Why did Providence decide energy management was worth pursuing?
Beam: True, hydro-electric dams provide over half the power to many of our facilities and it is still cheaper than fossil fuel plants. Energy is 1% of net operating costs for us, system-wide. But what makes energy management worth pursuing is when you look at the facility level. Typically, our operations budget is broken down as follows: Out of every dollar, 67 cents goes to utilities, 13 cents to water/sewer, 6 cents to supplies, and 14 cents to salaries. When the administration asks us to look for savings, the place with the most potential is clearly utilities. The second is salaries. In many respects, saving energy helps us to save our jobs. Author: Is there anything else driving energy management besides dollars? Beam: Being a faith-based healthcare system means we take seriously the charge of being good stewards. It’s one of the core values in our mission statement. In fact, we align our efforts with the Second Catholic Encyclical by Pope John Paul which calls for holding precious
