10 tips to help hospitality businesses to save energy
- Tuesday, January 7, 2025
- Posted By The Growth Company
If you're a hospitality sector manager, owner or operator, you’ll be more than familiar with the impact of rising energy bills on businesses, with more and more money is being spent keeping the business running. If you’re looking for practical ways to lower these costs, while also lowering your carbon footprint, here is a ten-tip guide to help you get started:
Educating staff on reducing energy usage in smaller ways, such as turning off lights when they leave a room and not leaving doors or windows open unnecessarily, can make a big difference when it comes to saving energy.
Obtain professional advice on energy usage and conduct an energy audit to identify where savings can be made. Bee Net Zero partner Green Economy offer energy audits to support hospitality businesses bespoke support on identifying energy use and improvements that could be made.
Regularly servicing equipment such as refrigerators, air conditioning, ovens and lighting can not only keep energy costs low as they’ll be working to their optimum efficiency, but also keeps the equipment running for longer and lowering the need for expensive replacements.
Make sure to completely fill washing machines, dishwashers, glasswashers and other equipment. This will reduce the need for multiple cycles and keep both energy and water bills down.
Educate guests on their energy use, lead by example by showing them how you save energy without giving directives. For example, hang an infographic in the bathroom showing how much heating is saved by installing water saving shower heads, or put a note on the window, asking the guest if they switched the air con off before opening the window.
By replacing traditional incandescent or fluorescent lights with energy-efficient alternatives, installing motion sensors and timers and utilising natural light where possible, you can heavily reduce waste and lower your operational costs.
Regularly cleaning and maintaining HVAC systems, installing programmable thermostats and upgrading to energy efficient HVAC systems are all great wasy to keep energy consumption low and costs down considerably.
Make sure you know the recommended temperatures for specific areas in hospitality businesses and use that as a guide. The Carbon Trust provide a solid guide to this if you’re unsure what area should be which temperature.
If you’re looking for a more drastic change, air source heat pumps are a renewable technology that can lower your business’s heating bills. They extract ambient heat from outside air, even at low temperatures, to provide space heating and hot water. Government grants are available to cover the upfront costs of installing an air source heat pump under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme until 2025.
It’s important to know who is supplying your energy to you and if they are offering you the best deal. With so many aggregators online, it’s easy to browse the market and find the cheapest supplier. Although this won’t actually help you cut down on your consumption, it might help you save money.
To learn more about support available to help hospitality businesses in Greater Manchester reduce energy costs and become more sustainable, get in touch with us.