• DECIPHER
  EARTHCHECK
  IPAT
  GREEN GLOBE

Savings in the City

“Building a foundation for emissions reduction awareness”

The City of Melbourne’s ‘Savings in the City- Green Hotels’ programme was developed as a sustainability initiative which would build a foundation for emissions reduction awareness in the city. The Council wished to benchmark the environmental performance of 20-30 hotels as part of the programme. This was done in an effort to obtain a quantitative overview of the environmental performance of hotel operations and to be able to identify and highlight areas where operations could be improved.

EC3 Global’s Earthcheck benchmarking software provided the City with an easy-to-navigate interface for the hotels to be able to measure their energy, water and waste output each year.

The benchmarking activity the hotels underwent annually provided the City of Melbourne with the ability to identify best practice for addressing climate change issues such as greenhouse gas emissions. The City found that hotels benchmarking against similar companies provided Melbournes’ major hotels with a market advantage, as they were able to identify and create early environmentally-responsible targets and develop emissions objectives based on the figures they received.

The measurement of energy, water and waste also assisted the City by providing a solid data reference from which they can base future building development and planning decisions.

The City of Melbourne’s Sustainable Business Coordinator, Sheridan Blunt, says: “The annual benchmarking activity undertaken by hotels provided the City of Melbourne with the ability to identify best practice for addressing climate change issues such as greenhouse gas emissions.”

In its pilot year, the Savings in the City benchmarking programme assisted participating hotels to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by over 11,000 tonnes – equivalent to the average greenhouse gas emissions produced by 933 Victorian households. In addition, one individual hotel claims to have achieved operational cost savings of over $AUD50,000 annually by benchmarking the three key indicators.