The NHS Emission Quantification Recipe Book is a transparent, collaborative and evidence-based approach to establishing a standardised means of calculating emissions associated with NHS Carbon Footprint and Carbon Footprint Plus themes set out by the Greener NHS in October 2020 (Figure 1). The NHS Emissions Quantification Recipe Book has been developed by Dr Dan Wright of the Sustainability Team at Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust in collaboration with members of the NHS Kent & Medway Integrated Care System.
Key to the methodologies specified is the recognition that NHS organisations are at different stages in their emissions quantification journey. To support this journey and provide an innovative means to report in a methodologically-transparent way, each theme provides three options for calculation:
- A Reduced Calculation (RC) is intended to be an approach to calculating a ballpark figure emission impact using data that should be easily accessible by someone stepping into an emissions reporting role.
- A Standard Calculation (SC) is intended to feature the minimum data that NHS organisations should be working towards sourcing and handling, for example, periodical energy consumption data.
- An Optimal Calculation (OC) is intended to feature ‘best in class’ approaches to calculating accurate emissions, this may include using advanced tooling or higher resolution data, for example, half-hourly energy consumption data.
By being transparent around which methodological approach has been used, either RC, SC or OC, this supports ‘comparing apples to apples’ both within and between Integrated Care Systems.