OURS TO PROTECT
James Hayde the Director of Sales for The Iveagh Garden Hotel met with Q102 as part of their ‘Ours to Protect’ initiative. They discussed the steps the hotel has taken to cut their carbon emission since becoming Europe’s first sustainable hotel in 2018.
The Hospitality Industry contributes to roughly 1% of carbon emissions globally. With water being a fundamental resource in many hotels across the globe. According to the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, the average hotel guest uses eight times more water than the local community.
Many hotels in the country have begun taking steps to increase their sustainability efforts and limit their impact on the climate. The Iveagh Garden Hotel became Europe's first ever fully sustainable hotel after opening in 2018. The Hotel's director of sales James Hayde says their transition to becoming fully sustainable was a comprehensive process.
Interviewer: What steps did the hotel take to become more sustainable
James: "Our owners, the McGill family, had a strong desire to reduce their carbon footprint within their hotel's operations. So we put a system in place worth approximately 2 million with a projected return in 7.5 years overall. The hotel’s pre-existing technology such as the plumbing and heating systems that ran on fossil fuels were replaced with a new system which uses natural energy that's harvested on site”.
“We have an underground energy reserve for the cooling and heating of the hotel, which operates without burning any fossil fuels. Our natural energy centre uses electricity that's produced on site in the gas engine which then eliminates the electrical energy that's required and taken out from the grid",
"Our on-site gas turbine produces hot water for the hotel use, which is stored in each floor, in the bathrooms. And wastewater operates through gravity based design with no plumbing energy required. So basically, we're trying to keep it as low cost and as green and as effective as possible on site"
Image: Iveagh Garden Hotel
Interviewer: “Can you tell us how the hotel measures their sustainability to know that what they are doing is working?”
James: "We track it through the systems that we have on site here in our plant room. We have a lot of processes in place where we measure on a daily basis our intake and outtakes, and then we offset them as well".
"We can monitor it as well against the hotel’s energy bills. We've seen a reduction, especially with the high energy crisis that was going on, our bills did rise but not as high as other establishments. This showed us that we weren't using as much power and electricity off the grid as other hotels, and that we're keeping a lot of it inside".
Interviewer: “Is it difficult to stay sustainable?”
"I suppose COVID kind of led to us having to temporarily get rid of a lot of the sustainable practices that we had in place. We unfortunately had to go back to single use items such as sugar packets on the tables and single use shower products in the bathrooms".
"Thankfully we're slowly getting back to implementing those smaller sustainable practices. We're trying to eliminate as much of that as possible and return back to our full green plan that we had when we opened back in 2018. We're slowly getting back on track".
Interviewer: “Do you think your use of more sustainable practices and being a greener hotel impacts customers' decision to stay with you?”
James says the hotel attracts a lot of visitors who are trying to be more mindful of their environmental impact.
James: “Yes, definitely. Especially in the corporate world, at the moment, everyone is looking to reduce their carbon footprint. With us being a green hotel and Europe's first sustainable hotel, it leads to the bigger multinational companies choosing to stay with us. Being able to offset some of their carbon footprint, especially if they have delegates that are visiting the office. At least they're making the right choice and staying in a Green Hotel while they're here and trying to do their best".
Interviewer: “What statistics do you have on the hotel's sustainability”.
James: “Ideally we're looking to increase our ER rating for the building. When the hotel was first purchased prior to construction we had an E1 rating, we're now on A3 level. So we have a decrease in energy usage, just 78% and a decrease in our Co2 emissions of 81.86%".
"With the carbon saving that we do on site here basically it translates to 645 vehicles driven for a year. So that's over 11 million kilometres driven by an average passenger. That's what we're saving here on site".
"We have carbon saving emissions from Co2 to balance it out would be about 530 homes of electricity use for one year, or 1.1 million litres of diesel that's consumed over the year. To put it into today's context, we can power 387,594 smartphones throughout the year".
“These are the figures that we are looking at here and what we have measured over the time the hotel has been open. We’re just looking to grow that in the next couple of year”.
Interviewer: “The Hospitality Industry is aiming to reduce emissions by 66% by 2030, and by 90% by 2050, but unless other hotels begin taking similar steps to the Iveagh Garden Hotel, those targets will be difficult to meet”