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Feb 14, 2022, 8:00 AM
Calculating the carbon footprint, reducing and offsetting emissions, as well as the useful digital tools for achieving these goals, are current topics in the business environment due to new climate change regulations that are increasingly restrictive and require a wider range of companies to maintain thorough control over their emissions.
In this regard, the tourism sector, far from being immune to this reality, is responsible, according to the UNWTO, for a significant percentage of global emissions related to hospitality and, to a greater extent, transportation. Therefore, the hotel technology consultant EISI SOFT organized an online seminar with experts in the field to explain the legislative framework we are under and address questions from hoteliers.
The seminar, moderated by Xavier López, Director of Operations at EISI SOFT, featured Mar Robles, Co-founder of GreeMko (Green Management Technology); Joan Mateos, Managing Partner at Sinergies; Borja Daniel González, Environmental Technical Manager at Grupo EULEN; and Marga López, Project Director at EISI SOFT.
Legislation on climate change is increasingly expanding at all levels, with more restrictive regulations. At the European level, the first environmental legislation we encounter is Directive 2014/95/EU on non-financial reporting, which requires reporting on good governance practices at the social, environmental level, and specifically greenhouse gas emissions from large companies.
This directive was transposed into Spanish law in 2018 through Law 11/2018 on audit of accounts, covering non-financial information and biodiversity. It requires large companies with assets exceeding 20 million euros, an annual turnover above 40 million euros, and more than 500 employees to publish their non-financial information, including their carbon footprint.
From January 2021, Spanish legislation became more restrictive, requiring companies meeting the previous specifications to calculate their carbon footprint, reducing the employee threshold to 250. Additionally, the Climate Change and Energy Transition Law 7/2021 specifically mandates companies in Spain to publish their carbon footprint information. However, the scope of application, i.e., the types of companies required to report this information, will be specified in a royal decree.
According to Mar Robles, Sustainability Manager and Co-founder of Greemko: “Legislation will continue to increase and become more restrictive at the European, national, and regional levels, requiring more companies to calculate and report their carbon footprint information.”
However, “it will not only be done due to legislative obligation,” said Mar Robles, adding that: “there are also incentives and even benefits to calculating the carbon footprint, such as reducing costs associated with environmental impact, accessing new financing opportunities, and being more competitive in public tenders.”
At the regional level, several autonomous communities have taken the initiative to apply more restrictive legislations, such as Andalusia, the Basque Country, and specifically the Balearic Islands.
In this sense, within the national territory, the Balearic Islands have been the first community to generate the obligation of calculation and registration through Decree 48/202, which, starting January 1, 2022, requires medium and large companies operating in the Balearic Islands to calculate and register annually their carbon footprint from two years prior, i.e., the impact of activities from 2020 must be registered this year.
According to Joan Mateos, Managing Partner of the consultancy and laboratory Sinergies, “Between January 1 and September 30 each year, medium and large companies operating in the Balearic Islands with a turnover or balance sheet exceeding 10 million euros and at least 50 employees must calculate and register their carbon footprint, including all greenhouse gases. This includes mandatory consideration of direct emissions in Scope 1 and indirect emissions from energy purchases in Scope 2.”
The goal of calculating and registering the carbon footprint is mainly to understand the amount of emissions that need to be reduced and offset. In this regard, actions to reduce emissions from various economic activities are limited and need further development. To achieve the NET 0 goal set by the United Nations, offsetting comes into play. This means compensating for all those tons of CO2 equivalent that cannot be reduced through the development of various offset projects.
In this regard, Borja González, Environmental Technical Manager at Grupo EULEN, mentioned that “Climate change mitigation has become one of the main challenges for organizations worldwide, for which the development of emission offset projects emerges as one of the main lines of action in corporate strategies towards economic decarbonization.”
Aligned with this, Grupo EULEN has developed a carbon sink pool to help companies achieve climate neutrality through offset projects, such as international projects, green carbon projects through active forest creation, blue carbon projects through the creation of seagrass meadows, peat bogs, and microalgae, among others.
Throughout the carbon footprint calculation process, digitalization plays a crucial role in helping companies automate and simplify the process. In this regard, EISI SOFT has partnered with Greemko to integrate carbon footprint calculation in Scope 1 and 2 through a specific sustainability module in its operational process digitalization platform for hotel assets.
Marga López, Project Director at EISI SOFT, presented the new sustainability module of their platform and emphasized that: “Based on our approach to making EISI HOTEL the digital twin of the hotel asset, which allows transforming the establishment's operations into data. With the new sustainability module, we have added the ability to automatically and in real-time calculate the carbon footprint, in addition to the existing waste and resource (energy and water) management. This not only aims to reduce environmental impact and comply with existing and upcoming regulations but also to raise awareness among organizations about their environmental footprint and address the demands for ecological transition and circular economy increasingly requested by institutions and clients.”
With EISI HOTEL's new sustainability module, hoteliers can automatically and in real-time calculate the carbon footprint related to various emission sources, such as electricity, fuels, gases, etc., which must be reported to official bodies. Additionally, it allows for tracking the impact per customer and comparing different periods to ensure that emission reduction efforts are having the desired impact.
In conclusion, this is the year for combating climate change. A large number of guidelines and initiatives are expected at the European, national, and regional levels to meet carbon neutrality objectives, and companies that are prepared and engaged will be better positioned competitively to respond.
Undoubtedly, environmental impact is everyone's responsibility, and it is a fight at the individual, organizational, and administrative levels to preserve our environment. Measuring it is really straightforward; you only need to have the right tools.
If you also want to digitalize waste and resource management and automate carbon footprint calculation with our new sustainability module, you can request more information through the contact form or by sending an email to info@eisisoft.com.
Additionally, if you couldn't attend the webinar, you can access the recording HERE.