Colorado ski resorts lack a comprehensive strategy for addressing climate change — report

Ski resorts in Colorado and across the West showed marked improvement in environmental ratings for the third year in a row, according to an annual report released today by the Ski Area Citizens Coalition.

While the scores for protecting habitat and watershed protection are weaker in Colorado than other states, Colorado scored the strongest of the 11 Western states evaluated in the report in the “environmental policy and practices” category.

With regard to addressing climate change, the report found that ski resorts are backing away from things like biodiesel and renewable energy credits in favor of other new energy saving ideas. Additionally, the report found that ski resorts continue to implement a piecemeal approach to improving their carbon footprint, rather than a comprehensive strategy.

“Some resorts that scored points for buying renewable energy credits last year lost those points this year because they discontinued the program,” said Colorado Wild intern Megan Marshall in a statement. “In some cases, it sounded like it was a cost-cutting measure, but in other instances resorts seemed to be simply searching for something new to market to their customers.”

Even with scores improving across the board, more than half of the resorts still receive a failing grade in at least one of the four areas evaluated — habitat protection, watershed protection, addressing climate change, and environmental policies and practices, according to Paul Joyce, report card research director with Colorado Wild.

“Resorts in Colorado are leading the way in addressing environmental policies and practices, but still lagging behind when it comes to on-the-ground conservation,” Patricia Hickson, land use campaign associate for the Sierra Nevada Alliance, said in a statement.

The Ski Area Citizens Coalition has been publishing the “Ski Area Environmental Scorecard” for the past decade. The report card evaluates the environmental policies and practices of ski areas based on a system of 35 criteria, including preservation of sensitive lands within the ski resort areas, actions related to water conservation and quality, and “green” programs such as recycling and alternative energy use. This year, for the first time, the coalition grouped the suite of criteria by which the ski resorts were evaluated into four categories.

Scorecard data is obtained from an annual survey, public records from government agencies and from the resorts themselves.