Budget chain easyHotel is to spend £4.5 million to improve energy efficiency at 12 UK properties.
Heat pumps, solar panels, improved metering, control systems and new more efficient air conditioning systems will be installed
The aim is to cut CO2 emissions are expected to fall by 45% by 2025 across all the UK hotels.
Additionally, single use plastic bottles have been removed from all owned and leased hotels with free filtered water fountains installed for guests to refill their own bottles or buy a reusable bottle from reception.
Plastic key cards are being replaced with wooden alternatives certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as coming from sustainably managed forests.
The wooden key cards are expected to prevent 55,000 plastic key cards from being produced this year.
The group has also partnered with carbon-neutral facilities management company, Kanso, for all cleaning across its owned and leased UK hotels.
Initiatives such as removing plastic bin liners from rooms and using refillable recycled bottles has led to a 42% decrease in easyHotel’s plastic waste associated with hotel cleaning since last September.
The UK locations involved are London Shoreditch, Croydon, Birmingham Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Milton Keynes, Ipswich, Cardiff, Newcastle and Glasgow. The hotels will remain open while the work is completed.
Similar low-carbon investments for its hotels in Belgium, France, Netherlands and Spain are to be announced by the end of the year.
The hotel company’s chief executive Karim Malak said: “The hotel industry accounts for about 1% of carbon emissions globally, and we have a collective responsibility to do all we can to reduce these emissions.
“Our business is naturally low-carbon thanks to our size-efficient room design which uses less raw materials, but it’s important for us to look at every area of our operations and try where we can, to be as low-carbon as possible.
“Our no-frills, easy, experience means we don’t provide unnecessary items that end up in landfill or waste power on often unused elements of a hotel such as gyms and restaurants.
“The energy that we do consume is set to become even more efficient due to this investment and we’re proud to be offering low-carbon alternatives which in turn, enables us to pass on savings to our guests too.”