Turning waste heat into a decarbonisation pathway at Cobalt Medical Charity

Cobalt Medical Charity provide diagnostic imaging to support the NHS. Like many healthcare organisations, Cobalt Medical Charity needs to reduce emissions and improve energy efficiency across its estate. However, assessing potential decarbonisation projects and building a robust business case often requires specialist expertise and significant upfront investment.

Like many NHS and healthcare organisations, their challenge was not a lack of viable decarbonisation opportunities – it was a lack of capital to explore them.

Exploring the potential of waste heat recovery

Through our Energy for Tomorrow programme which supports low-carbon initiatives, Centrica provided £10,000 in grant funding to help Cobalt Medical Charity deliver a feasibility study on a potential decarbonisation initiative. We also granted a further £80,000 in grant funding to help fund future decarbonisation technologies.

Cobalt Medical Charity had identified that MRI and PET-CT scanners generate heat continuously, most of which is rejected into the atmosphere and lost. They believed there was an opportunity to recover this waste heat and reuse it to meet their heat demands elsewhere on the site. However, they needed the technical expertise and financial support to determine if it was a viable idea before proceeding.

Our grant funding enabled them to fully assess the technical viability of the idea, evaluate operational impacts and risks, model energy and carbon savings, develop an outline implementation plan, and build a financial case for investment in the project. This gave them everything they needed to make an informed decision about whether to progress with the project or not. 

Transforming an idea into an actionable plan

Thanks to the grant funding provided by Centrica, Cobalt Medical Charity were able to determine that heat recovery from their MRI and PET-CT scanners could deliver significant benefits to their organisation. It would:

• Reduce their gas consumption by 86%
• Reduce their annual carbon footprint by 71 tonnes
• Reduce their annual energy costs by £34,000. 

The feasibility study gave them the confidence they needed to make an informed decision on whether to proceed or not, and it gave them a clearer implementation roadmap.

Fiona Deane, CSR Lead and Quality Manager at Cobalt Medical Charity, said: “By combining our own contribution with Centrica’s support, we have been able to investigate the feasibility of this high carbon saving project. 

“As a charity we are always exploring ways to improve our carbon footprint and when the opportunity arose to be the first to investigate the feasibility of retrospectively fitting a heat recovery pump to MRI units in England, we knew we wanted to make this happen and sought grant funding to do so. This piece of work has demonstrated that the concept is viable. We are now excited to explore the next steps and develop a pathway for implementation."  

Healthcare organisations face increasing pressure to reduce carbon emissions and energy costs. Yet valuable energy is wasted across hospitals, imaging centres and other healthcare facilities. These are clear opportunities to reduce cost, carbon and operational risk.

Centrica helped Cobalt Medical Charity overcome one of the biggest barriers facing many organisations: securing the funding needed to investigate new decarbonisation opportunities. The project provided the evidence, confidence and implementation roadmap required to support future investment decisions and help them progress its long-term sustainability ambitions.