Save our Snow conducted an environmental audit of many of the worlds ski resorts. If you haven’t seen it, you may be interested. Generally (though not always) resorts in Switzerland, France and Austria came out well, while Italian and Bulgarian were nearer the bottom.

There is an overview available from our site. It links to full report and ski club of great britain report summary too.

We would be interested to know if this kind of report has any impact on where you choose to ski, or not?

Cheers

Alex

For me, it is a consideration. There are some resorts I avoid (but maybe don’t boycott entirely) because I don’t like aspects of their policy, like heliskip pickups from Clavans at l’Alpe d’Huez.

Mountain Riders do a similar study

http://www.mountain-riders.org/_EcoGuideStations/index.php?lg=en

it will be interesting to compare the two. I’m not sure how detailed these reports are, for example the 7 laux has run out of drinking water and is now pumping water using a diesel pumping unit from the Venetier stream. No mention of this in the mountain rider’s report

http://www.mountain-riders.org/_EcoGuideStations/station.php?id=50&lg=en

of course they might not have a drinking water problem if they were not using the Jasse stream for snow canons.

I would think a big chunk of pollution is caused by the cars driving up to the resorts. I have to say, I really like the fact I can access many Swiss resorts using public transportation (quickly and efficiently). France is a bit lacking in that respect. Even Geneva to Chamonix, despite there being a train line, is ridiculously slow, so no one would ever consider it. I took the train up to Zermatt last weekend and loved it!

To be perfectly honest: no.

If you fly to a ski resort, you’ve already created so much CO2 that whether they have solar panels or not is totally irrelevant. If you fly e.g. UK to Vancouver you’ve created half of the average Frenchman’s TOTAL ANNUAL CO2 usage, including all industrial usage.

I’m also a little sceptical as to the touchy-feeliness of some of these audits e.g. one of them mentions that Chamonix has a solar power cell with 0.2 kW peak power output (i.e. when it’s sunny). Total chairlift consumption is maybe 20MW, or 10,000 times that, and the chairlifts run before it’s light, after it’s dark and on cloudy days, when solar electric output is close to zero.

Water consumption and shortages is perhaps a more significant issue.

I’ve tried to do a quick calculation of CO2 creation here. I’ve used Chamonix as an example purely because I know it well. Please feel free to correct my figures.

I’m a little surprised that chairlifts and piste bashing came out so low per person. You’ll see that it’s about the same as cars too and from airports, and totally swamped by the flight. For reference the average CO2 per capital is around 7 tonnes in France and 20 in US.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita).

I had thought that heli-skiing might come close to piste skiing as there are no lifts or piste bashers or artificial snow. It certainly has lower local environmental impact. But I reckon a heli probably uses 20L/person/day, which equates to 0.05tonnes/person/day, so it’s actually around 10x worse. But maybe 10x more fun, so take your pick.

CO2 calculations based on:
http://www.co2balance.uk.com/co2calculators/

Thanks for the replies. Certainly travel to and from the slopes has the biggest single impact from a carbon perspective, and encouraging people to go local and not fly is not the easiest task (though does seem to be catching on at some level).

There are of course many more direct local environmental issues - water usage and contamination being major ones as you say, but there are plenty of others. It can be hard to see a resolution too, given the commercial pressures ski resorts face to pull numbers during 4 months of the year. Turning ski resorts into year round destinations with more varied actvities on offer may help to ease some of this pressure. Operators and accommodation providers need to take some responsibility as well, their operations are often fantastically wasteful of local resources, and foreign owned ones often only give a minimal return to the local economy.

For me these kind of audit reports will never be full proof or even close, but they do at least start to raise awareness both within industry and among customers. The most effective way to encourage further positive change is to vote with your feet (and wallets). Always has been. Small steps and what may appear like ‘token gestures’ are still a start, and if rewarded they will lead to further improvements.

Niall, interested to know where you got those chair lift energy usage figures from?

Cheers

Alex

re chair lift power consumption.
It’s a rough average, maybe a little on the high side. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chairlift (Prime mover and gearbox section). Or http://library.abb.com/global/scot/scot201.nsf/veritydisplay/1ee938cf6514ed2ac1256da4004d1208/$File/AC_Drives_in_ski_lift_applications_EN.pdf. I seem to remember some 4 seater, lower vertical rise lifts in Europe having nameplate power usages of around 250kW.