Inside America's First All-Electric Hospital: UCI Health's $1.5B Bet

Hospitals consume 10% of America's electricity, despite occupying less than 3% of the country's building square footage. Now imagine cutting the gas line entirely. That's the $1.5 billion gamble UCI Health is making with its new Irvine campus.

When Joe Brothman, Director of Facilities & General Services at UCI Health, stood up at HealthSpaces to talk about building America's first major all-electric hospital campus, the room got quiet.

This wasn't just another sustainability feel-good story. This was a multi-billion-dollar bet that could reshape how we think about hospital infrastructure.

Why UCI Went Fully Electric

Brothman didn't sugarcoat the challenge his team faced when UCI Health decided to build its new Irvine campus under California's aggressive 2019 sustainability mandate: no new buildings with fossil fuel combustion for heating or water heating. Period.

"We set a stretch goal: no natural gas for humidifiers or steam generation, Brothman explained to the HealthSpaces audience.

UCI Health had to figure out how to do everything differently—no more natural gas for steam distribution, sterilization, or kitchen operations.

Engineering an All-Electric Hospital

Here's where Brothman got brutally honest about what building an all-electric hospital actually means.

Typically, half of a hospital's electricity consumption comes from fossil fuels through natural gas-powered steam heating and reheat cycles. UCI Health's solution replaced centralized steam distribution with:

• The largest array of air source heat pumps west of the Mississippi
• Heat recovery chillers
• Point-of-use electric steamers at every location (ORs, sterile processing, kitchens)
• Full electric kitchen operations

The compromise: diesel backup generators for emergency power. Patient safety came first.

The Workforce Gap No One Talks About

"There's one thing about handoff and then there's another thing about maintaining it," Brothman said, underscoring the steep learning curve his team faced. 

His team has spent two years flying in manufacturers to train staff on maintaining these cutting-edge systems. They've been sending facilities personnel to specialized training programs for air source heat pump maintenance, electric steam operations, and heat recovery chiller systems because the workforce simply does not yet exist for this level of hospital electrification.

This isn't just about technology—it's about building human expertise from the ground up.

What Healthcare Leaders Should Take Away

The lessons were clear: you need everyone on board from day one—UCI spent serious time upfront getting clinical teams comfortable with the risks and redundancies built into their all-electric hospital systems. You can't treat workforce development as an afterthought when your people need specialized training. And don't let perfect be the enemy of good—even this all-electric hospital still relies on diesel backup generators because keeping patients alive matters more than ideological purity.

The technical reality? Everything coming from the grid meant massive upfront electrical capacity planning. The two-year timeline for central utility plant commissioning revealed that these systems require extensive testing before the first patient arrives.

Proving What's Possible

"We would love to see you come and tour our site here in Irvine," Brothman concluded, extending an invitation that signals confidence in what they've built.

For Brothman, this wasn't just about compliance—it was about showing what's possible. "Healthcare is one of the most energy-intensive industries in the world," he reminded the audience. With this all-electric hospital, UCI Health set out to prove it doesn't have to be.

Brothman and his team are essentially beta testing the future of hospital infrastructure for the rest of us.

Watch his full talk below...