One of the first things to catch your eye on entering the Populus hotel in downtown Denver is what looks like sheets of cowhide hanging above the restaurant’s bar. But the art installation material is actually Reishi, a leathery material made from mycelium, a root-like structure found in fungus. It’s just one of many elements at the new 265-room hotel (rates from $299) that are meant to evoke nature and underscore a broader mission to offer what the Populus bills as an exceptional level of sustainability. (A second, 120-room Populus with a similar approach will open in Seattle this spring.)
In fact, the hotel, designed by the Chicago-based Studio Gang firm, claims it is the United States’ first “carbon-positive” hotel (meaning that it is supposed to sequester more carbon than it emits). It’s a bold statement, but just one among a growing list of self-applied superlatives by other properties.
Aruba’s Bucuti & Tara Beach Resort, for example, calls itself “the Caribbean’s first and only certified carbon-neutral resort.” IHG Hotels and Resorts bills its new Voco Zeal Exeter Science Park in Exeter, England — with an exterior clad in electricity-generating vertical photovoltaic panels — as the brand’s first net zero-carbon hotel. The Alohilani Resort in Honolulu says it is the “first hotel in Hawaii to announce carbon neutral certification commitment.”
The Populus’s claims go a step further, said Joseph Romm, a senior research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, and author of “The Hype About Hydrogen: False Promises and Real Solutions in the Race to Save the Climate.” The hotel, he said, “has the chutzpah to claim they are being a net positive for the climate, which is a much stronger claim than neutral.”
“A hotel has a lot of impact on the environment,” said Jon Buerge, the president of Urban Villages, the Denver-based developer behind the Populus. He said his team didn’t find many properties that they felt took a holistic approach to reducing environmental impact while also enhancing guests’ experience. The hotel’s design intends to mimic the experience of being inside a tree, from the “forest floor” aesthetic of the ground level to the rooftop restaurant and deck with citywide views (the “canopy”).
Of course, the most environmentally conscious approach would have been to not build anything. But the hotel’s prime location on an unused downtown lot means the site was unlikely to escape redevelopment. Amid a hospitality landscape in which many hotels have moved far beyond the simple bathroom-counter placard urging you to reuse your towel, how does the Populus measure up?
It Begins With the Building
The Populus’s approach started at construction, with a concrete mix said to emit 30 percent less carbon dioxide than regular concrete. Repurposed elements are heavily relied on, including wood from an already felled cottonwood tree for the reception desk; beetle-kill pine for some walls and bed headboards; and snow fencing from Wyoming as decorative ceiling beams. The 365 glass-fiber-reinforced concrete panels on the hotel’s exterior, inspired by the bark of aspen trees, help keep the building cool in summer and warm in winter. The hotel did not build a parking garage — instead it uses existing lots in the area for valet parking, and encourages public transit for guests.
Measures like these, said Shivya Nath, who runs the consulting firm Climate Conscious Travel, help reduce a building’s embodied carbon, or the carbon emitted by making, using and eventually disposing of materials like concrete, steel and insulation. According to the American Institute of Architects, almost 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide result from construction materials, and embodied carbon makes up 11 percent of this total.
Other measures used by the Populus include guest rooms that rely on durable textiles; carpeting made from recycled, biodegradable materials; and a biodigester that turns food waste from the hotel’s Pasque and Stellar Jay restaurants into a nutrient-dense liquid, which is then mixed with compost to fertilize local fields. An online carbon dashboard tracks the hotel’s emissions and offsets for curious guests.
“They have a lot of things in the right place,” said Ms. Nath.
Carbon Offsets: How Effective Are They?
The Populus also relies on carbon offsets, as do many other sustainability-focused hotels that compensate for at least part of their emissions by tree planting, for example, or purchasing renewable energy certificates (RECs). (A REC equates to one megawatt-hour of renewable power in environmental value.)
With 20 properties worldwide, Florida-based 1 Hotels, for instance, contributes to reforestation projects through the Arbor Day Foundation and “has also offset more than 46,000 metric tons of CO2 to date through independently verified carbon credits,” according to Elizabeth Traub, a hotel spokesperson. Room2’s residence-style Chiswick in London works with a reforestation partner in Nicaragua. And the Alohilani Resort plants trees in Hawaii and buys additional offsets.
Climate change experts have debunked the efficacy of most such measures.
“I don’t know any company right now that is serious about climate change that still thinks tree planting is a legit offset,” said Mr. Romm. That’s because the seedlings take time to grow into trees, which can then take years to fully absorb — and truly offset — carbon. Additionally, those trees are at risk of infestation and vulnerable to weather and wildfire.
The Populus’s own tree-planting efforts faced that kind of vulnerability. In 2022, when the hotel was being constructed, it paid for the planting of some 77,000 Engelmann spruce in Colorado in a partnership with the National Forest Foundation to replace trees wiped out by mountain pine beetles. Extreme weather killed 80 percent of the saplings.
Mr. Buerge said the higher-than-expected death rate hasn’t dissuaded his team from its belief in the program’s ultimate efficacy in tipping the hotel’s scale to carbon positive. The Populus aims to plant another 50,000 to 70,000 trees this year.
The Need for Legislation
Class action suits against companies making misleading environmental claims are increasing in the United States. California adopted a bill in 2023 that requires companies to disclose evidence for carbon neutrality and similar statements.
In Europe, the legal system is paying close attention to the sustainability claims of businesses. “Major companies have lost court cases in Europe in recent years for merely saying they are carbon neutral based on dubious offsets,” said Mr. Romm. Indeed, in Germany, hotels can no longer advertise that they are climate neutral without proof. And hotels throughout the European Union must comply with a new directive against greenwashing — overstating environmental claims — that will take effect next year.
Perhaps a more accurate claim than carbon neutral is the one made by the Hotel Marcel in New Haven, Conn., which opened in 2022 in a retrofitted, 1960s, Marcel Breuer-designed building. The property calls itself America’s first fossil-fuel-free hotel, thanks to more than 1,000 solar panels that help power the hotel’s electric infrastructure.
But some question environmental mitigation itself. Such steps are well-meaning but ultimately ineffective, according to Auden Schendler, the author of “Terrible Beauty: Reckoning With Climate Change and Rediscovering Our Soul,” and the former senior vice president of sustainability for Aspen One, which oversees the Aspen Skiing Company. He argues that real sustainability comes with changes in governmental policy, not via the free market.
“These actions are voluntary and taken by sub 1 percent of the hotel industry,” Mr. Schendler said. “They’re inadequate.” To really address food waste, for instance, Mr. Schendler suggested that the Populus’s operators argue for better waste legislation. “People listen to businesses,” he said.
In fact, Mr. Buerge said that he was a voting member of Denver’s climate change task force, which put in place regulations that aim to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions in large buildings by 2040, and that he’s currently on the city’s sustainability council, working to improve electricity distribution, which would allow the Populus to go all electric.
Others within the hospitality industry see value in individual mitigation. Amanda Ho, a co-founder of Regenerative Travel, a collection of independently owned, sustainably minded hotels, said, “The private sector has more power in making change happen quickly. We’d be moving very slowly if we waited for government.”
And what role does the traveler play? The best approach may be to appreciate the real sustainability measures hotels undertake, which can range from renewable energy and eliminating single-use items to local sourcing, without attributing as much to hyped-up marketing messages. At their best, hotels that emphasize sustainability may increase environmental awareness among guests.
“It’s not just about building more efficiently and reducing our carbon footprint,” said Mr. Buerge of his hotel’s mission. “My hope is that someone leaves the Populus and says the natural world is pretty amazing and we need to protect it.”
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