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Denver ski company takes the environment seriously

The Aspen Skiing Company goes green and hires the first in-house environmental director.

The Aspen Skiing Company uses solar power to reduce emissions.

Alpine Skiing often gets a bad rap as being an unsustainable activity. The Aspen Skiing Company—which operates four ski areas, two hotels and 15 mountainside restaurants in Aspen, Colorado—is trying to change that by putting in place measures to conserve energy and water and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To date, it has built facilities that meet green architectural criteria and installed a miniature hydroelectric plant and solar photovoltaic system. The company also uses biodiesel-driven snowcats and offsets all of its energy use with wind power.

The Aspen Skiing Company also appointed the industry’s first in-house environmental director, Auden Schendler, who doesn’t underestimate the seriousness of the climate change crisis. “We could eliminate all our emissions—all the emissions in the ski industry, too, in fact—and still be out of business in 100 years,” Schendler says. “The best climate scientists say we have to solve this problem in a decade. So ski resorts need to figure out what their biggest lever to drive big action on climate solutions is, and use it.”

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