ASPEN, Colo. – For all of its well-documented ambitions, the Aspen Skiing Co. continues to expand its carbon footprint. The latest report from the company shows that the company’s activities at its four ski areas and associated lodging and other properties increased carbon output 4.3 per cent between 2000 and 2006.
This is despite changing out the lights, using biodiesel, buying wind power and two-dozen other measures to either use energy more efficiently or produce energy in ways that don’t involve burning hydrocarbons.
Now, it’s time to advance the conversation, says Auden Schendler, the director for community and environmental responsibility. He and his associate, Matt Hamilton, want to run all company initiatives through what he calls a carbon filter, to see how much greenhouse gas emissions result from a specified business decision.
For example, what about not trying to open at Thanksgiving, which most years requires extraordinary amounts of electricity to compress air, which is combined with water to make snow. He is also calling for a review of the World Cup ski races in the context of its carbon contributions. Too, they want to know whether the company intends to expand grooming and snowmaking.
Beyond reducing its responsibility for producing greenhouse gas emissions, Aspen also has a financial incentive to reduce its energy use: energy prices are going up. Compared to the overall budget, it’s not that much, but the report says that the cost of natural gas, electricity, and diesel and gasoline more than doubled between 2000 and 2006.
Aspen is also studying the potential for creating electricity by means other than burning coal. One possibility is a wind turbine at Snowmass. The site is gusty, but the company will measure the wind during the next year.
More promising is microhydroelectricity. The company has one such plant at Snowmass, which uses the infrastructure needed to make snow in fall to realize the power of spring runoff to make electricity. The company intends to study potential microhydro plants at its other three ski areas.
As well, Aspen is studying the potential of investing directly in a wind farm. The company’s energy plan will include carbon offsets only as a last resort, reports The Aspen Times.
Turbines, solar collectors planned
VAIL, Colo. – Three years ago Vail Resorts garnered national coverage when it announced the intent of purchasing 152,000 megawatt hours each year in renewable energy certificates for its five resort operations. It was, at the time, the nation’s biggest such purchase of wind-created electricity.
But in doing so, it put aside plans for a wind turbine atop Vail Mountain, the company’s flagship ski operation. To critics, the company’s claim of being “wind powered” was hollow.
Now, wind turbines are back, as well as ambitious plans for solar installations. The company has asked the U.S. Forest Service for permission to install two 30-foot-tall wind turbines on Vail Mountain. This compares with the 253-foot-tall turbine at Massachusetts’s Jiminy Peak, which was installed last summer.
Vail also plans to put solar panels on its gondola cars this summer, to power the lights and the fans inside, reports the Vail Daily. Solar panels are also scheduled for several of the buildings on mountain, producing up to 8.4 kilowatts per hour, or enough to light 140 60-watt incandescent light bulbs.
The new value of forests?
TRUCKEE, Calif. – The future is in California, where the state government is trying to usher in a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions. And in this new regime are opportunities — or so thinks the Truckee Tahoe Airport.
It owns a ranch in the nearby Martis Valley, located between Truckee and Lake Tahoe. The ranch has trees, and trees soak up carbon. So, the thinking is that the forest can be managed so as to soak up carbon, and hence a business elsewhere in California that emits greenhouse gases can buy the “credit” from this forest.
At least that’s the theory, and the true value of the cap-and-trade regime as applied to carbon is being debated across the globe. The European Union adopted it as part of its Kyoto Protocol commitment, but the jury is still out as to how well it is actually working to reduce greenhouse gases.
That’s the doubt in Truckee, too. One of the airport community advisory team members, Andrew Terry, calls the plan being considered for the local forest a “feel-good” measure. “It’s not saving the planet. It’s enhancing the ability to pollute the planet,” he said.
But the essential question remains whether forests can be managed as carbon “banks” if for more than a temporary period. Forest Magazine, in the current issue, reports that scientists are unsure if the science and economics match up. The science of long-term gain is “squishy,” said one scientist.
Another challenge to the idea of forests as long-term carbon sinks is posed by the bark beetle epidemics. A case in point are those forests in British Columbia now being killed by an epidemic of mountain pine beetles. A study led by Werner Kurz of the Canadian Forest Service estimates that the forests will release more carbon dioxide than they will absorb, reports the Association Press.
“When trees are killed, they no longer are able to take carbon from the atmosphere. Then, when dead trees start to decompose, that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” Kurz said.
Students call for ‘right to dry’
BASALT, Colo. – Legislation likely to become law in Colorado would preclude homeowners’ associations from banning clotheslines. In Basalt, a group of high school students called the Planeteers have teamed with a community group to not only condone clothes, but to actively promote sun-drying of clothes. They call their mission the Clothes Line Project.
Clothes driers are second only to refrigerators in electrical consumption. Alyssandra Rousseve told the Basalt Town Council. She and other Planeteers want to “legalize sustainability.” Furthermore, reports The Aspen Times, they claim the “right to dry.”
Sales down, prices up
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – Jackson Hole had 25 per cent fewer real estate sales in the first quarter of this year as compared to last. Still, the median price of those sales that occurred was up 86 per cent.
David Viehman of Jackson Hole Real Estate and Appraisal, says the prices of some high-end properties have been reduced to more accurately reflect market conditions.
But despite the sluggish sales, reports the Jackson Hole News & Guide, plenty of people want to peddle land and homes. Jackson Hole now has 805 real estate agents — nearly double the number of properties listed for sale.
Ray Elser, responsible broker for Real Estate of Jackson Hole, estimates that 30 to 40 per cent of agents are “hobbyists.” “Retirees, divorcees and bored housewives are a big chunk of it. I don’t think there is enough business that goes on to support 800 Realtors.”
Realtors remain optimistic
TELLUIDE, Colo. – The real estate market in Telluride tumbled through the winter, but agents express confidence that summer will bring a recovered market. April, they report, has been very promising.
Total sales volume dropped 66 per cent in March, reports The Telluride Watch. That’s $23 million in sales, as compared to $68.5 million for the same month last year.
“Buying a second home is the furthest thing from people’s minds right now,” said T.D. Smith, of Telluride Real Estate Corporation. It’s not that people weren’t around. Occupancy levels for winter were up 6 per cent. But even in the high end, people were holding out for bargains.
Realty figures insist the market is not a disaster. “Visitors who come to town expecting to find the local real estate market in a shambles may need to readjust their expectations,” said Matthew Hintermeister, president of the Telluride Association of Realtors.
Sluggish sales mean ‘value’
PARK CITY, Utah – Real-estate agents see a silver lining in every cloud. Consider Park City, where the number of homes sold in the first quarter of this year was half that of last year. “There is an opportunity for buyers to find a great value,” an agent tells The Park Record. The median price of homes dropped 11 per cent.
Wolverine seen using underpass
BANFF, Alberta – Remote cameras along a wildlife underpass have revealed a wolverine, a rarely seen carnivore that has largely disappeared from the West. There have been several sightings in the Banff and Canmore area in the last dozen years, but the sightings have been rare enough that this photograph of the animal making its way under the Trans-Canada Highway rated a prominent story in the Rocky Mountain Outlook. The wildlife underpass is similar to what is being proposed for Colorado’s Interstate 70.
Guide to the stars dies
SUN VALLEY, Idaho – They’ve laid Clayton L. Stewart to eternal rest in Ketchum. He had returned to the Wood River Valley after World War II to run the transportation department in the municipality of Sun Valley, and also worked as city clerk and postmaster. But his most glamorous jobs were guiding the author Ernest Hemingway, the movie star Clark Gable, and Union Pacific Railroad president Averell Harriman to the best trout streams. As well, notes the Idaho Mountain Express, Stewart helped Hollywood moviemakers with the logistics for more than 20 movies, including “Bus Stop,” which starred Marilyn Monroe.
Stewart was 89.
Officials tinker with home limits
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – In the land of the cowboy hat, Routt County officials are considering adopting a system of transferable development rights and even perhaps limiting the size of homes.
The cap on home sizes is far more tentative, reports the Steamboat Pilot & Today. Officials noted that a policy could be adopted that doesn’t necessarily cap home sizes, but does discourage larger homes.
More likely, says the newspaper, is transfer of development rights away from viewsheds, critical wildlife habitat or active agriculture operations and to pre-determined “receiving” areas, particularly areas that have already been heavily urbanized. Among ski-based counties, Pitkin, Summit and Gunnison already have such TDR programs.
CB divided about ski expansion
CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – Most ski areas in the Western United States are located on Forest Service land, which rarely approves of ski area expansions if the local communities are dead-set against them. That’s why it matters what the two towns located near the ski area at Crested Butte have to say about the proposal now before the Forest Service.
That proposal would be to extend skiing across the highway onto a new mountain, Snodgrass, installing three chairlifts to provide a generous dollop of intermediate-level ski terrain, something in short supply on the existing ski mountains.
Mt. Crested Butte, the closest town, has now registered its support for the terrain expansion. Two-thirds of both local residents and non-resident property owners had supported the expansion.
But two miles away, at the one-time mining town of Crested Butte, the wind is blowing in the opposite direction. There, a thin majority of the business community seems to support the expansion, but the community on balance appears opposed.
“Residents of this town have clearly said they don’t want lifts on Snodgrass,” said Alan Bernholtz, the mayor.
The Crested Butte News reports that the town council is trying to shape a letter that reflects this overall sentiment. Only one town council member seems to support the expansion.
