There has never been a more pressing time to adopt environmental and sustainable practices. Our aim is to maximise our green energy output and reduce our carbon footprint, encouraging others to follow our initiatives to create a brighter and healthier future for all.
English Lakes Hotels Resorts & Venues recently attained the Greengage ECO smart gold award for renewable energy and approaches to sustainability and eco-tourism. This nationally recognised certification integrates UN sustainable development goals into its benchmarking processes to demonstrate commitment to environmental standards.
Our biggest project is the hydropower water turbine at Low Wood Bay. Fed from a fellside stream behind the hotel, it generated 209,269 kwh of the hotel’s green energy production in 2024. That has covered around 12% of the site’s electricity usage, reducing our environmental impact and saving us around £36,000 in operating costs.
Low Wood Bay Resort & Spa is also benefiting from the addition of 385 photovoltaic solar panels to roofs on five buildings around its grounds, with each cluster facing south or south westerly to maximise sunshine hours and light exposure.
The new solar panels are expected to provide annual electricity generation of over 130,000 kwh. As well as contributing to environmental targets on carbon reduction, they will significantly reduce energy consumption costs, with estimates indicating savings of over £1.3m over the lifetime of the PV solar panels.
We also run a combined heat and power (CHP) plant at the spa hotel, which generates electricity and heating. And we have six EV charging points too.
Lancaster House Hotel was the first of our venues to embark upon a solar energy project with the installation of 340 photovoltaic panels back in 2015. At that time, it was calculated that the solar panels would reduce the hotel’s carbon footprint by 30,000kg of CO2 per annum, as well as reducing energy costs and generating a revenue stream via the feed-in tariff. The hotel also recently installed EV charging points for guests in response to the growing popularity of electric vehicles.
And our approaches to renewable energy and sustainability do not stop there. In the rural woodlands of Wild Boar Estate, the hotel has installed its own biomass wood chip burner, as well as a set of solar panels. It also has its own private supply of locally sourced spring water from a borehole.
Through our Guest Donation Scheme, we invite guests to contribute a voluntary £1 per night on their bill. Donations help support conservation projects and community projects.
We continue to invest in several projects which benefit the surrounding landscape with a number of previous tree planting and rewilding projects completed.
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