Energy Security on a Barrier Island, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston

In 2008, Hurricane Ike left Galveston flooded, leading to an evacuation, damaged infrastructure, and leaving the hospital inoperable for 90 days. To avoid this downtime in the future the hospital undertook a series of steps that included converting buildings to hot water heat, distributing heating steam overhead (rather than underground) to research buildings, elevating boilers and chillers, installing flood walls, and producing electricity onsite via combined heat and power (CHP). As a result, when Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017, the hospital suffered no major damage or outages.