How the yearly sustainability goal becomes monthly targets, what happens once a month is over, and why one month can show more than one number.

The yearly goal, in plain terms

Think of your energy goal as a household budget. In its base year, our example hotel used 20.80 kWh for every guest night. It committed to reducing this by 17% by 2030, and on the straight path towards that promise, the allowance for 2026 is 19.29 kWh per guest night. Multiplied by the roughly 337,000 guest nights forecast for the year, this gives the hotel a yearly energy budget of about 6.5 million kWh.

That budget is then divided across the twelve months – not equally, but following your expected business pattern: busy months receive a larger share, quiet months a smaller one. The result is a concrete kWh target for every month of the year.

What happens when a month is over

Once a month closes, its planned target is never changed – but you will see two different numbers for it, on purpose, in two different places:

• In reports and the learning view, the month keeps its original plan. For July, that plan was 476,247 kWh. Like a diary entry, it records what the hotel was supposed to consume, and it is never edited afterwards.
• In the cockpit chart, the target line for a finished month shows what actually happened – 614,262 kWh in July. Once a month is history, the chart shows reality rather than an outdated plan.
• Both numbers are correct; they answer different questions. “What was the plan?” – look at the report. “What happened?” – look at the cockpit.

If the hotel consumes more than planned – as here, 29% over in July – the system automatically tightens the targets of the remaining months of the year, so that December still lands exactly on the yearly goal. The past is never rewritten; the future absorbs the difference.

The efficiency figure (kWh per guest night)

The kWh-per-guest-night figure you see for a month is a running average since January, not the month alone. A busy July naturally looks very efficient on its own, so a single-month view would be misleading; the running average keeps the picture honest.

For a finished month, the system’s target line combines what really happened in the earlier months with that month’s own plan. In our July example: actual consumption January to June, plus July’s planned 476,247 kWh, divided by all guest nights since January – giving a target of 20.72 kWh per guest night. The hotel’s real running average was 21.44, so it was about 3.5% above target at that point.

If you divide a single month’s consumption by its own guest nights – as the KPI module shows for the individual month – you will get a different, often much lower figure. July alone: 614,262 kWh / 37,096 guest nights = 16.6 kWh per guest night. That number is real, but it mostly reflects how busy the month was, not how efficiently the hotel ran: July’s peak occupancy spreads the hotel’s fixed consumption (lobby, kitchen, ventilation) over the largest possible number of guests. By that measure, the month that exceeded its consumption budget by 29% would look like the most efficient month of the year – which is exactly why GoGreen always evaluates efficiency as the average since January.

 

July’s efficiency figure	Calculation	What it tells you
16.6 kWh/GN (KPI module, single month)	July kWh / July guest nights	How busy July was – peak occupancy dilutes the fixed base load
21.44 kWh/GN (cockpit, running average)	Jan-Jul kWh / Jan-Jul guest nights	How efficiently the hotel is running this year – compare this to the target of 20.72

Why the two targets can disagree

It is perfectly possible – and quite common – to be over the consumption target and under the per-guest-night target in the same month. The reason: consumption measures volume, the per-guest-night figure measures efficiency, and guest nights sit on opposite sides of the equation.

The consumption target was built from the forecast: allowed kWh per guest night times the guest nights expected. If the hotel then welcomes more guests than forecast, total consumption naturally rises above that plan – more rooms serviced, more showers, more breakfasts. But every additional guest night also enlarges the divisor of the efficiency figure, pulling it down. A mini example:

	Planned	Actual
Guest nights	10,000	11,500
Consumption	192,900 kWh	210,000 kWh (9% over)
kWh per guest night	19.29	18.26 (5% under)

Both statements are true at once: the hotel used more energy than planned and ran more efficiently than required. And that is the fair verdict – the extra consumption came from extra business, not from waste. It also works because much of a hotel’s energy use is fixed: lobby, kitchen, pool and ventilation run whether the house is full or not, so additional guests add only a little consumption each while fully counting in the divisor. The same logic in reverse explains why a very quiet month can consume less than ever and still miss the efficiency target: the fixed base load is spread over too few guests.

The practical rule: when the two targets disagree, first compare actual guest nights with the forecast. More guests than forecast makes “over on consumption, under on efficiency” the expected, healthy pattern. If guest nights were on forecast and both figures are over – as in our July example – it is genuine over-consumption, and the conversation is about operations, not about the calculation.

July 2026 at a glance

Question	Number	Where you see it	What it means
What was July’s plan?	476,247 kWh	Reports / learning view	The frozen monthly target
What did July consume?	614,262 kWh	Cockpit (actual & target line)	Reality – 29% over plan
Where should the hotel stand by July?	20.72 kWh/GN	Cockpit efficiency target	Running average: actuals to June + July’s plan
Where does it actually stand?	21.44 kWh/GN	Cockpit efficiency actual	Running average of actual consumption
What was July alone?	16.6 kWh/GN	KPI module (single month)	July kWh / July guests – reflects peak occupancy, not comparable to the goal
Where must December land?	19.29 kWh/GN	Yearly goal	Guaranteed by tightening Aug-Dec targets

Chart 1: each month’s planned budget (blue) next to what was actually used (orange); the remaining months (green) receive slightly tighter targets so the year still ends on goal. Chart 2: the running efficiency average – the hotel’s line versus the target line – converging to the yearly goal of 19.29 by December. The grey dotted line shows each single month on its own (KPI module): July alone reads 16.6 purely because it is the busiest month.

Good to know

Targets are recalculated automatically at the start of each month and whenever forecasts change – but only the current and future months move. Finished months are final.

A finished month’s efficiency figure above the yearly goal is not automatically a problem: the average starts high in quiet months and converges towards the goal as the year progresses. What matters is the gap between the actual line and the target line.

If you export data, note that learning exports show consumption in MWh (thousands of kWh), while the cockpit displays kWh.