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April 20, 2005
Monitoring Energy Consumption Pays
This article is reprinted with permission from Hospitable Climates
For most hospitality businesses, the real motivation for reducing energy consumption is cost savings. These (and the maximum possible contribution towards environmental protection) will only be realised if your business sets a process in place for monitoring energy consumption and targeting improvements. Some businesses � especially those with a large number of individual units have adopted a particularly rigorous approach towards monitoring their energy consumption and have reaped the benefits of these programmes. Accor -- one of the largest hotel companies in the world -- has been particularly successful. With an annual energy and water bill of £s;4.2 million for its 85 UK hotels and an impressive commitment to sustainable development, the business has a strong environmental and financial motivation to make savings.
Environmental charter
The starting point for Accor's environmental programme is an Environmental Charter. This has been distributed to every hotel in Europe and makes specific reference to energy and water saving. The charter is, however, meaningless, without the comprehensive programme that Accor have put in place to measure their achievements. As Bill Wilson, Technical Services Director for Accor UK and Ireland Hotels explains: "Monitoring does not have to be complex or time consuming. To start with, it can take the form of a spreadsheet that simply records the number of units consumed over the last month, the tariff and the total cost. As the programme develops, larger businesses may wish to record more comprehensive information, for example, to illustrate the amount of energy consumed in individual departments or related to sales or occupancy. At Accor, we developed our own monitoring system, but industry standards such as the Energy Assessment and Reporting Methodology (the basis on which Hospitable Cl
Accor monitoring system
Within individual hotels, the monitoring system employed by Accor enables those without a technical knowledge of energy management to understand whether their energy (and water) consumption is in line with company targets. Simple energy reports highlight actual performance against targeted performance and also record the amount of energy consumed per room let. The monitoring system for individual hotels, thus plays an important role to help general managers and other staff assess whether their energy management programme is delivering the anticipated results.
Corporate level
At a corporate level, the programme plays a different function and helps Bill and his team to understand:
* which units are implementing energy efficiency measures
* which may be targeted for action, including initiatives or investments
* whether any units may be experiencing errors in the bills as a result of meter errors or
estimated consumption
At a corporate level, the monitoring programme also plays a far more important and unexpected role. It is a powerful means for communicating success in achieving the aims of the company's environmental charter, for motivating staff and for generating healthy competition between units. Each month, every hotel in the UK receives an energy report illustrating the amount of each utility they have consumed and indicating the comparative data for hotels of the same brand.
League tables
As in all league tables, there are inherent unfairnesses in the monitoring system -- for example, a hotel that is 20 years old is likely to have a lower level of insulation than a modern building and may, therefore, not be able to achieve the same level of energy efficiency. However, hotels of similar age and characteristics have become fiercely competitive about their position on the league table and managers have found this an essential part of their armoury when it comes to keeping enthusiasm for the energy campaign and general environmental initiatives alive.
Hospitable Climates
The comprehensive monitoring system within Accor made the group initially sceptical about the potential benefits they could gain from joining Hospitable Climates. As Bill states: "We had already achieved significant energy savings and did not immediately understand the benefits of joining Hospitable Climates. We joined in 2001 and found that the programme helped us to save a further 6.5 percent on our energy bills". The main strength of Hospitable Climates membership for Accor have been the fact files, which provide advice directly to our staff who deliver energy savings within individual hotels; access to energy audits via Action Energy; and access to networking Share Fare events which enable staff to exchange experiences.
Reflecting on the success of the Accor programme, Bill says: "The secret of our success has been our ability to establish an environmental programme that catches the hearts and minds of employees. We do not aim to use our monitoring programme as a stick with which to punish units that are not achieving the targeted level of energy or water consumption. It is instead used as a decision-making tool that helps us and managers to inspire our staff to achieve even greater environmental efficiencies. Our membership of Hospitable Climates also plays an important role in this regard."
Hospitality Energy Assessment Tool Targeting Waste Series
Energy Measures, Case Study 5
Hospitable Times News, Monitoring and Targeting Pays Dividends for Accor UK and Ireland Hotels
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Posted by Kit Cassingham
