Water Savings: Dollar Earnings

By Gilbert Lennox-King 9 May, 2012

Energenz's Lennox-King shows us how a water audit & savings action plan with a payback period of less than a year could result in 39% cost savings for a large hotel

Water is cheap in most Asian cities and many think there’s not much upside in water audits. Think again. Despite low water prices, dollar earnings can be made through improved water efficiency as demonstrated in this case study on a mixed use resort including a 600 room hotel and large casino area.

The numbers are compelling. The impending water tariff hikes should make it more so. Dollar savings in the scenario of a 300% water price hike could be as much as HKD4.5 million. Gilbert Lennox-King from Energenz walks us through the case study…

How we conducted the programme

To enable our team to accurately identify where the water savings opportunities were most likely to be on the site, we first needed to understand where the water was being consumed.  Through our detailed analysis, Energenz established where the water was used on the site, as per the below chart:

This water breakup enabled our team to focus on water intensive areas when identifying water efficiency opportunities, and accurately calculate any water savings initiatives at the site.

The table below outlines the results of the water audit and makes up the first step in a Water Savings Action Plan for this client:

Not only water

As the table above shows, many of the initiatives, such as the laundry weighing programme, pool cover, low flow showerhead and the wind sensor have dual energy and water savings. Of the overall total cost savings per annum of HKD1,493,865 saved, energy savings make up almost HKD500k of these.

Impact of impending tariff hikes

Adding HKD1.5 million straight to the bottom line every year on an initial project investment cost of HKD1.1 million is a convincing business case. The business case becomes even more convincing when we start to look at projected water price increases. As Debra Tan states in her article, On Being Frank, Guangdong province has tabled water tariff rises of between 45 to 306%.

Based on tariff hike scenarios, this hotel would have the following increased costs:

Existing retrofit vs. new build

This water savings action plan is for an existing hotel that is three 3 years old, and is fairly typical for the type of savings that our team have seen available in new hotels in Hong Kong and Macau.  Energenz are currently engaged with new build projects where a number of additional water savings opportunities can be identified in the design stage.