The carbon footprint of Portugal's health system

Research highlights

• "We decided to calculate the GHG emissions baseline for the Portuguese health system, including both the private and public healthcare providers at the national level."
• "2014 was defined as the reference year for the calculation of the emissions baseline due to the need to align our baseline expenditure data with the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) (2014) data."
• "When considering the entire Portuguese health system, covering public and private entities, the sector's total carbon footprint in 2014 was around 3.92 Mt CO2eq, representing approximately 5.8% of total GHG emissions at the national level."
• "Considering only the public sector of the Portuguese health system, the total carbon footprint in 2014 was around 2.51 Mt CO2eq, representing approximately 3.7% of the national total."
• "Most of the health system's emissions are indirect, resulting from GHG emission sources of scopes 2 and 3 (86%). The direct emissions, from sources controlled directly by the healthcare entities represent about 14% of the total emissions footprint."
• "The results showed that the Portuguese health sector needs particularly to address its indirect emissions, related to the supply chain, and work to implement measures to minimize it, especially those related to the consumption of chemicals and pharmaceuticals."

Methods & Results

For a complete summary of this data source and to see reported environmental impact values for studied products and activities, explore the HealthcareLCA Database.

Citation

Administração Central do Sistema de Saúde, IP. Carbon footprint of the Portuguese health sector and ways for mitigation: Operation Zero Project Report. ACSS. December 21 2022.