The Washington Post - USA (2022-02-13)

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ EE F3

Mexico, wants to do more than

just reduce the resort’s carbon

footprint. “We take everything

into consideration before making

changes: The environment, sus-

tainability and social responsibili-

ty are all taken into account,” says

David Norden, its chief executive.

In 2017, Taos became the world’s

first ski resort to be designated as

a B Corp., a business whose certifi-

cation obligates it to meet a high

social and environmental stan-

dard.

Part of this responsibility is to

enact change beyond the bound-

aries of the ski slopes, and Taos

does this as a charter signatory of

the Nature Conservancy’s Rio

Grande Water Fund (RGWF), cre-

ated after the 2011 Las Conchas

wildfire that burned tens of thou-

sands of forested acres in North-

ern New Mexico. Post-fire thun-

derstorms led to ash and debris

flowing into the Rio Grande, even-

tually contaminating the water

supplies in Albuquerque and San-

ta Fe. The goal of the RGWF is to

increase the health of 600,000

acres of forest upstream to secure

clean water for future generations

downstream. For its part, Taos is

selectively thinning the forest, on

its private land and on parcels it

leases from the U.S. Forest Serv-

ice, as part of the RGWF strategy.

Taos is focused on day-to-day

operations, too. The resort has

committed to becoming carbon

neutral by 2030, and to do so, it

has partnered with a local electric

cooperative that plans to be 100

percent solar by the end of this

year. But Scott notes that coal is

still the main source of power to

the New Mexico grid, so the ben-

efit of Taos’s swap to solar is

mixed. The resort also invested in

a BioCoTech composter that di-

verts food waste from landfills,

along with the associated meth-

ane gas that comes from rotting

food.

Berkshire East

Mountain Resort

According to marketing man-

ager Nathan Marr, Berkshire East

in Massachusetts is the only ski

resort in the world to generate 100

percent of its electricity via on-site

renewable energy sources. Marr

said the mountain commissioned

a 277-foot-tall wind turbine in

January 2011 that produced 900

kilowatt-hours (kWhrs) of energy.

Shortly thereafter, the resort add-

ed a 10-acre field filled with 1,800

solar panels that produced an-

other 500 kWhrs. The 1,400 com-

bined kWhrs are enough to power

the entire resort — but only be-

cause, as Marr notes, it’s a small

one, at about 200 acres. “We only

have three main chairlifts, a cou-

ple magic carpets, and several

lodges and buildings that all re-

quire energy,” Marr says. “We

don’t have a huge, huge power

demand like larger resorts.”

Small or not, it matters. “This is

as sustainable as it gets in terms of

on-site actions to reduce emis-

sions, and the turbine also feeds

clean power into the grid year-

round,” Scott says.

Berkshire East often produces

more energy than the resort re-

quires, especially in the summer,

when snow-making machinery

isn’t running. When this happens,

BY HEATHER BALOGH

ROCHFORT

The data is telling: Climate
change is threatening the ski in-
dustry. The 2022 Beijing Winter
Games are the first Olympics to
use nearly 100 percent artificial
snow, and domestic ski resorts
from Maine to California are re-
porting shorter ski seasons and
lower snow levels. According to
the Environmental Protection
Agency, the April snowpack in
Western states declined at 86 per-
cent of the sites measured be-
tween 1955 and 2020.
Paradoxically, ski resorts have
been large contributors to the
environmental issues that threat-
en them now, with snow-making
machines that inhale water re-
sources, chairlifts that guzzle en-
ergy and expansive ski runs that
tear down trees and displace wild-
life. Then there’s the problem of
the skiers themselves: Most of the
carbon footprint in skiing comes
from lodging and the cars and
planes used to get to the resorts.
As domestic ski resorts take
stock of their grim future, more
and more are beginning to make
an effort to offset their environ-
mental effects. We talked to lead-
ers at four very different resorts to
find out about some of the steps
they are instituting to protect
both the environment and their
sport.

Aspen Skiing Company

The officers at Aspen Skiing
Company in Colorado believe in
thinking beyond the boundaries
of Aspen Snowmass, four resorts
that together attract about 1.5
million visitors a year. “You can’t
really make change from within
the system,” says Auden Schen-
dler, a climate activist, author of
“Getting Green Done” and senior
vice president of sustainability at
Aspen Skiing Company (ASC).
“Our obligation at Aspen — or any
other entity with power — is to
wield that power to fix the sys-
tem.” As an example, the skiing
company got involved in early
2021 when the Biden administra-
tion halted new oil-and-gas leases
on public lands, sparking lawsuits
from the state of Wyoming and a
fossil fuel industry organization
called Western Energy Alliance.
ASC and its legal team joined a
range of partners to support the
president’s position.
Daniel Scott, a professor at
Canada’s University of Waterloo
who specializes in climate
change, agrees that policy is the
biggest step resorts can make
toward change. “The systemic
change needed for deep decar-
bonization of the U.S. and global
economy needs policy changes at
all levels of government, but par-
ticularly national governments.
[Aspen’s] strategy of advocacy at-
tempts to accelerate climate ac-
tion where it is needed most.”
But it’s not just politics. After
Aspen became the first in the
industry to build a solar array in
2004, its leaders realized the sys-
tem couldn’t generate enough
power for all four of Aspen’s ski
mountains. So, in 2012, they in-
vested more than $5.3 million
into building a three-megawatt
power plant at the Elk Creek Mine
in Somerset, a small town about
two hours away. After partnering
with local energy companies, they
were able to use this facility to
convert leaking methane from
the coal plant there into electrici-
ty for the resort. According to a
2021 report from ASC, the mine
produces about enough baseload
power annually to power all four
of Aspen Snowmass’s ski hills for
a year, including hotels and res-
taurants. Plus it prevents meth-
ane from being released into the
environment, where it would be-
come a major contributor to cli-
mate change. “The key to change
is solving multiple problems with
one solution,” Schendler says.

Taos Ski Valley

The leadership of Taos Ski Val-
ley, a 1,300-acre resort in New

the excess energy goes out to the

grid to be used by others in the

area. In addition to its renewable

energy sources, the resort also

uses wood cut from the property

to heat the buildings, further re-

ducing its reliance on oil or pro-

pane.

Snow-making is still a major

resource hog within the ski indus-

try, and Berkshire East is no dif-

ferent. However, the resort added

a top-of-the-mountain snow-

making pond, in addition to the

original one at the base. “Pump-

ing water from the base to the top

of the mountain to make snow,

against gravity, took a lot of en-

ergy,” Marr says. “When we added

the pond to the top of the moun-

tain, we’re going with gravity and

using much smaller pumps, so

that takes a lot less energy.”

Bluebird Backcountry

If you want to view sustainable

skiing from a different angle, con-

sider Bluebird Backcountry,

which saw about 6,200 visitors in

its 2020-2021 season. A ski resort

designed for backcountry skiing

education, this Colorado resort

doesn’t require much in the way

of resources, because, as it puts it,

it is “human-powered.” All skiers

are required to carry traditional

backcountry safety gear — ava-

lanche beacon, shovel and probe

— to traverse the natural, ung-

roomed terrain that is routinely

mitigated for avalanche danger

by the resort’s highly skilled pa-

trol team.

There are no chairlifts; all ski-

ers earn their turns by skiing

uphill. There is no lodging or

housing or restaurants; all struc-

tures at the base are constructed

with removable tents that the re-

sort breaks down in April. There

is no snow-making; skiers have to

wait for Mother Nature to dump

powder. And as for power for the

tents? “When we’re in-season, we

use solar panels from Elevated

Independent Energy in Boulder,”

says Melissa Baker, the partner-

ships lead at Bluebird.

And when the ski season ends

in April, there is nothing left of

Bluebird — except for acres of

grazing land turned back over to

the cattle.

Rochfort is a writer based in

Colorado. You can find her on Twitter

and Instagram: @HeatherRochfort.

Ski resorts are joining the fight against climate change

JUSTIN WILHELM

TAOS SKI VALLEY

An employee feeds food waste from restaurants into a composter at Taos Ski Valley in New Mexico.
The process diverts the material from landfills, along with the associated methane from rotting food.

BERKSHIRE EAST ASPEN SNOWMASS

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: In Colorado, Bluebird Backcountry’s off-grid base area is powered by a solar system that supplies 99 percent

of the ski area’s electricity needs each season; the “Melted Gondola” art installation, made by Chris Erickson, s its at the top of Aspen

Mountain; the wind turbine at Berkshire East Mountain Resort in Charlemont, Mass.

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