As the world strives for a low-carbon future, it is imperative that all nations, sectors, and communities take urgent action to reduce emissions. In the context of healthcare, an essential service, such decarbonisation needs to be achieved while expanding access to care even as the climate crisis adds to the global burden of disease. Working with Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), an international NGO promoting climate leadership in the sector, Arup has recently published the Global Road Map for Health Care Decarbonization; making the case for climate-smart healthcare and providing guidance for health policy makers. 

This is second collaboration between Arup and HCWH; in 2019 together they published Health Care’s Climate Footprint, the world’s first estimation of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from health care, recognised in the 2020 IEMA Sustainability Impact awards. 

In the most recent report, Arup provided a new level of detail around the emissions embodied in goods and services in the sector’s supply-chain. Going further, we created detailed scenarios to forecast future emissions through to 2050, as shown in Figure 1. Together with HCWH, we explored the potential sector decarbonisation achievable through measures designed to meet existing Nationally Determined Contributions; further, high-ambition, decarbonisation measures across global industry; and actions driven by the health sector to reduce consumption of resources. This modelling facilitated the identification of broad range of policy recommendations, organised into three decarbonisation pathways (covering the sector’s direct emissions, emissions from its direct supply chain, and emissions in the wider economy driven by demand from the sector) and seven high-impact action areas (energy provision, buildings and infrastructure, transport, food procurement, pharmaceuticals, circular healthcare, and increased health system effectiveness). These provide a template for global sector decarbonisation in line with a target of limiting global warming to below 1.5°C.