A Singapore hospital turned its operating theatres green — and the world just gave it gold

Operating theatres are among the most energy-hungry rooms in any hospital. Singapore's National University Hospital set out to clean up its own, and at the World Hospital Congress in Seoul it has won the Gold Award for Low Carbon Healthcare from the International Hospital Federation. The results behind the prize are concrete: the hospital cut its use of desflurane, a high-carbon anaesthetic gas, by 99 per cent, saves about 660,000 kWh of energy a year by easing theatre ventilation when rooms sit idle, and redesigned its knee-replacement instrument sets to cut almost 10,000 kg of carbon emissions a year while using less water. Its lessons are now being shared across Singapore's public hospitals.

SDG 13 · Climate action — Mechanism: institutional program