Want to know where the country’s dirtiest hotel room is? No, it’s not that $20-per-night drive-in motel on the side of the highway. Chances are that it’s a penthouse suite in a J.W. Marriott hotel in Chicago.
And if you’re looking for the cleanest hotel in the country, you might consider going to a Vagabond Inn located somewhere in California.
That’s according to a new report from the research firm Brighter Planet, which just released a comprehensive ranking of the energy and carbon intensity of hotel chains across the country. Here’s a look at the geographic spread of where the “cleanest” and “dirtiest” hotels are located:
There are 51,000 hotels, motels and inns scattered around the U.S. with roughly five million guests rooms. According to Brighter Planet, the lodging industry represents 4 percent of all commercial building energy consumption in the country, generating 34.5 million metric tons of CO2 each year.
As appliances and building materials get more efficient, you’d think that the industry would be getting more efficient. But this analysis shows that modern hotels use far more energy per room than their “vintage counterparts.” This trend is particularly stark in upscale hotel chains, which use 25 percent more energy per night than the average budget hotel.
The dirtiest 25 percent of hotels — a large share of which are upscale chains — represent more than half of the energy use and carbon emissions from the entire lodging industry. The cleanest 25 percent only make up 7 percent of energy consumption and carbon emissions.
However, it’s wrong to conclude that high-class hotels are always going to be “dirtier” than budget lodging:
It’s probably no surprise that efficiency varies by price, with upscale hotels on average using 25% more energy per room-night than budget hotels. This is to be expected based on hotel characteristics: the average upscale hotel has twice as many rooms and was built a decade more recently than the average budget hotel, with midrange hotels falling in between.
But it’s important to note that there’s so much variability within each service class that the different service classes overlap significantly. Nationwide the cleanest upscale hotels are cleaner than most budget hotels, and the dirtiest budget hotels are as dirty as all but the dirtiest quarter of upscale hotels.
This study is particularly relevant for companies attempting to track their carbon footprints. It’s not just air or car travel that matters. Depending on the length of stay and the type of room purchased, lodging can rival the carbon intensity of office space.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
51,000 hotels serve five million guests per year? So each hotel has on average 100 guests per year; two per week? How do they manage to stay in business?
Digging into the report itself, it appears that the five million figure is the number of guest rooms:
Thanks for pointing out the error. Fixed.
Under the current socio-economics the affluent consumer is usually the wasteful consumer.
The socio-economics must adapt to largely eliminate resource plunder and waste where affluence is best evaluated by high quality of life — and perhaps low cost of living — and advancement toward positive change such as the elimination of emissions, eradication of poverty, advanced education, massive restoration of the environment etc.
Read the beginning section of the history of New York City by Mike Wallace, “Gotham,” where the overwhelming description was that of being Eden. Imagine the value of NYC if this high quality had been maintained despite major advancements optimally with the quality of life very high and the cost-of-living quite low.
Looks to me like hotels use a lot of energy in places that are very cold. Not sure exactly what Minneapolis hotels are supposed to do about sub-zero temperatures.
Carbon intensity is similarly affected by cold weather as well as the reliance in the Midwest on cheap Wyoming coal used to generate electricity.
I’m all for a strict carbon tax set at the level of the social cost of the carbon externality, but it is not at all clear to me that hotels are particularly inefficient in their energy usage.
The Brighter Planet report said that much of the hotel energy use is lighting (31%) and heating hot water (31%).
The report did not mention stratagems of the more efficient hotels.
Do they have motion-activated hall lighting? Can guests choose to reuse towels and sheets over a stay of more than a day, which saves hot water of laundering linens?
It’s not clear how much of the energy usage difference is due to optional amenities like hot tubs or due to lack of upgrades in more basic components of hotel service.
I recall reading a comment here a fair while ago from someone who’d been trying to get hotels to control their air conditioning. He wasn’t selling the super-budget your-air-won’t-come-on-unless-your-keycard-is-in-the-slot of the caravan park style of thing, though.
He just couldn’t get the owners or managers to see that they’d save buckets of money if they didn’t run air-conditioning in every room all day every day regardless of occupancy. There were all sorts of other seriously inefficient practices as well, but that was the one that struck me.