Measuring greenhouse gas emissions in the health sector

There has been increased policy attention to the close links between a changing climate and health, and to the contribution of the health sector to overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Many countries have policies in place to decarbonise their health systems but monitoring progress requires robust measures. While several studies exist on an international level to measure the carbon footprint of the health sector, they are either outdated or lack in granularity. This document presents the first estimates on GHG emissions associated with the health sector for all OECD countries for the year 2018, based on a modelling approach using OECD’s Inter-Country Input-Output (ICIO) tables in combination with OECD’s annual health expenditure data collection. Results show that at the aggregate level, the health sector accounted for 4.4% of all demand-based GHG emissions across the OECD. Hospitals, medical goods and the outpatient sector were responsible for around three-quarters of all health-related GHG emissions. Nearly four-fifths of all emissions associated with the health sector can be attributed to supply chains.