Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center – Daniel McDermott – 2021

Goals

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s (MSK) Sustainability program is nationally recognized as one of the leading programs within the health care industry. To continue to be at the forefront and limit climate impacts, MSK recognized the importance of analyzing opportunities to further reduce their carbon footprint. A standardized methodology to quantify, manage, and visualize greenhouse gas emissions data allows for an analysis of operations across the organization and is key to identifying reduction opportunities.

Solutions

Daniel McDermott worked with the MSK Facilities Management and Sustainability teams to identify all sources of Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions and generated a tool capable of calculating greenhouse emissions, including key performance indicators like emissions intensity. He put this tool to use by creating an account of all GHG emissions dating from 2007 to present. He aggregated data into a variety of visualizations to create charts that allowed for identification of areas for potential improvement.

Following up identification of these opportunities, Daniel distributed questionnaires to building managers to identify existing HVAC energy efficiency measures at a subset of facilities. Questionnaire results were compared with GHG emissions data to develop reduction targets and a five-year roadmap on how to achieve those targets. 

Potential Impact

The establishment of a standardized GHG calculation tool and process within the organization gives MSK the insight needed to make data-driven decisions when identifying reduction opportunities. This decision-making process will be vital as carbon-cap local laws become more stringent and will allow MSK to continue to be sustainability pioneer with the potential to set standards that can be used across the health care sector.