A Guide for Hotels: Boosting Profits with Energy Efficiency & Conservation
Planning an Energy Program: General Guidelines
Before taking any energy efficiency steps at your facility, devise a strategy that will guide your actions and yield the biggest benefits.
General Guidelines for creating an energy action plan:
- Conduct an energy audit to determine current and future energy needs based on current use and available improvements.
- Establish achievable goals for conservation in your hotel.
- Appoint an energy team or energy manager* to oversee your energy plan. You might use a task force to brainstorm specific conservation steps the hotel could take.
- Develop a draft. It is important to consider issues beyond energy when creating your energy plan to be sure that you are not creating problems in other arenas such as water use.
- Engage employees and solicit comments from anyone affected by the energy plan.
- Finalize your plan and create mechanisms for implementation and evaluation of results. Identify key players for implementation and evaluation, clearly defining roles and responsibilities and consequences for not staying on target. The plan will not help you if it sits on a shelf collecting dust.
*An energy manager is responsible for facilitating and coordinating the planning, procurement and utilization of energy resources at a property, facility or portfolio of properties. In some organizations, the energy manager is a full-time, dedicated position whose responsibilities might encompass a single building or a whole portfolio of properties. In others, energy management is just one part of the responsibilities of a facility or property manager. A background in engineering is common; increasingly, business and communication skills are also required. The energy manager carefully analyzes a company's potential for investment, articulates findings and recommendations to company decision makers, oversees implementation of efficiency and conservation measures and then tracks and quantifies results stemming from the energy management program. In doing so, successful energy managers depend on their relationships with co-workers, such as building staff, business managers and company executives, as well as external partners, such as vendors, contractors, energy service providers and the local utilities.
Your efficiency plan will be most successful if you have the full support of all employees. They will be responsible for many of the conservation steps in your plan. Make sure everyone understands the importance of efficiency to the business, the state and the environment.
Marriott International
Marriott International recently announced that more than 85 of its hotels will earn the ENERGY STAR label in 2007. Pat Maher, Senior Vice President, Engineering and Program Management for Marriott, says Marriott now has more than 200 properties with the ENERGY STAR label and it expects to increase that number by 33% in 2008.