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.
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