Customer Case Study: Barony Castle
Barony Castle Hotel Offsets Carbon Emissions in latest ECO-drive
Set in 27 acres of countryside in the Scottish borders, Barony Castle is an 83-bedroom hotel, spa, and wedding venue, with a restaurant that caters for approximately 1,000 covers a week.
With a need for a reliable fuel to power its kitchens, central heating and hot water systems, Barony Castle’s very existence is dependent on an efficient, and uninterrupted energy supply to its off-grid location. This is exactly what it has received from Flogas, during a longstanding relationship that stretches back almost a decade.
Location
Scotland
Application
Hotel – heating and cooking
Results
- 264 tonnes of CO2 offset annually
- Equivalent to 70 return flights from Edinburgh to Sydney
Service and Relationships
“A round-the-clock supply of energy is the lifeblood of any hotel, but its importance is even more prominent when you’re located off the national gas grid like we are.
“Flogas understands that, and we have complete trust in the service they provide. For example, to make sure we never run out of gas, Flogas has installed a telemetry system that monitors the LPG levels in our storage tanks, and automatically orders more to ensure we always have the gas we need to keep our hotel running smoothly.
“But our relationship with them goes much further than just filling up our gas tanks. They’re extremely fair, professional, and easy to work with, and we know that if we ever needed anything, they’re easily contactable and will find solutions quickly. You can’t under-estimate how important that is to us.”
Susan Allan, Sales and Marketing Manager, Barony Castle Hotel.
A good example of this came when the hotel wanted to re-evaluate the gas usage specifically in its restaurant. Along with food and staff salaries, energy makes up a large part of the costs associated with running a restaurant. So, it was vital for hotel management to know exactly how much they were spending on the kitchen’s energy use, compared to the rest of the hotel. To allow them to do this, Flogas installed a specific meter that only measured the gas being used for cooking, enabling them to set their menu prices at a more profitable level.
This sort of bespoke solution is what Flogas prides itself on. Instead of offering an ‘off-the-peg’ or ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, Flogas provides its business customers with a turnkey solution and minimal downtime, whilst ensuring all energy requirements are met.
Supporting Sustainability
Flogas has also provided a vital solution to the hotel’s contribution to global sustainability.
As part its ongoing renewable and environmental programme, the hotel reviewed its operational efficiencies and processes to reduce energy use, and introduced sustainability initiatives to reduce unavoidable emissions. These included ‘room service on request only’, low energy smart lighting, locally sourced meat and produce, and newly installed electric vehicle charging points.
However, one of the hotel’s largest environmental contributions is in offsetting all of its LPG carbon emissions, which it does through the Flogas Carbon Offsetting Initiative.
Through the initiative, Barony Castle Hotel offsets 264 tonnes of CO2 every year, an amount equivalent to driving 738,000 miles, or 70 return flights from Edinburgh to Sydney.
The way it works
Flogas’ Carbon Offsetting Initiative allows Barony Castle to offset the unavoidable LPG carbon emissions created during day-to-day operations. It sees any emissions created balanced by verified carbon reduction projects that remove an equivalent amount of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
For this to happen, carbon credits are purchased, based on the hotel’s energy usage, which are put towards activities that capture or absorb carbon dioxide around the world.
Examples of projects helped through the Flogas scheme include one that provides some of the poorest households in Burkina Faso, West Africa, with access to eco-friendly cooking equipment, and another that has protected an area of nearly 750,000 hectares in Zimbabwe from deforestation. More information on these, and other Flogas carbon offsetting projects can be found here:
Supporting Success
“With Scotland revising its climate change targets, and committing to reduce emissions of all greenhouse gases to net-zero by 2045, we have to act now. For off-grid businesses like Barony Castle, the Flogas Carbon Offsetting Initiative will go a long way towards helping them achieve their sustainability targets. Not only are they using LPG, the cleanest off-grid fossil fuel, they are combining it with carbon offsetting, to drastically reduce their environmental impact.
“The initiative is also an important part of the Flogas ‘2040 Vision’ – our plan on how we intend to support the government’s carbon reduction targets by building a lower-carbon future for off-grid homes and businesses across the UK.”
Garry Wilson, Key Account Manager, Flogas Britain
We have specific sustainability objectives that are not only important in ensuring we hit the amended Scottish climate change targets, but also to our guests. They expect us to be playing our part in creating a greener world, and the Flogas carbon offsetting scheme allows us to do just that.
Susan Allan | Barony Castle Hotel
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