How is occupancy related to energy use in healthcare buildings?

Healthcare industry is quite emission intensive due to its energy needs to ensure safe and reliable operation and care delivery. Healthcare buildings, such as hospitals and aged care communities, tend to be 24–7 in operation. This paper reveals the correlation between the occupancy and energy use for aged care communities in the state of Queensland Australia. Results show quite low correlations between occupancy and monthly energy use for those communities across different climate zones. However, temperature is found highly correlated with all communities' energy use. In hindsight, it makes more sense to design energy efficient buildings from an early stage and to consider the climate conditions of the site, since the variability of occupancy levels may not play a significant role after those healthcare buildings are commissioned