Fuel switching support for hoteliers

SWITCH-Asia Greening Sri Lanka Hotels Project:

The Greening Sri Lanka Hotels Project under the EU-SWITCH-Asia Program is targeted at enhancing the environmental performance of Sri Lankan hotels through improvement of energy, water and waste management systems and reducing cost of operations and increase the market acceptance of Sri Lankan hotels through promoting them as low carbon foot print green hotels.

The European Union funded project, implemented by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce has already taken the green message to the west coast, the southern and the eastern regions, the Cultural Triangle, the central and hill country and the east. At present, the project works with 112 registered hotels representing both SMEs and key players in the hospitality industry.

A new project coordinated by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Environment Ministry will support hotel sector projects to switch from oil and diesel to wood fuel. The project aims at converting industries currently running on oil, kerosene or diesel to sustainable biomass (harvested wood fuel, wood waste and agricultural waste).

A preliminary meeting was held at the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce premises on February 21 with the hotels registered with the SWITCH-Asia Greening Sri Lanka Hotels Project, to discuss the possibility of converting hotels that currently use diesel for steam generation.

The biomass energy project is funded by the Global Environmental Facility and implemented by the Forest Conservation Department and the Sri Lanka Sustainable Energy Authority in collaboration with the UNDP and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations(FAO) would consider assisting the interested hotels in replacing conventional fossil fuel based systems to Biomass-based steam generation system.