Questions & Answers

ClimateScore is founded in Denmark, and our main purpose is to assist guests and companies in choosing climate-conscious hotels and conference venues. We developed Climate Score, a tool for hotels and events to reduce CO2 emissions with easy recommendations. Meanwhile, we discovered it to be a powerful tool that enables hotels to prioritize initiatives, subsequently saving a significant amount of money. Both aspects are crucial in our mission to create more climate-conscious hotels for people to choose from. The Climate Score is influenced by the guests and the hotel’s consumption, including choices related to food, energy, etc. The methodology is well-documented and adheres to ISO standards. Both large and small hotels can easily utilize this tool.

The Climate Score is a unique tool developed by ClimateScore to address the environmental impact of the hotel industry. Grounded in a scientific approach based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) principles and adhering to ISO 14040 and ISO-14044 standards, this method has undergone critical reviews by three external climate institutions, ensuring its reliability. ClimateScore conducts LCAs for hotels, converting CO2e emissions into a metric known as the hotel’s “Climate Score.” This annual score, ranging from 1 to 10 (with 10 being the best), signifies the lowest quantified CO2e emissions per guest per day. The score is dynamic, resetting yearly with updated data and must always display the assessment year. This intentional design sparks continual emission reduction efforts, motivating hotels to act proactively. The Climate Score is designed to make it easy for you as a guest to choose the climate footprint you want during your hotel and/or conference stay while motivating hotels to improve their climate footprint over time.

Table: Overview of the conversion between Global Climate Score and CO2e pr 24-hour guest equivalent for 2024

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is considered the most comprehensive method for quantifying climate impact. It is the preferred approach in anticipation of the future EU ‘Green Claims’ directive, addressing communications and comparisons related to climate. This ensures that your communicated results and scores are robust, minimizing the risk of greenwashing allegations or critical inquiries into your outcomes.

To make informed choices about hotels assessing their CO2 emissions, ClimateScore follows Life Cycle thinking—a crucial tool in decision-making. This process involves a quantitative assessment using a life cycle assessment (LCA), following ISO-standardized steps such as goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment, and interpretation of results.

Life cycle thinking allows us to comprehensively quantify environmental impact, considering all activities from raw material extraction to recycling and end-of-life. One of the strengths of LCA is its collection of multiple impact categories for a holistic analysis, including water, emissions, land use, etc., to understand all aspects of the impact. The primary focus, most discussed publicly, is on global warming potential (GWP), measured as the sum of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in CO2 equivalents (CO2e). The resultant impact is referred to as CO2e-impact.

The Climate Score encompasses daily activities in a hotel, considering various factors like transport, energy, food, beverages, waste, water, hotel procurement, services and staff activities. The methodology is well-documented, adhering to ISO standards, and can be easily utilized by both large and small hotels. With stringent data validation, hotels provide detailed information, ensuring accuracy and transparency. The assessment evaluates the environmental impact of a guest’s 24-hour stay, expressing the result as the average kilograms of CO2e per guest per day (referred to as 24h guest eq.). Notably, long-distance travel emissions are excluded from the assessment, and the methodology encourages hotels to make measurable changes to reduce emissions directly during a guest’s stay.

The Climate Score provides an overall impression of emissions related to living in a hotel, encompassing areas influenced by hotels, guests, or their interaction. It goes beyond traditional scopes, offering a holistic approach for hotels to actively engage in climate initiatives and encourage guests towards more climate-friendly behaviour. The methodology covers a comprehensive range of activities experienced by a guest during their stay, including energy, water, food and beverages, waste, hotel purchases, laundry, staff activities, and guest transit transportation. The assessment is designed to focus on the most comprehensive type of guest ”those staying for 24 hours”while recognizing the existence of various guest types within a hotel.

The Climate Score compares hotels by allocating emissions based on the number and type of guests, specifically overnight guests, conference attendees, and restaurant guests, to the number of 24-hour guest equivalents. These guest types are chosen for their commonality and broad identification by most hotels. The allocation factors for each guest type are crucial for accurate comparisons. The approach recognizes variations in hotel operations based on guest types and their usage patterns, ensuring that the Climate Score captures the diverse priorities of hotels catering to various guest types. The scientific aspect lies in recognizing and accounting for the significant variation in the composition of guests at different times, enhancing the accuracy of comparisons and enabling effective prioritization of climate initiatives.

By decomposing all emissions and allocating this accordingly to guest types of the final Climate Score based on kg CO2e per guest per day is obtained. This value can be used to compare hotels thus providing guidance for travelers to choose low emitting accommodation.

It’s all statistics: The Climate Score methodology accounts for almost all types of consumption found in households. However, certain industries and sectors contributing to national emissions, such as hospitals, education, air, and water transportation, are not included in the methodology. For a valid comparison, these exclusions must be kept in mind.

The Climate Score assessment (24h guest eq. CO2e-impact) can still be compared to emissions in households (citizen CO2e-impact). This indicative comparison serves as a reference for discussing emissions per person per day, allowing the average traveller to understand. For each specific country, a particular score will then be equivalent to household emissions, indicating that some hotels emit either more or less than the average citizen per guest. The comparison is based on values from Exiobase. To read the full description, please continue reading here: Method.

Statistically, for a hotel to be considered more climate-conscious than staying in a Danish household, it should have a Climate Score above 4.6. This benchmark is based on a Danish comparison and publicly available estimates from organizations like Concito and Exiobase, as well as the Climate Score methodology. The average Dane is estimated to have a Climate Score of 4.6, corresponding to an average daily emission of 46.6 kg of CO2. Therefore, any hotel with a Climate Score surpassing 4.6 is provocatively claimed to be a more climate-friendly choice than staying at home. Keep in mind that this serves as a bold statement encouraging individuals to make environmentally conscious choices when selecting accommodations.

Illustration of what is included in the Climate Score methodology and examples of what has been removed from the Exiobase dataset to make a fair comparison.

It’s all statistics: Hotel consumption varies constantly over the year in the same way as your own consumption at home. Therefore, the Climate Score is calculated for a whole year at a time and is updated every year, ensuring the Climate Score from year to year is comparable between hotels.

It’s all statistics, and statistically, for a hotel to be considered more climate-conscious than staying in a Danish household, it should have a Climate Score above 7.1. This benchmark is based on a Danish comparison and publicly available estimates from organizations like Concito and Exiobase, as well as the Climate Score methodology. The average Dane is estimated to have a Climate Score of 7.1, corresponding to an average daily emission of 46.6 kg of CO2. Therefore, any hotel with a Climate Score surpassing 7.1 is provocatively claimed to be a more climate-conscious choice than staying at home (in Denmark). Keep in mind that this statement encourages individuals to make environmentally conscious choices when selecting accommodations.

As a traveller, what might make better climate sense, in any country, is to look for hotels committed to cutting carbon. The “Committed to Carbon Cutting” badge is awarded to hotels that, by joining ClimateScore, have demonstrated their dedication to reducing CO2 emissions. However, there are instances where they are unable to receive a Climate Score due to specific reasons. One simple reason is signing up in Q4, resulting in outdated data due to ongoing CO2-reducing initiatives. This doesn’t mean they cannot get a score; it just means they would not get the “full value” of within-year initiatives. Other reasons for not receiving a score could include limited data availability, offering only one meal in the restaurant, or being the first hotel in the region awaiting a fair benchmark.

The method used to calculate and provide recommendations for these hotels is the same as for a normal Climate Score and aligns with the ISO 14040 standard but falls short of meeting the strict data criteria due to these reasons. Still, as a traveller, we honour their commitment to reducing CO2 emissions.

Yes, reducing CO2 is increasingly important for both you as hotel guests and for businesses. Hotel guests are requesting more transparency and clear indications that their chosen accommodation is committed to operating sustainably. This leads to a new demand for a tool to guide the guest. Traditional “green” labels and/or certificates may not accurately represent a hotel’s carbon footprint, as factors like daily sheet changes can significantly impact the overall CO2 impact.

In the current business landscape, where eco-consciousness is gaining prominence, the focus is shifting from traditional financial reporting to Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reports. These reports document a company’s emissions, efforts to reduce carbon emissions, and future plans for sustainability. Successful companies are leveraging this reporting tool to achieve transparency and honesty regarding climate, environment, and sustainability. The shift towards ESG reporting reflects a new era of environmentally conscious businesses, emphasizing the importance of on-site actions, documentation, and monitoring.

In conclusion, there is a growing demand from travellers, hotel guests, and meeting planners for climate-conscious hotels. Companies with traveling employees are committed to reducing CO2 emissions and are turning to ESG reporting. Shifting employee hotel nights to hotels with a high Climate Score becomes a significant strategy for companies to reduce their carbon footprint. The collective effort to make informed decisions can contribute to a more sustainable world, one hotel stay at a time.