Hywel Dda Health board, which serves Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion, and Pembrokeshire, has launched an innovative, yet simple ‘Switch it off’ campaign to reduce energy usage and costs.

The campaign consists of switching off all non-essential equipment when not in use; from computer monitors and laptops to medical equipment, lights, and radiators. This is one of the several initiatives being delivered as part of Hywel Dda’s Decarbonisation Delivery Plan. All of which are aimed at helping to reduce energy costs and CO2 emissions for non-essential equipment by around 20%, which could save around £100,000 per year.

From March 2022 to April 2023, the health board reported spending almost £14 million on energy, producing more than 20 million kg in CO2 emissions. It was evident action needed to be taken to meet its targets to reduce emissions to just 34 per cent by 2030 as set out in the NHS Wales Decarbonisation Strategic Delivery Plan.

Sarah Thorne, Senior One Health Practitioner at Hywel Dda, said:

“While analysing our energy usage, we discovered that leaving just one TV or PC monitor on standby can waste almost £25 of electricity per year. We have over 6,000 screens across the hospital and offices within the health board so if everyone switched off their screen when they weren’t using it, it could help to save a huge amount of money, while also reducing CO2 emissions. Simple actions like this will have a massive impact.”

The health board has received funding to install a solar farm and other initiatives.

Huw Irranca-Davies, Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change said:

“The ‘Switch it off’ campaign from Hywel Dda is a great example of how organisations can inspire and empower their staff to work together to reduce both carbon emissions, energy usage, costs, and our impact on the environment.

“If everyone could do their bit by ‘switching off’ unnecessarily appliances, it would make a huge difference to the amount of energy we use, which will in turn help us to create a cleaner, greener Wales.”

For more advice on how you can reduce your energy use visit climateaction.gov.wales.