FHA: IHG working on new version of Green Engage
22 April 2010
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) is in the process of developing a new version of its green standard Green Engage, an executive at the company revealed at the FHA Expo in Singapore today.
In a panel discussion on green design, Hoyce Ho, director of engineering and energy management, InterContinental Hotels Group Asia Australasia, said the company was working on producing a second version of the green benchmark it originally launched in August last year.
“We believe that for a company of our scale, we need to have [our own system]. We have our own ideas to what green hotels should look like. We have done some research and we have an online tool where guests can leave feedback about green hotels and taking this into consideration we feel we need to develop our own system,” he said.
Ho added that most of the group’s hotels in the Asia Pacific region use the benchmarking system EarthCheck and are either EarthCheck benchmarked or certified, while some of its new hotels use Earth Check building planning and design status.
Ho said the first version of Green Engage cross references to other certification such as US Green Building system LEED and the UK environmental assessment method BREEAM. He told Hotel Management Asia that the company was currently working on a revised version of the standard, but did not specify when it would be ready.
Developed by IHG, Green Engage is an online tool designed to help general managers manage energy consumption more effectively.
If fully adopted by all hotels across the 4,000 strong IHG portfolio, savings for hotel owners could be as much as $200 million using the system, the company said at the time of launch.
Green Engage has a three-pronged approach to environmental concerns, based around measuring, managing, and reporting energy use and wastage.
The tool was launched on a gradual roll-out across IHG’s brands with the intention being for it to be used in all the company’s hotels eventually.
Ho was speaking at the panel discussion on ‘Building and Investing in Green Chains’ which was held today as part of the Hospitality Operations & Design conference taking place at the Food and Hotel Asia Expo in Singapore.
