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Dubai’s hotels now have until next year to reduce their carbon footprint, as part of a government initiative to promote environmental sustainability and reduce the impact of businesses on the climate.
The emirate’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) announced on Tuesday that it had extended the deadline for the implementation of the 19 Sustainability Requirements and Carbon Calculator submissions by one year. The hospitality sector now has until July 2021 to comply with the requirements.
“In light of the current situation surrounding the global COVID-19 pandemic, hotels will benefit from an additional 12-month implementation period to finalise their sustainability compliance,” the DTCM said in a statement.
“All requirements will now be mandated from 1 July 2021 with the extension also including the postponing of the Carbon Calculator monthly submissions until the same deadline,” it added.
The requirements include hotels’ sustainable management approaches, performance metrics, as well as energy, food and water management plans, guest education and employee training initiatives.
The 19 sustainability requirements were announced last year.
In January 2017, the Carbon Calculator was launched as part of the Tourism Dirham Platform. It’s a tool that tracks the carbon footprint of establishments within the hospitality sector in Dubai.
Under the programme, hotels are supposed to submit on a monthly basis their consumption of 11 carbon emissions sources, including electricity, district cooling, water, waste, fuel for transportation, fuel for generators, fire extinguishers and liquefied petroleum gas, for analysis.
The information collected is analysed to find out the sector’s collective carbon footprint.
Hotels account for approximately 1 percent of carbon emissions around the world, according tourismpartnership.org.
(Writing by Cleofe Maceda; editing by Seban Scaria)
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