services Building site. The heat pumps replace traditional gas boilers as the building’s source of hot water. 

Early designs for the Critical Services Building achieved a four-star Green Star rating, but now the ACT Government has put a formal submission to the Green Building Council of Australia for an upgraded five-star accreditation, supporting the ACT’s Climate Change Strategy (2019-2025) and the Government’s target to have a zero-emissions ACT Government health sector by 2040.

Sustainable design features in the Critical Services Building to target an enhanced Green Star rating include:

• A high performing façade glazing of thermally-broken double glazed units, which minimises the cooling required in summer and the heating required in winter. The façade minimises air changes and manipulates solar heat gains.
• Other energy-efficient façade elements, including solar shading.
• Energy efficient and intelligent heating, ventilation, and cooling systems.
• A holistic Building Management and Control system, which monitors and controls all systems in the building. This is supported by an analytics system, which provides insight for more efficient operations.
• Achieving a high indoor environment quality through regulating humidity, temperature, air quality, oxygen concentration, lighting quality, and access to natural light and greenery.
• Landscaping and irrigation that use recycled water, and open courtyards and green spaces with plants suitable to the local environment.

Environmentally conscious decision-making has also been at the forefront of the Critical Services Building throughout its construction process, Ms Stephen-Smith said.

Ninety-six percent of the materials from the demolished previous buildings were salvaged and repurposed for other projects.

Concrete for the new building includes locally sourced low carbon concrete, with 40 per cent less carbon content than standard concrete mixes. This has eliminated more than 2,000 tonnes of embodied carbon dioxide on the project to date – the equivalent of carbon removed by more than 30,000 tree seedlings grown over 10 years.

Electric cranes helped to eliminate pollution and noise during building construction.