The project will follow a problem solving approach focussing on the very high energy demands within the European health care sector. Furthermore, also the unfortunately relatively poor indoor climate and air quality conditions, which have been recognised lately in the European hospitals, will be addressed through this approach. As these problems are recognised throughout Europe, solutions will be identified and demonstrated effectively by setting up a task force (the HOSPITALS group) which holds the necessary resources to solve these serious problems. The primary audiences of the HOSPITALS project are administrators, managers, designers and contractors of health care buildings. The HOSPITALS initiative will demonstrate that renewable energy technologies may be used with very positive results within the health care building sector and in that way help exploiting the use of renewable energy. Thus, the main milestones, deliverables and expected results of the proposal are:

• Design, construction and demonstration of 5 exemplar energy conscious and sustainable buildings for the European health care sector providing energy savings and CO2 emissions reductions of > 50%
• Careful monitoring, evaluation and broad dissemination of the achieved results and experiences to key decision makers in the health care sector on national and European levels
• Production of guidelines and design advice for future "low CO2" building designs in the European health care building sector
• An improved public health in Europe at no extra costs compared to the construction, running and maintenance costs for conventional health care buildings through the creation of high quality indoor climate conditions

The projects are different in size and with respect to the energy demands needed for the treatments offered, but all sites provide significant reductions of energy demand. The bar charts below show the total annual energy demand and the annual energy demand per m² for the individual demonstration project For all projects the total energy demand is reduced from 64 374 MWh to 43498 MWh corresponding to a reduction of 32%. This value includes the renovation projects and the new build projects as a whole. The energy savings vary a lot from project to project as various designs and concepts are used, but for thermal energy, savings of up to more than 60% are expected. For the electricity use, savings of up to 80% are expected. WP1 - Integrated Design Process
WP2 - Design Workshops / Design Reveiw
WP3 - Monitoring + Evaluation
WP4 - Hospitals Facilities Managements / Psychical Working Conditions
WP5 - Dissemiration Copyright 2005 All rights reserved. Supported by the European Commission.