Elevating Comfort: Energy Efficiency Solutions for Hotels

Tips for Hotel Energy Management: How to Create a Green Machine

The benefits of energy conservation apply to the bottom line of business but extend beyond money into the realm of image, industry reputation, general conservation and social responsibility. In many cases it takes few changes, little money, and low effort to implement processes that benefit the budget, please the planet, and keep consumers content.

Competition in the world of hospitality requires more than a clean room and sparkling service. Guests are acutely aware of the world of carbon footprints, energy usage and eco-friendliness. A growing majority wants to see best practices in place, and guests want to know how a business impacts its environment. No hotelier wants to miss the chance to book an event, fill rooms or win an account because their facility doesn’t have any energy-management practices in place.

Hotel energy solutions can produce savings that range from a small percentage in a few categories to drastic reductions of overall energy usage and costs. How much money depends fully on the kind of hotel building you have, its characteristics, and the depth of your commitment to going green.

Even a new-construction hotel built to the highest of green standards with an Energy Star score of 80 will have a little room for improvement, especially as it ages and technology changes. An older building stands to improve substantially through both small, incremental changes as well as larger projects, like replacing aged equipment systems with more efficient technology.

Hotel Energy-Saving Ideas

Your hotel may not have a food-compost pile or water-free toilets just yet, but chances are you’re already doing some eco-friendly things that will improve your energy profile. While some improvement measures do require planning and investment, other tasks are easy and inexpensive immediate changes.

It especially pays to have a thorough examination of your hotel’s envelope, or the parts of the building that touch the outside world: Roof top, walls, insulation, foundation, basement, windows and doors. These are the places where conditioned air escapes and outside air enters, sometimes with excessive moisture or heat or cold. You will realize savings just by using insulation, caulking and weather stripping around doors and windows to stop drafts and leaks.

Experts say to pick a temperature at the lower end of the comfort scale for ambient air in common areas like the lobby, corridors and eating areas. Changing the temperature by a degree or two will save money and make hot-natured guests happier.

There are many energy-saving tips for hotels to keep in mind, across several systems:

Heating and Air Conditioning

• Apply sun film to windows that affect interior temperature, like a Dallas hotel that tinted its windows and installed programmable thermostats to realize a savings of $50,000 per year
• Establish the benchmark temperature(s) when neither heating nor cooling systems need to run so the two will never compete against each other
• Clean and service utility-heating units like furnaces, boilers and stoves, as well as air-conditioning units once a year, especially evaporation areas
• Inspect and fix any appliances connected to utilities such as washers, dryers and icemakers
• Install programmable thermostats and position them away from direct sunlight or heat sources, such as a fireplaces
• Implement motion sensors for heating and AC
• Limit the range of temperatures guests can access to 65-80 degrees Fahrenheit
• Defrost freezers at least twice per year or as needed
• Get de-stratification fans for high ceilings to push heat back to the floor
• Avoid unnecessary ventilation by using variable-speed fans on a timer and replace motor with highest-efficiency model
• Install a draft-catching double door or entryway to the building to deter cold drafts in winter and hold in AC during summer
• Close loading-dock door unless there’s a load in it
• Cover pools and hot tubs to hold in heat and humidity
• Implement a plan for refrigerant management or enhance the existing one.

Hot Water

• Use less hot water if possible, which can account for nearly half the electricity or natural gas a hotel uses
• Set hot water temperature to the recommended setting of 110 degrees Fahrenheit
• Install water-saver shower heads, some of which have air-assisted features to maintain good pressure
• Install spray and/or sensor faucets for hand washing
• Give guests a choice of how often they want fresh linens
• Mount multiple towel hooks in bathrooms.

Lighting

• Change to LED or compact florescent bulbs, which last longer and emit less heat, to reduce the energy used for lighting by as much as 80%
• Opt for ‘exit’ signs with LED technology
• Install timers and dimmers
• Use daylight-sensitive lights to reduce energy consumption by up to 30%
• Clean light fixtures and their sensors regularly
• Close drapes in summer to block sunlight
• Open drapes in winter so building can absorb sunlight
• Make it a part of cleaning routine to check lights and drapes
• Place reminders in guest rooms about turning off lights
• Turn off, even unplug, all electronics not in use.

Green Technology and Practices

• Check into geothermal heat pumps as a heating system
• Place small signs or placards in the room letting guests know they can just hang up their towel and re-use it the next day
• Educate staff about conservation and encourage or reward good practices
• Look for energy-efficient vending machines that use about half as much electricity as some older models
• Replace old or broken utilities with a solar-powered boiler or series of staged boilers
• Insulate pipes, tanks, valves and boiler parts
• Repair any leaks promptly
• Appoint an energy manager or hire a professional like Shipley Energy — or both
• Check to see if your hotel is in a deregulated market for electricity or fuels, like Pennsylvania, then compare providers
• Use proper-sized saucepans in the kitchen, not bigger than needed
• Consider preferred parking for hybrid and alternative fuel cars
• Switch from small plastic bottles of shampoo, conditioner and hand soap to dispensers
• Make recycling available throughout the hotel common areas and guest rooms, including newspaper, plastic bottles and bags and aluminum.

Overall Benefits

• Better lighting will increase visibility and concentration
• You’ll save money for each degree you raise the thermostat during summer or lower it in winter
• A typical light-replacement project pays for itself within two years
• Housekeeper testimonials say laundry decreased dramatically with towel hooks and signs about the sheet-changing frequency – one said only one in every 30 or 40 guests would want the linens changed a Saturday
• Water-free urinals in one hotel in Washington D.C. saved about 95,000 gallons of water per year
• Savings can be realized by coordinating with utility providers to run shifts at off-peak times.

Build Sustainability Bit by Bit

Developing an energy-management strategy can be overwhelming process. An expert energy consultant, such as Shipley Energy, can help you develop an effective hotel energy management solution.

There are options to join the government’s voluntary Energy Star program, which labels products and buildings in efficiency as well as offers data and other resources to make existing buildings greener and help new ones achieve the highest possible energy standards. The EPA created Energy Star in 1992 as a way to reduce energy consumption and pollution and increase the nation’s energy security and sustainability.

Now consumers recognize the logo and label that applies not only to appliances, electronics and consumer products but also entire buildings, homes and industrial applications. It offers a number of tools to aid hotel owners and managers in tracking usage, creating a plan and measuring progress.

Energy Star assigns an efficiency score from 1-100 for 21 kinds of business buildings, with about a score of 50 as average and 75 as high. The U.S. Green Building Council offers certification for a green-building standard called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, with a few levels of achievement: certified, silver, gold and platinum. Both the LEED and Energy Star programs use a point system to rate a building’s energy efficiency and sustainability, and there are a number of ways to achieve the points.

Energy Star aims to conserve finite resources and help address rising costs and demand. For example, a clothes washer with the Energy Star label will use about 70% less power and 75% less water than a washer made 20 years ago.

Energy Star says the average building wastes about a third of the energy it uses. The EPA suggests a staged approach to improving energy efficiency, with the first focus on operations and maintenance plus behavior across departments. Next you can move along to systems and see what improvements can be made and how much they’ll cost. The more data you have, the better able you will be to prioritize your projects.

Shipley Energy can do a commercial-electricity analysis of your building and help even out utility bills to make them more predictable. Shipley has been a leading supplier of natural gas, propane, diesel and heating oil and gas for more than 90 years, serving commercial, industrial and residential customers throughout Pennsylvania and Maryland.

Every hotelier’s steps to a green-machine building will be different, except for the common goal to make substantial and measurable improvements and achieve a better, overall energy profile. Collective attention to all the things that contribute to a hotel profile may well produce bigger percentages of savings and cost reduction than you expect.

The studies and statistics coalesce to indicate that saving energy matters for a business, financially and in other ways. A hotel’s practices, philosophy and social awareness make a difference in how guests and employees perceive a hotel, so each business continues learning and improving to remain competitive and create the best hospitality environment possible.