Energy-Efficient Hospital: GreenHET – Green Hospital Energy Twin

Hospitals have particularly high energy consumption: On average, a hospital bed requires 32,800 kWh Energy per year, which is equivalent to about four single-family homes. “GreenHET” (“Green Hospital Energy Twin”) addresses this energy consumption in hospitals using a digital energy twin.

Process-specific consumption data for electricity, heating, cooling, and compressed air is automatically collected using wireless sensors, aggregated via an edge cloud, and mapped in the digital energy twin. Hospitals can use this to identify energy efficiency opportunities, digitally simulate optimization measures, and monitor their impact during operations. GreenHET supports hospitals on their path to becoming energy-efficient facilities without compromising the quality of care for patients.

The healthcare sector accounts for approximately 6% of greenhouse gas emissions in Germany. Hospitals, in particular, have exceptionally high energy consumption due to energy-intensive areas such as operating rooms and intensive care units.

At the same time, a backlog of investments, rising construction costs, and legal requirements—such as those under the German Energy Efficiency Act (EnEfG), the German Supply Chain Act (Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz, LkSG), and sustainability reporting regulations—are hindering the transition to energy-efficient hospitals.

Many hospitals are unable to comprehensively renovate their buildings and therefore need solutions to reduce energy consumption within the hospital’s existing structures.

»The systematic, near-real-time collection and analysis of process-specific energy consumption data provides a key foundation for identifying efficiency opportunities in hospitals, sustainably reducing emissions, and using data to guide the transition toward climate neutrality.«
Malin Gerhardt, Research scientist in the Health Care Logistics at Fraunhofer IML in Dortmund

Hospitals need clear, transparent data on which processes consume how much energy, where opportunities for savings lie in day-to-day operations, and which alternatives actually reduce energy consumption. Currently, there is a lack of comprehensive data collection and analysis, as well as the ability to reliably compare alternative processes in advance.

This is exactly where the GreenHET project comes in: It is developing a digital energy twin for secondary and tertiary supply and disposal processes in hospitals—potential use cases include material supply and disposal in the operating room, food service, bed and linen management, and sterile supply processing.

To contribute to the goal of climate neutrality and efficient energy use, the research project aims to identify optimization measures and implement operational monitoring without compromising patient care.

The goal of GreenHET is a decision support and monitoring dashboard that:

• displays process-specific energy consumption in the hospital in real time
• identifies and evaluates energy efficiency potentials
• simulates alternative processes in the digital energy twin
• and monitors their impact during ongoing operations.

Unlike existing approaches, which typically focus only on building parameters, GreenHET concentrates on:

• real-time measurement of energy consumption in hospitals
• secondary and tertiary supply and disposal processes rather than core medical processes
• linking environmental (emissions, energy) and economic effects (process costs) within the Digital Energy Twin

Hospitals can use this to:

• identify energy efficiency potential at the process level,
• first test alternative processes digitally, and
• monitor the impact in operation after implementation.

GreenHET thus bridges the gap between legal efficiency requirements and practical implementation, leading to an energy-efficient hospital.

GreenHET: Green Hospital Energy Twin is co-financed by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and supported by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Protection, and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.