It was learned from the China Hotel Association that at the national service industry working conference, Vice-Minister of Commerce Zhang Zhigang said that China will build 10,000 "green hotels" by 2010.

Zhang indicated that establishment of green hotels advocating energy-saving and environmental protection is also development orientation of international hotel industry. Developed countries and regions in Europe and America have published the green hotel standards one after another and put them in practice.

At present, China has nearly 300,000 hotel enterprises and their cost of energy accounts for about 10 percent of their total income. There is still much room for these enterprises to save energy and reduce consumption in terms of water, power, gas and consumables. The campaign of "Competing to Build Green Hotels" which focuses on energy and resource saving, resource protection and food security will strengthen the awareness of energy saving and introduce new energy-saving technologies. Such new technologies include implementation of green lights projects, setting up green rooms, use of environment-friendly equipment and products, reduction of use of disposable products, garbage classification and non-hazardous disposal of organic garbage. This will not only greatly boost hotel industry's level of energy saving and consumption reduction, but also evidently increase hotel enterprises' business profit.

According to calculation of experts, establishment of 10,000 green hotels can save three billion kwh of electric power, equivalent to one-month power generation volume of the Three Gorges Power Station and one-year power consumption of 1.67 million households in cities. It can also reduce water consumption by 200 million tons, equal to 20 fold of the West Lake's water volume and water consumption of 1.85 million households in cities.

(Chinanews.cn August 8, 2005)