The healthcare industry consumes about 30% of the energy spend of State governments worldwide, making this sector the biggest energy consumer, Val Jovevski, head of Healthcare South Asia Pacific’s technical building solutions company Honeywell tells Engineering News.

“This is why it is so prudent that hospitals must be the first focus in reducing energy consumption,” he adds.


“Conservatively speaking, Honeywell can reduce this hospital energy spend by at least 20% by providing business and energy solutions,” he states.


Honeywell Building Solutions (HBS) regional GM Richard Creighton notes, however, that the energy use reduction amount will depend on the age of the facility, adding that the private healthcare space is far more vigilant in the savings measures that it adopts than are government hospitals.

Although Honeywell is fairly new to the South African healthcare industry, it is well established in the international healthcare sectors.

As part of understanding the burning issues affecting the local healthcare indus-try, the company is seeking to align itself with doctors, contractors, consultants, developers and government to sift out the pressing needs and to face these challenges by using HBS expertise and applying the latest technologies to various projects.

Technologies that can be used to improve the healthcare sector include appropriate security systems, building management controls to control energy and the environment, infection control, tracking of assets and people, and full management systems, to name but a few. 
These technologies can all be linked for integrated monitoring.

Further, as the City of Johannesburg is a signatory to the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI), Honeywell has engaged with representatives to identify buildings the 
City wants to retrofit to create energy savings.


The CCI is a global initiative that has identified 40 cities worldwide, which are referred to as the C40, of which Johannesburg is one.


The CCI aims to create awareness around energy efficiencies and involve energy services companies in investigating and identifying areas of low energy efficiency that can be targeted to reduce spend.

“South Africa’s energy has been dirt cheap up until recently, when the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) and Eskom began to focus on increasing energy costs to be able to fund new power stations.
“There is no doubt in my mind that energy is going to become a very critical issue; therefore, we have to be more tactical with our transfer of knowledge and education.

The key is a collaborative approach between the private sector and government,” Creighton notes.
Jovevski remarks that there is no esti-mated timeframe to complete a project of this magnitude across the entire healthcare system, but explains that the company will be clearer about this once it has completed its research.
“We are here for the long haul.

It depends on how quickly government and health leaders can move and drive their goals into this space. 
“Typically, from my experience, to take a project of this nature from definition to final delivery takes about ten years. 
“Current projects will take anywhere from 12 months to three or four years,” he concludes.