Vail Resorts says as a company, the product it’s selling is the environment, a fact that undergirds its approach to business.

The company, in January, released its annual Environmental & Social Responsibility Report, detailing the progress the company is making on its sustainability goals and other endeavors.

Vail Resorts’ sustainability goals can be summed up by the company’s Commitment to Zero initiative, launched in 2017, which states that the company will aim to reach a zero net operating footprint by 2030.

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“The outdoors is our business and we have a special responsibility to protect it, and a commitment to the people who live, work and play in our mountain communities,” CEO Kirsten Lynch states in the annual Environmental & Social Responsibility Report.

To achieve a zero net operating footprint, the company has set goals of reaching zero net emissions, zero waste to landfills and zero net operating impact on forests and habitat.

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“I am proud to share that the company is ahead of schedule to meet its emissions goals, and is on track to reach zero waste to landfill and zero net operating impact on forests and habitat to achieve a zero net operating footprint by 2030,” Lynch said in the report.

Those visiting Vail Resorts’ mountains — seeing snowcats and snowmobiles driving around as part of the resorts’ regular operations, or seeing resort expansions open nearly every season in Colorado in recent years — might wonder how such goals are ahead of schedule after seeing the amount of fossil fuels that get burned through sled runs and grooming, or the number of trees removed from resorts in creating new runs.

The answer lies in offsets, on which Vail Resorts has focused much attention in recent years. To offset areas permanently impacted by new or expanded operations — like this year’s opening of the 555-acre Bergman Bowl at Keystone Resort, or the 2022 opening of the 250-acre McCoy Park in Beaver Creek, or the 2020 opening of the 68-acre Golden Peak expansion on Vail Mountain — the company has reforested 239 acres of land since 2017. To offset its power use — 61% electric, 16% diesel, 12% natural gas, 6% propane and heating oil, 4% unleaded fuel, and 1% refrigerants — renewable energy is purchased from other locations.

Vail might not be directly supplying its ski areas with carbon-free power, but by supporting a wind farm in Nebraska, for example, the company is able to add more clean energy to the nation’s electricity grid, reducing the amount of energy generated by fossil fuels.

Vail entered into a partnership with energy company Ørsted in 2018, agreeing to purchase 310,000 megawatt hours of wind energy out of the Wayne County, Nebraska-based Plum Creek wind project for the next 12 years.

In fiscal year 2023, Plum Creek produced for Vail Resorts 361,787 megawatt hours of renewable electricity, “which is equivalent to 100% of our North American resorts’ electricity usage and 96% of our worldwide electricity usage,” according to Vail Resorts.

That effort worked in conjunction with a $10M spend the company has made on more than 90 energy-saving projects at its resorts.

“These projects focused on snowmaking efficiency improvements, LED lighting retrofits, facility system and control upgrades, and more, all while improving operations and the guest experience,” Vail Resorts writes in its Environmental & Social Responsibility Report.

But as the company continues to acquire more resorts, there’s constantly more work to be done. After seeing a steady decline in location-based greenhouse gas emissions from 2020 (219,057 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent), to 2021 (216,860 MTCO2e) to 2022 (204,797 MTCO2e), the company jumped back up to 224,104 MTCO2e in fiscal year 2023, citing new acquisitions as the culprit.

The increase was “primarily due to Seven Springs Mountain Resort, Laurel Mountain, and Hidden Valley Resort being included in our energy and emissions footprint for the first time, representing approximately 4% of our market-based emissions,” Vail Resorts wrote in its Environmental & Social Responsibility Report.

The company also made mention of the fact that it now operates in several countries, gaining control of Andermatt-Sedrun in Switzerland in 2022, and Crans-Montana in Switzerland in 2023.

“Vail Resorts will continue to directly reduce our emissions as well as develop additional renewable electricity in all countries where we operate,” according to the company’s Commitment to Zero initiative.

This story is from VailDaily.com.