Lots of people and businesses in the snow industry are doing great things to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and advocate for serious political action to respond to the existential threat posed by climate change.

There are lots of inspiring initiatives, like Thredbo resort in NSW who have announced that it will ensure that ‘all its major resort operations are now powered by renewable energy’ or Mt Abram, in the North East of the USA, who installed 3,190 solar panels to become completely reliant on renewable power to meet its energy needs (lots more stories here).

We haven’t yet covered this story: Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort is the largest resort in the southern New England region of the USA. It is also the only mountain resort in North America to generate its own energy using wind power.

As reported recently in Powder magazine, in an interview with Brian Fairbank from Jiminy resort,

“In 2007 we put in the wind turbine, ‘Zephyr.’ It was the first wind powered turbine at a ski area. It’s as tall as the Statue of Liberty. It was a humongous task to get it up the mountain.

I’d like to say we did it because we wanted to be environmental pioneers, but the truth is, electric rates were going up, and we looked at how we could curb energy use. Jiminy is net green. If you look at the amount of power we produce versus the power we consume, we’re on a level playing field”.