A hotel stay with sustainability in mind

When you think of staying overnight at a hotel, you might think about the amenities, room fittings, its 'grammability' or bar offer; you might not necessarily think about the building's energy efficiency or its carbon footprint. However, with the climate crisis and ESG agenda now key consideration for many, how can hotels still maintain the customer experience and profitability while minimising their impact on the environment?

When quantifying a hotel's energy efficiency and carbon output, this can be broken down into two key elements: operational carbon and embodied carbon. When looking at operational carbon, defined as 'the amount of carbon emitted during the operational use of a building', the largest energy consumer in a hotel is typically in heating and/or cooling, followed closely by hot water. The use of facilities and equipment by guests have a significant impact in a hotel's energy consumption and its operational carbon emissions. Guests often have full control over thermostat settings, adjusting accordingly to their comfort. This can, however, lead to windows being left open while heating and cooling systems are in operation or equipment left on when the room is unoccupied, resulting in unnecessary energy waste.

The most cost-effective and, arguably, easiest way to reduce operational carbon emissions is to improve the way a hotel is managed. This can be from how rooms are booked to when they are being heated and cooled through the use of intelligent room sensors. However, where possible, active design and improving the thermal performance of the building can equally prevent vast amounts of energy from being wasted. Moving away from the reliance on fossil fuels to lower and zero carbon technologies, such as ground source heat pumps, can significantly reduce hotel energy use.

The first step in assessing a hotel's performance and the extent of improvements required is to determine its operational carbon output. Ideally this should be from submetering the main energy-consuming areas in the hotel. The most appropriate method to understand the carbon footprint is by utilising the Carbon Risk Real Estate Monitor (CRREM) tool. This provides a summary of the building's baseline and future carbon performance capturing its metered annual energy data. At the same time, it compares it against the target decarbonisation pathway of the building.

Nevertheless, enabling a net zero carbon performance in operation is only dealing with part of the issue. Hotels, like other buildings, are constructed or redeveloped from materials extracted from the ground, which require heavy manufacturing and are transported numerous times for processing, fabrication and installation. Each step emits 'embodied carbon', defined as 'the amount of carbon emitted in producing materials and construction of a building', which can make up to 70 per cent of the building's lifecycle emissions. While the dynamics between operational and embodied carbon emissions are complex, for true net zero carbon to be achieved in hotels, whole life emissions must be considered.

Early design decisions can have the biggest impact in managing and reducing embodied carbon emissions, starting by scrutinising the design and challenging the brief, the performance criteria, the form and materiality, planning for minimal waste and the use of local sources and materials with little to no embodied carbon.

What is positive is that many stakeholders in the industry are pushing boundaries, not least providing customers with the information they need to make more informed decisions. Change is happening and we're delighted to be helping clients on their respective net zero journeys which benefit both the environment, but also ensure a more sustainable business going forward.

Further information

Contact Yorgos Koronaios or Frankie Wood

Hotel market insights: ESG considerations moving up the agenda and driving change