UK Hub for One Health

The NHS must cut its carbon emissions to net zero by 2045, and this £6.5 million hub will find the most carbon-intensive parts of health and social care—then redesign them. The problem is stark. The NHS produces around 4% of England’s total carbon emissions, much of it from patient travel, medical waste, and the supply chains for drugs and equipment. Current efforts to decarbonise are piecemeal. This hub, led by the University of Exeter with partners including the Royal Devon University NHS Foundation Trust, Queen’s University Belfast, and Glasgow Caledonian University, will systematically map entire care pathways—from a GP appointment to a hospital stay to home care—and identify where emissions are highest. If the hub succeeds, it will give NHS trusts and social care providers a practical toolkit to cut emissions without compromising patient care. That could mean fewer unnecessary patient journeys, lower-waste procurement contracts, and cleaner supply chains for everything from surgical gloves to MRI scanners. The changes would be largely invisible to patients but would quietly shrink one of the UK’s largest institutional carbon footprints, helping the NHS meet a legal target that currently looks difficult to achieve.