Nailcote Hall Hotel, Golf & Country Club is an idyllic
Jacobean retreat situated in Solihull Warwickshire. Rick Cressman,
proprietor of the hotel, wanted to reduce the hotel's carbon
footprint, while at the same time lessen the impact of escalating
electricity costs.
Financing energy efficiency
In order to finance the required upgrade to more energy
efficient technology, Rick turned to the Energy
Efficiency Financing (EEF) scheme, a joint venture between the
Carbon Trust and Siemens. Rick wanted to try and find a way to
better manage and contain energy costs in the current challenging
economic climate.
The benefits of using an EEF arrangement was first introduced to
Nailcote Hall via their energy efficient lighting supplier City
Electrical Factors (CEF). The availability of specialist financing
for the project enabled the hotel to start work on a re-lamping
project, converting 670 regular halogen light fittings which can
use anything between 35-100 watts into LED light fittings which
only use 7 watts of power.
Energy savings payback
A Carbon Trust assessment of the application confirmed that
investing £30,000 in re-lamping all the light fittings should bring
a saving of approximately £12,000-14,000 a year. This investment
was expected not only to help reduce power usage but also reduce
the amount of staff time changing light bulbs, the cost of buying
replacement light bulbs and a reduction in maintenance time. The
expected payback on the project is around 2.5 years and as the
monthly payments are less than the monthly energy savings achieved
from the new lighting, the hotel will be cash positive from the
very start of the project.
Nailcote Hall has now launched a second energy saving project,
the installation of a 100kW biomass boiler, with the aim of
reducing the hotel's heating costs. The biomass boiler will run on
a combination of woodpellet and the bi-product of the biodigestor,
a biomass fuel which is a sustainable, carbon neutral source energy
alternative.
In addition, the hotel has already undertaken a further project
to install a food digestor to reduce food wastage costs, as well as
delivering a supplementary supply of burnable fertiliser. This will
be combined with the wood pellet supply for the biomass boiler. The
biomass boiler was supplied through BioNova Recycling and the
biodigestor through ACM plc on an EEF lease.
Download the Nailcote
Hall Hotel, Golf & Country Club case study (PDF)