Jetwing Hotels aims to have all its hotels carbon neutral by 2020

In Sri Lanka while  air conditioners are serious energy guzzlers, the Jetwing Hotel chain wants to make all cooling in its hotels carbon neutral by 2020 - using cinnamon. 

While Air conditioning consumes more than half the energy used by  the hotels,  conventional systems use harmful coolants and are powered by electricity.

According to a report that appeared in DW, Jetwing is switching to climate-friendly absorption chillers, which cool using steam. To generate the steam, the hotels will burn wood waste from the cinnamon industry. As a result, only as much CO2 is released as was initially absorbed when the cinnamon wood was grown.

With 30 hotels, Jetwing is one of the largest hotel chains in Sri Lanka. Burning biomass will save 2,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year. 

Its project partners include International Climate Initiative (IKI); Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on behalf of the German Ministry for the Environment (BMU); Nature Conservation; German Ministry for the Environment as part of the Green Cooling Initiative.

Many hotels use outdated cooling systems that guzzle electricity and use coolants that are very powerful greenhouse gases.  Jetwing, one of the largest in Sri Lanka, is now modernizing its system, and plans to be carbon-neutral by 2020.

The hotel chain accoridng to the report has already installed climate-friendly cooling systems in five of its hotels. These so-called absorption chillers convert heat into cold. To do that, they burn wood waste from the cinnamon industry.  Jetwing buys the wood waste and the cinnamon trees are reforested - it's a climate-neutral cycle. But the green project is already facing its first limitation, as readily available cinnamon wood is becoming scarce.