Altira Macau was the big winner of the “Macau Energy Saving Contest 2011” jointly held by electric utility CEM and the Office for the Development of Energy Sector.

The property owned and managed by Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd. was crowned with the “Energy-saving Concept” Grand Award for saving the highest electricity (768,120kWh) among all the participants.

Altira Macau engineering department manager Gerald Cheung said the property has installed a number of energy-saving devices in recent years, which has helped the hotel casino to achieve significant energy savings.

The contest is based on the comparison of electricity consumed by participants from June to November 2011 with that of the same period in 2010.

The number of participants increased by nearly 15 percent compared to 2010, CEM said in a press release, without disclosing the actual figure.

The contest marked a combined energy-saving of 3.72GWh of electricity, equivalent to planting 66,961 trees a year, CEM said.