Energy Consumption and Carbon Emissions in Three Small-Size Hotels in The Island of Crete, Greece. Achieving Net-Zero Carbon Emissions

Hotels utilize large amounts of energy for meeting their energy requirements. They mainly use conventional energy sources while the use of zero-carbon energies is rather limited. The necessity to mitigate climate change and the efforts to achieve net-zero carbon economies in the next decades require the clean energy transition in hotel industry. An energy analysis of three small-size hotels located in the island of Crete, Greece has been realized combined with evaluation of their carbon emissions. It has been found that all of them use several benign energy technologies such as solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, solid biomass burning and high efficiency heat pumps. One hotel has negative carbon emissions, one zero-carbon emissions while the third has substantially reduced its carbon emissions and it could zero them with the use of solar energy technologies. Our work indicates that the achievement of net-zero carbon emission small-size hotels, due to energy use, in Crete is technically feasible, economically viable while the current legal framework allows the use of clean energy technologies in them. It is useful since it indicates that the clean energy transition in small-size hotels in Crete is easily achievable and it should be promoted. Their clean energy transition improves the environmental sustainability of the local hotel industry and it helps in the achievement of the national and EU target for net-zero emission societies by 2050.