Climate Change Toolkit for Health Professionals

This guide, published by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, provides health care professionals with strategies to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of health care facilities (HCFs) and increase their resilience to climate-related disruptions. It details the environmental impact of the Canadian health sector, offers frameworks for vulnerability and resiliency assessments, and suggests specific mitigation measures across energy use, procurement, transportation, and food systems.

• The Canadian health care sector's life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including direct facility emissions and indirect supply chain emissions, were estimated at 4.6% of total national GHG emissions in 2015, totaling 0.0330 Gigatonnes (GT) CO2 eq. Between 2009 and 2015, these emissions increased at double the national average rate, growing by 10% compared to 5% nationally.
• A significant majority of the health care sector's GHG emissions are generated upstream. In Canada, 90% of health care life-cycle GHG emissions are produced by non-health economic sectors, with energy (electricity at 22% and oil and gas at 17%) being the largest contributor.
• Health care facilities (HCFs) in Canada are highly energy-intensive, with the highest energy use intensity of all commercial and institutional buildings at 2.45 Gigajoules (GJ) per m2. While hospitals make up only 0.2% of such buildings, they account for 4.1% of the total energy used by the building sector in Canada.
• Climate-related events have already caused major disruptions to health services in Canada. Flooding has impacted HCFs in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick, and the cities of Toronto and Windsor in Ontario. The 2013 southern Alberta floods caused HCF closures, evacuations, and infrastructure damage, while 2017 and 2018 wildfires in British Columbia led to HCF closures and patient transfers.
• Inhalation anesthetic gases are potent GHGs that are often not included in Canadian reporting requirements. In England, the NHS Sustainable Development Unit found that these gases represent 5% of the carbon footprint of acute care organizations, which is roughly equivalent to 50% of the emissions from heating buildings and water.
• Telemedicine and tele-health offer significant opportunities to reduce GHG emissions from health sector travel. For distances exceeding a few kilometers, telemedicine appointments can reduce carbon emissions by 40 to 70 times compared to travel by single-occupancy vehicles.
• The agricultural sector contributes approximately 5% of total health care GHG emissions, primarily through methane from ruminant animals and nitrous oxide from fertilizers. Canadian HCFs spend over $4 billion on food annually and may discard up to 50% of the food served.
• Various tools exist to help HCFs assess and improve their climate resilience and sustainability. These include the Health Care Facility Climate Change Resiliency Checklist (developed by CCGHC and Health Canada), the PIEVC protocol for infrastructure vulnerability, and the Green Hospital Scorecard for environmental benchmarking in Canada.

APA

Ribesse, J., & Varangu, L. (2019). Climate Change Toolkit for Health Professionals. Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. https://cape.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Module-6-Final-Solo-April-2-2019.pdf#new_tab

Chicago

Ribesse, Jérôme, and Linda Varangu. Climate Change Toolkit for Health Professionals. Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, 2019. https://cape.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Module-6-Final-Solo-April-2-2019.pdf#new_tab.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Ribesse |first1=Jérôme |last2=Varangu |first2=Linda |title=Climate Change Toolkit for Health Professionals |publisher=Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment |date=April 2019 |url=https://cape.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Module-6-Final-Solo-April-2-2019.pdf#new_tab |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{ribesse2019climate, author = {Ribesse, Jérôme and Varangu, Linda}, title = {{Climate Change Toolkit for Health Professionals}}, institution = {Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment}, year = {2019}, month = apr, url = {https://cape.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Module-6-Final-Solo-April-2-2019.pdf#new_tab}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }