CARBON EMISSIONS OF A FUTURE HOTEL IN JURONG LAKE DISTRICT

Abstract

Being naturally vulnerable to the consequences of climate change, Singapore must start to develop sustainably. Jurong Lake District was identified as Singapore’s new generation of sustainable high-density districts and will soon have its first hotel building built by 2015.

Hotels account for almost 2% of Singapore’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Estimation of carbon emissions coming from this future hotel will aid in the identification of carbon intensive operations and henceforth help in setting priorities during implementation of carbon reduction policies. Carbon emitting operations shortlisted for carbon accounting were electricity consumption, water consumption and waste generation.

Carbon emissions were estimated based on actual data obtained from comparable hotel buildings in Singapore. The study revealed that this future hotel will probably consume 16,358.19 kWh of electricity, 210.93 m3 of water and generate 908.54 kg of waste annually. Annual carbon emissions was estimated at 5,267.44 tCO2-e, with electricity consumption being the major carbon emitter (86.49%), followed by waste generation (13.23%) and subsequently water consumption (0.29%). Through the case study, organic waste was found to account for a high 52.09% of total waste generated.

Carbon reduction strategies, in areas of energy, water and waste management, were proposed for this future hotel based on findings from the case study and investigations on green technologies available (e.g. renewable energy sources, greywater and on-site waste recycling systems).

Nonetheless, limitations of this study were in terms of its small sample size, lack of actual resource consumption data for analysis and inability to include all carbon emitting operations for carbon accounting.