IHG opens first zero carbon hotel

EXETER, England – IHG Hotels & Resorts has opened its first branded zero carbon hotel in partnership with Zeal Hotels and Valor Hospitality. The voco Zeal Exeter Science Park has been designed to operate entirely on renewable and solar energy.

The 142-room hotel has earned a BREAM Outstanding rating as the first building in the U.K. that has utilized vertical photovoltaic panels as a rainscreen cladding system. It also follows the Passivhaus standard for ultra-low energy buildings and uses adiabatic cooling and heat reversible heat pumps to reduce energy usage.

Voco Zeal Exeter Science Park was constructed using materials chosen for their sustainable characteristics and assembled to achieve best-in-class results. For example, they have used Ecocrete during construction, a low carbon concrete with up to 85% less CO2 than CEM1 (100% cement).

The hotel has been designed to reach net-zero operational and embodied carbon.

Various measures and techniques have been utilized to achieve net-zero carbon construction, including:

• The building has been designed to minimize operational energy use and should achieve an EUI (Energy Use Intensity) of less than 60kWh/m2, one of the lowest known in the U.K. This has been done by following the Passivhaus building standard to ensure that the building requires less energy for heating and cooling as well as using heat recovery, adiabatic cooling for guestrooms and reversible heat pumps for balanced load sharing.
• Refrigerant emissions have also been minimized by using CO2 heat pumps, with a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 1, for domestic hot water - a significant reduction in environmental impact compared to conventional refrigerants.
• It is designed to operate entirely on renewable energy and maximize on site renewable electricity generation through vertical photovoltaic panels.

The embodied carbon used in the construction of the hotel was reduced through sustainable material choices, including the use of 60% Ground Granulated Blast-furnace Slag (GGBS) in the concrete mix for the building frame (GGBS is a by-product from the blast-furnaces used to make iron). The remaining embodied carbon will be offset.