Tourism in the Philippines is a major contributor to the economy and creates local employment. It has grown rapidly and with its high demand for energy, it is also responsible for a large amount of carbon emissions. The project worked on reducing energy consumption by using locally available carbon-neutral resources, reducing the carbon footprint of the tourism industry in the Philippines.
The Zero Carbon Resorts project funded by the European Commission aimed to influence numerous tourism SMEs to operate their facilities in energy-efficient ways and increase their guests’ awareness of energy-saving behaviors. The project also built the capacity and knowledge of intermediaries, engineers, consultants, architects, planners and SME owners and managers on how to diagnose problems related to energy consumption and how to solve those using appropriate solutions. It also prototyped and tested possible solutions (i.e. small-scale solar energy and biomass devices), and influenced policy related to building regulations vis-à-vis energy standards.
ASSIST handled project promotion activities to convince more tourism SMEs to use energy efficient practices. It included the design and development of three training manual handbooks, training toolkits, project website with a database, content management experts with technical expertise on resource efficiency, organizing of two large events for project promotion and promotion of success stories of hotels/resorts.
