Lessons learnt at this Burgess Hill hotel were applied at the new Premier Inn in Barry
Insulation played a key part in the overall plan for the Barry site
placed than many when it comes to knowing where to concentrate its efforts on carbon reduction. ‘Even back in 2009 we had a very good understanding of our energy use in our hotels and restaurants, with half-hourly metering on gas and electricity and water meters also coming through at that time,’ says Brakes. ‘Now we have gone down to minute sub-metering, with some of our locations having up to 50 meters, so we have robust data where we can separate out the figures from the restaurants and hotels and get a good understanding of our base loads.’ Unsurprisingly, heating and hot water
With the reduced FITs now available, Whitbread will not be funding any further applications unless energy price rises make the technology more attractive
6 CIBSE Journal October 2012
usage are two key areas, but the lighting grabbed some early attention. ‘When we looked into it, reducing the lighting load gave us a very quick win. It’s not just about the equipment but how often the lighting is on,’ points out Brakes. ‘We made a big investment in LED lighting, PIR [passive infrared] detection and zoning controls in an aggressive rollout and achieved a payback in less than two years. That’s a good business decision with great environmental benefits.’ Of course, not all energy-saving technologies are going to give you a payback as quickly as that. Whitbread also takes a longer-term view, trialling equipment in its new-build stores to assess which technologies make the grade, before
rolling it out into its existing estate. ‘We would like energy-saving equipment
to achieve a payback in less than three years,’ explains Brakes. ‘If it’s under that, then you can pretty much say we will invest without too many arguments with the finance director. You might have a bit more of an argument with a five-year payback, and anything over that will have to have other benefits alongside the financial ones.’
Feeding green aspirations One such technology is solar photovoltaics (PV). Whitbread has this year installed PV technology at 10 Premier Inn hotels across southern England. These are expected to generate moe than 84 kW per year of electricity and save more than 42 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. With the Feed-in Tariffs (FITs) available at the time, solar PV technology will achieve a payback of just under six years, and makes a very visible statement of green intent. However, with the reduced FITs now available, Whitbread will not be funding any further applications unless energy price rises make the technology more attractive. Whitbread is already drawing valuable experience from its new-build hotels. ‘As we own the freehold on the majority of our properties it enables us to look at longer paybacks,’ says Brakes. ‘For example, we are looking at less than 10 years for ground and
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