Will shifting to solar help healthcare clinics survive the climate crisis?

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It is not easy to rattle Rosa Vivian Fernandez. The chief executive of a California healthcare clinic, she sees the harsh realities that the low-income, largely Hispanic community served by the clinic faces every day.

But when Fernandez traveled to Puerto Rico in 2017 to visit family, she was shocked to see how deeply Hurricane Maria had devastated the island.

“All the healthcare centers – the ones that did not get flooded or destroyed by the storm – went down,” Fernandez said. More than 5,000 people died due to the violent Atlantic storm, which caused an estimated $90bn (£80bn) in property damages, wiping out the electrical grid. “People died from the lack of services,” she added.

After her 2017 visit, Fernandez realized the clinic she heads, San Benito Health Foundation in Hollister, California, could also be vulnerable to power failures that could jeopardize patient health. California’s record heatwaves and other factors are increasingly taxing an already strained electrical power grid. Something had to be done, she decided.

Today, the 17,000 sq ft San Benito clinic is nearly 100% solar-powered with the ability to rely entirely on sun-fueled energy for a week, thanks to a $1.7m self-contained micro-grid of solar panels and batteries.

The clinic has been heralded as an example for other healthcare facilities to follow, an achievement made more noteworthy by the fact that roughly 90% of the patients are people of color who lack health insurance.

And the efforts to become energy independent have positioned San Benito as one of a growing number of healthcare facilities strengthening their resilience to the environmental challenges associated with climate change.

A report issued last year by California’s Hospital Building Safety Board warned that solar power was fast becoming essential for healthcare “sustainability and resiliency” as climate change increasingly threatens traditional energy resources. The report noted the San Benito clinic is among multiple “pilot projects” providing examples for other healthcare facilities to follow.

“We hope that this will serve as a model for other community health centers,” Fernandez said.

Researchers say hospitals, clinics and other healthcare facilities are among the sectors most in need of a shift away from fossil fuel-dependent energy sources due to their large energy consumption, the critical nature of their services and the fact that healthcare facilities are typically large emitters of greenhouse gas emissions.

With that recognition, solar and other “green energy” options are growing in popularity globally. A New Jersey hospital started working to incorporate solar energy into its power supply in 2014 and now more than 70% of its annual electric requirements are provided by solar. And a hospital in Jackson, California, installed an on-site solar-generating system in 2019 to provide more than half of its electricity needs. Three hospitals in Greece currently under construction will be covered with canopies of solar panels to help power the facilities.

Solar power has helped hospitals in Puerto Rico keep the lights on after major storms, too – with some stops and starts. In San Juan, a children’s hospital was able to have power restored after Hurricane Maria, when Tesla donated a series of solar panels and batteries. But elsewhere, these philanthropic efforts have been less successful at affecting change in the long term. The only hospital in Vieques, one of Puerto Rico’s smaller islands, closed shortly after Hurricanes Irma and Maria, even after Tesla installed solar power equipment at the center.

Still, inspired by what she saw on the island after Maria, Fernandez was determined to bring solar power to San Benito Health.

Founded by farm workers in 1975, San Benito Health is located in a farming and ranching community of about 41,000 people, surrounded by farm fields bright with green rows of lettuce and spinach. The clinic offers dental, pediatric and vision care, along with primary care services.

To build out the system and renovate the clinic to accommodate solar panels on its roof, the clinic partnered with the non-profit climate justice group Let’s Green CA and solar installation provider Mynt Systems. One of the goals was to make sure the clinic would have the capacity to store at least 10 days of power.

By relying on the sun for its energy needs, the clinic’s micro-grid alleviates the need for burning roughly 2.3m pounds of coal over 25 years, according to Robert Hymes, chief development officer of Mynt Systems, which installed the clinic’s system.

The clinic’s monthly power bills have dropped from more than $44,000 annually to less than $4,000 a year since the clinic made the move to solar in 2019. The clinic has also received $200,000 (£176,282) so far in rebates from electric utility PG&E and expects another $200,000 more over the next five years. In contrast, prices for electricity have climbed more than 15% so far this year.

The operational benefits of the switch to solar were underscored earlier this month when record temperatures of well over 100F (37.7C) pushed the electric grid in the region beyond its capacity. Three buildings at the Santa Clara Valley medical center in San Jose, California, lost power as a diesel generator designed as a backup failed, forcing the hospital to cancel surgeries and direct ambulances to route emergency patients elsewhere.

The early success with their solar system has San Benito Health planning for growth. Clinic officials are designing a new and bigger micro-grid, the clinic has purchased an electric cargo van to operate as a mobile clinic, and electric vehicle recharging stations have been installed in the parking lot.

“We’re looking into electric bikes, too,” Fernandez said.

At a 2019 celebration of the clinic’s renovated energy system, the California congressman Jimmy Panetta applauded the work that went into the project. “Having health foundations taking affirmative steps to not just care for their patients full time, all the time, but to care for our environment – this is an example that must be used throughout this state… throughout this country,” he said.

This is an edited version of a storyco-published withthe New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group.