The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care has been awarded its third ENERGY STAR® Advocate of the Year Award for work in promoting and facilitating the adoption of ENERGY STAR qualified products within Canada's health services sector. 

"The Coalition has worked tirelessly throughout the past few years to improve energy efficiency within Canada's health services sector and winning the ENERGY STAR Advocate of the Year award again serves to reinforce our resolve to help make Canadian hospitals and long-term care homes as energy efficient as possible. On behalf of the Coalition and our hundreds of stakeholders across Canada, I'm very honoured to again accept the award on behalf of our team," said Executive Director Linda Varangu. "We take very seriously our commitment to improving energy management practices within the sector and our advocacy of ENERGY STAR is a key component in promoting energy efficient and climate change resilient health facilities."  

“Energy efficiency in our homes and buildings helps Canadians save money, creates jobs, reduces pollution and contributes to our clean energy future,” said the Honourable Amarjeet Sohi, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources. “I congratulate the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care for their ongoing leadership in improving energy efficiency in Canada.”

For nearly twenty years, the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care has been driving leadership in environmentally-sustainable health care practices by helping health care facilities, non-governmental and governmental organisations, individuals, students and businesses learn about greening health care best practices and to become better equipped to deal with the growing demands placed upon them to be environmentally responsible and climate-change ready.

The Coalition’s key accomplishments in 2018 that helped secure the award win include:

·         Extensively promoting the benefits of ENERGY STAR and its certified products to Canadians and to its international readership via the Canadian Green Health Care Digest, national and provincial conferences and trade shows, webinars, teleconferences, stakeholder events, and in all outreach and training.

·         Maintaining strong partnerships with various health care associations that in turn feature ENERGY STAR in their communication materials.

·         Making ENERGY STAR product recommendations in all building energy assessments conducted for Ontario health care facilities.

·         Provided Building Operator Certification Training, which encourages adoption of high efficient products among other energy efficient improvement measures, for the first time in a remote northern community, producing four First Nation’s graduates – a Canadian first. 

As a result of the Coalition's ongoing energy conservancy work via its HealthCare Energy Leaders Canada team, tens of thousands of ENERGY STAR certified products have been installed in care facilities across Canada and facility and energy managers have developed a far greater understanding of how beneficial ENERGY STAR is from both energy and financial savings perspectives. 

This is the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care’s third ENERGY STAR Canada award: Advocate of the Year (2015, 2017 and 2019). 

The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care (CCGHC) traces its roots back to 2000 when 27 representatives from some of Canada’s largest health care associations and environmental groups met to discuss environmental education. Since then, the Coalition and its member groups have had a significant impact upon the greening of the Canadian health care landscape and have been involved in a very wide variety of local, provincial, national and international initiatives. 

To learn more about how the Coalition is helping make Canada’s health care sector more environmentally-sustainable and climate-change ready, please visit www.greenhealthcare.ca