This Hotel Hopes to Be ‘Carbon Positive’ Without Carbon Credits
15.04.2024 - 18:31
/ skift.com
/ Elizabeth Casolo
Denver’s new Populus hotel, opening this summer, aims to be a “carbon-positive” hotel and an example of environmentally conscious hospitality. But two things make this hotel stand out: Populus plans to do this without buying carbon credits or focusing on LEED certifications.
Populus’ team intends to blend contemporary style and natural elements, with the building boasting views of the skyline and mountains. The hotel has 265 rooms and suites, a rooftop, two restaurants, a coffee bar, and event spaces.
The idea of carbon-neutral hotels isn’t new. How Populus is going from neutral to positive, though, is different. Think of carbon positive as one step beyond carbon neutral. The hotel’s developer, Urban Villages, considers carbon-positive status as sequestering — collecting and storing — more carbon in soil and biomass than is produced across the building’s lifespan.
While Urban Villages tried to limit the carbon emitted while building the hotel — such as by using reduced-carbon concrete — the plan wasn’t perfect.
“There’s no way to build a building that does not emit carbon,” Urban Villages President Jon Buerge told Skift. “It’s an impossible venture.”
To achieve neutrality, companies will sometimes rely on carbon credits. These credits allow companies to finance projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions or collecting carbon from the atmosphere. This strikes a balance in carbon output with the polluter, ideally reaching net zero. Standards around carbon credits aren’t always universal, but projects undergo verification, according to the Harvard Business Review. That wasn’t in Populus’ playbook.
“It’s just a financial transaction. We’re not actually emitting or sequestering carbon as a result of this transaction,” Buerge said. “We got uncomfortable with this idea of this financial transaction that goes into some ether that we don’t understand.”
Instead, Urban Villages partnered with the U.S. Forest Service to plant 72,000 trees in Colorado’s Gunnison County. Consultants and Urban Villages estimated these trees would cover the 7,500 megatons of carbon released in the building process.
The choice of Engelmann spruce trees was intentional — Japanese Beetles decimated trees in Colorado, but this spruce would be resilient. Buerge prioritized keeping the sustainability efforts close to home.
Urban Villages also decided not to focus heavily on LEED certifications, which rely on a points system to classify green buildings globally. After working on a LEED Platinum project — the most esteemed rating — in Seattle, Buerge said the team changed direction.
“I realized along the way, we were just chasing these points,” Buerge said. “We were doing things that were expensive, but the net impact was pretty