Reducing energy consuming products in tourism
With winter tourism steaming full speed ahead, the "sustainability subject" rears its head again on how to reduce our carbon emissions and help improve the planetary conditions for the future generations.
Tourism contributes between 8 and 11% of gas emissions and it’s up to us to help reduce them by reducing waste, switching to renewable energy sources and adopting more energy efficient appliances.
The Glasgow declaration launched in November 2021 wants us to half global emissions by 2030 and to reach zero emissions before 2050. We know these things take time and patience so we have to start now! The declaration covers Measuring, Decarbonising, regenerating, collaborating and Financing.
We can start with measuring the emissions in each of our properties in order to figure out how and where we can begin reducing this and the new Linky counters being installed in our properties help us with the first step of understanding how much energy is being consumed.
There are 3 types of greenhouse emissions.
- Direct emissions: car, house, appliances from use of fossil fuels
- Indirect emissions from purchasing electricity, heat, steam
- Emissions for purchasing goods and services such as waste, commuting, business travel
The Paris agreement launched in 2016 says that we should reach a peak by 2025 and should aim at -43% less by 2030.
In order to help, we need to:
1. Identify the emission sources
2. Engage with our teams and suppliers
3. Come up with, and implement a plan.
By reducing emissions by 10% we save 1 EUR per day so let’s get to it.
The main energy consuming products are:
1.Heating, ventilation, air-conditioning (HVAC)
2.Lighting
3. Kitchen and food resources
4. Hot water
Alpine Essence has already begun the process of helping its chalet owners switch to renewable energy sources and some owners are improving their chalet insulation. Some of the chalets already have solar panels on the roof and none of our chalets have air-conditioning.We are helping all our owners with the installation of the new Linky counters so we can keep tabs on energy output.
In every chalet we have provided a chart for our guests explaining just a few ways to help keep the emissions down by the simple acts of turning lights off in unused areas, keeping the windows closed if the heating is on, turning the heating down before they leave the chalet for the day, using the shower rather than the bath….
Alpine Essence have minimised plastics, have electric quads for transporting luggage, use transport friendly booking partners, (travel by train), incited our team workers to get involved and talk to our guests about making an effort while on holiday and have electric cars for staff transport. We make sure our office space heating and computer usage are kept to a minimum and use an automated booking and deposit system to reduce paper usage. We all muck in to manually keep pathways to chalets and public areas free of snow with shovels and pick axes using only the absolute minimum of salt and gravel required to keep our guests safe.
Everybody needs to do their part when thinking about the future of our planet and Alpine Essence is getting involved in every possible way.