Event professionals looking to reduce the impact on the Earth from their events have a partner in meetings hotels. Over the past year, a significant number of large properties have stepped up to reduce greenhouse gasses. The latest major announcement came this week: Caesars Entertainment has set science-based targets to reduce carbon emissions by a whopping 95 percent.
Caesars is one of 100 companies with an approved emissions reduction plan from Science Based Target initiative (SBTi), a partnership between World Resources Institute, World Wildlife Fund, CDP Worldwide and United Nations Global Compact. The initiative can drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from participating companies and their supply chains.
Targets adopted by companies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are considered “science-based” if they meet the level of decarbonization required to keep global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius, as compared to pre-industrial temperatures.
Caesars Entertainment committed to reducing emissions 30 percent by 2025, and 95 percent by 2050 (using 2011 as its base year). The company will also require 60 percent of its suppliers to institute science-based GHG reduction targets for their operations by 2023.
Caesars is the first gaming company to include vendors in its verified science-based targets. This indirect influence also makes it one of the most ambitious goals for a company, explained Mark Frissora, president and CEO of Caesars Entertainment. “With thousands of suppliers throughout the company, Caesars recognized the importance of engaging the full supply chain in order to create meaningful impact,” he said in a press release.
One of the first demonstrations of how Caesars will achieve its aggressive goals is a Request for Proposal that will be issued in June for a major utility-scale purchase of solar energy in the Las Vegas desert. The solar program will deliver power to the company’s Nevada properties as part of its CodeGreen environmental program.
So far, Caesars company has already:
- Reduced total GHG emissions by 22.9 percent since 2011
- Reduced water use by 21 percent per-square-foot since 2008
- Diverted 41 percent of waste from landfills in 2017.
A Green Tide
A recent Green Lodging Trend Report found that sustainable practices are becoming the norm in the industry. Almost all hotels in the Americas reported that they practice recycling in common areas, and almost a quarter of them donate excess food to local nonprofits. Examples of hospitality companies making it easier for planners to do right by the planet include:
- MGM Resorts partnered with Invenergy to build a solar farm to power 13 properties on the Las Vegas Strip, in addition to building the nation’s largest contiguous rooftop solar array at Mandalay Bay Convention Center.
- Portola Hotel & Spa at Monterey Bay was the first Central California property to receive U.S. Green Building Council LEED certification through energy and water reduction, ozone laundering and solar generation.
- Newly remodeled and expanded Moscone Center in San Francisco was designed to meet LEED Platinum certification, with a wastewater treatment system that will save more than 5 million gallons of water each year.
