“Out of the 144 hospitals where I did these requests, the overwhelming picture is of those increasing (bills) and consumption declining, this isn’t cherry picking,” Van Geyn said. “To find instances where bills are going down is cherry picking.”
The campaign is meant to illustrate the rising costs of electricity to Ontario residents on an institutional scale, Van Geyn said.
“What we want them to see is that it is not just their bills at their homes that are going up, but that the institutions we all value and rely on like RVH are seeing the same thing happen to them,” Van Geyn said.
Purdy said he thinks RVH is similar to most hospitals in terms of doing everything they can to conserve energy.
“A lot of the stuff that we do (to reduce energy consumption), there are incentives to do them,” he said.
Purdy said a partnership with Alectra allows RVH to submit energy conservation project costs, and receive up to a 50 per cent subsidy.
Van Geyn said the energy minister has touted conservation programs in response to the CTF campaign.
“Energy conservation is great and it’s important, (but) what we have seen is that saving electricity and conserving it is not actually resulting in lower bills for a lot of these hospitals.”
Hospital power costs 2012-2016 (per cent difference)
Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre:
$2,900,293 — $3,897,493 (34%)
Collingwood General and Marine Hospital:
$434,705.78 — $599,745.85 (38%)
Stevenson Memorial Hospital:
$253,174.42 — $282,272.71 (11.5%)
Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital:
$1,298,483.41 — $1,843,569.03 (42%)
Georgian Bay General Hospital:
2012 cost unavailable — $676,459.98 (N/A %)