NATIONAL REPORT—As posted on Green Lodging News last week, the International Tourism Partnership (ITP) and the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), in collaboration with 23 leading global hospitality companies, launched a methodology to calculate and communicate the carbon footprint of hotel stays and meetings in a consistent and transparent way. The methodology, called “HCMI 1.0,” is expected to be primarily used by the meetings industry, according to Christopher Brophy, vice president-corporate sustainability, MGM Resorts International.
Not included in the announcement about HCMI 1.0 was the methodology itself.
“Anyone who wants the methodology can currently request it through either the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) or the International Tourism Partnership (ITP) websites,” Brophy says. “At present, it is available on request, but the groups are working to make it available for download. During this initial release, they are looking to be able to track who is requesting/using the document, and thus the distribution method. The HCMI (Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative ) team is considering making this a web document, but those plans have not been finalized.”
One can also write to info@hotelcarboninitiative.org for additional information.
Industry Penetration Expected in Two Years
Brophy says the participants in the HCMI Working Group, comprised of hotel members within ITP and WTTC, will soon be distributing the methodology to industry stakeholders for use during the 2013 RFP season. David Scowsill, president & CEO of WTTC, in the press released distributed about HCMI 1.0, said he expects the methodology to be widely used within the lodging industry within the next two years.
“We will be working with as many hotel companies as we possibly can,” Brophy says, adding that the American Hotel & Lodging Assn., Hotel Association of Canada, Global Business Travel Assn., Green Meeting Industry Council and other groups and associations will be utilized to educate and inform industry stakeholders.
Brophy says the goal of the HCMI Working Group is to make the methodology as simple as possible. Brophy sent Green Lodging News a copy of the methodology. According to the document, the methodology provides hotels with a carbon footprint per occupied room on a daily basis and per area of meeting space on an hourly basis. This information can then be used to calculate the carbon footprint of a specific client’s use of the hotel (i.e. number of room nights and usage of meeting rooms).
“These are the measures which feedback has suggested the industry will find most useful, particularly for hotels completing Request For Proposals (RFPs) from potential clients,” the document says. “The methodology includes all energy used ‘on site’ and includes certain carbon emissions that may arise from ‘off site’ or outsourced activities, most notably outsourced laundry operations (a significant source of emissions and a key area of many hotels’ environmental programs). The methodology recognizes that some hotels operate a number of different facilities and so to improve comparability excludes any emissions from private areas, i.e. private space which is not accessible by guests.”
Designed for Any Lodging Establishment
The methodology is designed to be applied by any hotel around the world. The methodology has been designed in partnership with major hotel groups, however, it applies equally to individual hotels, large and small, regardless of the type of amenities offered.
A Practical Guide has also been created to help walk one through the methodology. Working in parallel with the Guide is a spreadsheet which can be obtained through ITP or WTTC.
The calculations are required to be performed once a year. In testing the methodology, it generally took two hours for participants to work through. Information such as total area of guestrooms and corridors is taken into consideration, as well as total area of meeting space, total occupied rooms for reporting year, and total energy consumption for reporting year. Energy consumption may come from the following sources: fuels consumed on-site such as natural gas (stationary combustion), oil and other fuels; purchased electricity; mobile fuels burned (from vehicles and landscaping equipment); purchased steam and chilled water; and district heating or municipal power. Energy consumption data should be obtained from energy invoices or from taking meter readings at the beginning and end of the reporting period.
One can use one of several sources to calculate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Things become more complicated if one outsources laundry as data must be collected from the laundry contractor.
The Hotel Carbon Footprint Formula
The hotel carbon footprint = total energy usage (electricity, gas, gas oil plus any additional energy sources) plus energy usage from outsourced laundry (if applicable) less energy consumed in private space (if applicable) converted into tonnes of CO2e using the most relevant emission factor for the country/state. For carbon reporting purposes, the hotel is divided into its two main services, guestrooms and meeting space, to avoid overlapping of footprints for guests that both attend meetings and stay at the hotel.
The methodology calculates emissions during “normal” operations. Numbers can be impacted if a hotel is undergoing a renovation. The methodology measures the GHG efficiency at which a hotel provides guestrooms and meeting space to its customers. If the hotel purchases carbon offsets, it can disclose this information, but it cannot deduct the amount of emissions that is offset from its total GHG emissions.
To help one work through the methodology, the Guide includes a hypothetical hotel of 180 rooms and then works through the calculations to determine its carbon footprint.
Glenn Hasek can be reached at editor@greenlodgingnews.com.
