A new hospital at UC Irvine opens Wednesday and it will be all-electric — only the second such medical center, and the largest, in the country so far.
People live through some of the toughest moments of their lives in hospitals, so they need to be as comfortable as possible. Hospitals traditionally connect with natural gas lines several times bigger than those connected to residential homes, to ensure that rooms are always warm or cool enough and have sufficient hot water.
But burning that natural gas is one of the main ways that buildings cause climate change. The way we build and operate buildings is responsible for more than one-third of global greenhouse gases…