How appropriate -- the hotel with the top green rating in the world is in the city of Greensboro. It's the Proximity Hotel, one of the few hotels anywhere to achieve the top LEED Platinum rating. And don't think you have to give up luxury to travel green -- this hotel has an AAA Four Diamond rating. Platinum and diamond -- that's a great combination.
The hotel was built to use 40% less energy and 30% less water than a comparable hotel, and
features such innovative technologies as the first installation in North America of the regenerative drive for Otis' Gen2 elevator, which reduces net energy usage by capturing the system’s energy and feeds it back into the building’s internal electrical grid. It's the same idea as regenerative braking in hybrid-electric cars like the Prius.
There are 100 solar panels on the roof -- they cover some 4,000 square feet of roofop and produce enough hot water for one hundred homes. The hotel's solar panels provide more than half of the hot water needed for guests to shower and the restaurant to wash the dishes. And the hotel saved two million gallons of water the first year it was open thanks to high-efficiency plumbing fixtures.
So, all you hotels names Marriott, Hilton, W, Westin, Ramada, Hyatt, Holiday Inn -- get on board and go green. Proximity did it. So can you.
