Decarbonizing Healthcare to Improve Service Delivery and Reduce Emissions in India
Electricity is essential for most healthcare services – from diagnostics to conducting surgical procedures. Without electricity, a health facility cannot ensure a sterilized environment for patients, or store life-saving medications and vaccines. Even for basic requirements such as lighting, heating, cooling, pumping water, record keeping of patients and training – electricity is a necessity. In a post-COVID-19 world, the roll out of new technologies such as telemedicine services in remote areas require a reliable source of electricity.
Despite significant efforts by the government, several thousand health sub-centres and Public Health Centres (PHCs), which are often the first point of contact for communities seeking basic healthcare, do not have reliable electricity services. Many facilities with an electricity connection suffer from poor quality of power with frequent outages lasting several days and weeks, especially during extreme climate events such as storms and floods. The lack of reliable electricity causes an interruption in service delivery, disallowing health facilities from investing in life-saving equipment. To overcome this, some facilities rely on expensive diesel generator sets causing local air pollution and other negative externalities. Cumulatively, the lack of reliable and clean power supply can affect rural and remote communities that need healthcare services and, the environment, causing local pollution and adding to India’s overall carbon emissions.
WRI India is partnering with HSBC India, to deliver integrated clean energy solutions at health facilities across states such as Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Assam. WRI India has also been working with development partners in the health sector, such as the Catholic Health Association of India (CHAI), to implement decentralized renewable energy interventions in health facilities.
Given the gaps in the electricity infrastructure in the health sector, this project is implementing customized renewable energy (RE) solutions suited to the needs of the healthcare facilities. This will ensure equitable access to improved healthcare services while accelerating India’s clean energy transition. It will demonstrate how new RE installations in remote health centres serving vulnerable communities can improve people’s lives and create models for replication.
The project resulted in the installation of new decentralized RE interventions in the healthcare sector, which improved access to reliable power from non-polluting sources. This in turn, reduced dependence on diesel generators, bringing down overall carbon emissions.
This initiative focuses on not-for-profit health facilities operating in unserved and underserved areas, lagging infrastructure because of a lack of access to a reliable, sustainable, and affordable source of electricity. The project aims to decarbonize the health sector while establishing new healthcare services and improving existing services in the health facilities in select Indian states.
