NH Hoteles has announced that it has received a 'Greenbuliding' award by the European Commission for the energy efficiency plan of the ambitiously renovated NH Principe de la Paz in Aranjuez.

The European Commission's GreenBuilding programme accredits the most environmentally friendly buildings that are not used as homes, as far as their energy consumption is concerned. NH Hoteles recently won this award for two of its hotels; a hotel in Barcelona (NH Podium) and one in Seville (NH Central Convenciones). The hotel chain will present its environmentally efficient initiative to some of its other 398 hotels for this programme.

After winning two Spanish prizes last January, the European Commission, in its GreenBuilding Programme, has awarded one of its 13 international prizes to the NH Principe de la Paz in Aranjuez. Luis Ortega, the Head of the Environment and Engineering for the NH Hoteles, picked up the prize at the Convention Centre in Frankfurt.

Since September 2009, NH Hoteles has been one of the European Commission's Partners for achieving its Environmental Plan, specifically in the GreenBuilding Programme. This project was started up in 2005 and aims to officially accredit non-residential buildings that are highly environmentally friendly with regards to their energy consumption. In particular, it certifies buildings which, over the last five years, have managed to achieve cutbacks of at least 25% in their total energy consumption. The first hotel in the chain that was accredited was the NH Principe de la Paz.

The renovation programme carried out at the NH Principe de la Paz achieved reductions of 1,930,928 Kwh in primary energy consumption, equal to the average home consumption of 1,300 people in a year and a reduction of 1,073 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

To achieve these targets, the hotel not only set up a system of comprehensive checking of its electricity, water and gas consumption, but also implemented technical measures and improvements in management. In addition to replacing all its energy inefficient light bulbs in its rooms and common areas, the NH Principe de la Paz cut down the amount of installed power in rooms by 68% without impairing brightness levels, implemented programmes for controlling the timing of outdoor lighting,
installed automatic sensors for detecting presence, put up solar sheets on the windows to lessen air-conditioning requirements, improved the systems for extracting and detecting smoke in the kitchens and installed a centralised system for managing its air-conditioning facilities.

In the area of management measures, after carrying out an in-depth energy audit to detect poor practices, specific training and awareness courses were set up for employees in the NH Principe de la Paz hotel and the work force was involved in an energy saving campaign.