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How does the future of ski resorts look in the face of climate change?

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How does the future of ski resorts look in the face of climate change?

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National Geographic, Article, 2024.

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Ski resorts are looking to sustainable practices to reduce their impact on mountain ecosystems and preserve the environment.

Photograph by Getty Images

Last season, once again, the weather brought serious challenges to the Alps. High temperatures and rain reduced snow over New Year; a dry spring brought little snow until just before Easter. Some estimates suggest that by 2050, many ski resorts lower than 1,200 metres will have to rely entirely on snow-making machines if they want to avoid adding to the pile of abandoned ski lifts beginning to litter the mountains. Since the 1970s, records show Alpine snow cover overall declining by 5.6% per decade, and snow depth by more than 8.4%. While global action is needed to tackle climate change, the ski industry has been galvanised into action after seeing first-hand some of its earliest effects.

"There are many fantastic examples within the ski world of companies and people taking action to reduce carbon emissions, the main cause of rising global temperatures," says Charlie Cotton, the founder of carbon-measuring company Ecollective, which helps businesses measure and reduce their carbon footprint. But he warns: "We need more businesses committing to reducing their yearly emissions and we need those already doing so to ramp up the amounts they're currently reducing their footprint by."

Impending loss of income is a strong incentive. Christmas, one of the most lucrative times of year, is no longer reliably 'white' in the mountains, as snowfalls shift to later in the season. Resorts are marketing themselves as year-round destinations to make up for the shortfall, but with travel and flights the main source of emissions, tour operators are realising they must do more.

In July, Eurostar announced its decision to discontinue its direct ski train from this season, citing Brexit border issues and the need to focus on core routes. Travellers can still connect through Paris or Lille but no-fly options have shrunk for Britain's skiers to the Alps. And flying accounts for around 80% of a ski trip's carbon footprint. "Over the next five years, the key change we need is a dramatic increase in people who either take the train, coach or travel in electric vehicles to ski resorts," says Ecollective's Charlie Cotton.

Some companies are already driving that change. "We're not - yet - getting calls from consumers asking for the most sustainable holidays," says Craig Burton, of Ski Solutions, which last winter launched a series of train travel packages to the Alps. "But as operators with a long-term interest in safeguarding the Alps, it's our responsibility to set the agenda by encouraging clients to travel by train, to the most environmentally conscious resorts."

In-resort eco initiatives are more established. Club Med, for example, created a sustainability department as far back as 2005 and is working to reduce energy and water consumption and install solar panels across all its resorts. Hotelplan, owner of ski specialist tour operators Inghams and Esprit, was an early signatory of the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism. Senior sustainability manager Krissy Roe says the company is "relentlessly committed to meeting carbon-reduction targets and establishing ourselves as a Nature Positive Business".

Thanks to their big tires, fatbikes can travel over unstable terrain, including snow, increasing the popularity of fatbiking as a winter activity.

Photograph by Alps Photography

France's 238 ski resorts met in 2020 to agree on 16 eco commitments, including the target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2037, with zero CO2 emissions. They're systematically working to dismantle disused ski lifts and rewild abandoned resorts. "France is the only country where all the ski areas have made a collective commitment," says a spokesperson for Domaines Skiables de France, an association representing the French ski industry.

With temperatures rising in the mountains at twice the global average, resorts are moving infrastructure in preparation. Climate service Climsnow is working with resorts to model different scenarios based on rising snowline projections from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - resulting in beefing up snow-making systems and raising lifts and nursery slopes away from resort bases. To use less energy, all are employing GPS-aided slope grooming, rewilding areas and adapting ski lifts - and in Europe renewable energy is now the norm.

Snow-making is no longer the panacea it was once considered to be. Snow canons account for 25% of a resort's carbon emissions and they can't operate in conditions that are warm (1C or above) or humid. Their energy and water requirements are so vast that researchers at Switzerland's University of Basel have warned the potential 79% increase in demand for water in resorts below 1,800 metres could lead to conflict with local communities.

But Italy's Dolomiti Superski area, an early adopter of snow-making back in the 1980s, is working with its suppliers to optimise technology."Snowguns today produce the same amount of snow as those first models but with less than half the water and power," says the area's spokesman, Dr Diego Clara. "Almost everyone in our valleys depends on snow tourism - hotels, gastronomy, ski schools, rentals, shops, etc - and the cold days of autumn are becoming fewer in number and also come later."

But it's snow groomers rather than canons that are most polluting: up to 60% of a resort's emissions come from piste-grooming machines, and resorts are now racing to convert the vehicles to HVO (hydrotreated vegetable oil) to cut emissions.

But with warmer winters, fluctuating temperatures and stronger winds come avalanches, and all this high-tech equipment and infrastructure - from lift pylons to solar panels - is vulnerable to higher numbers of wet, heavy avalanches, says Val d'Isère-based snow and avalanche expert Henry Schniewind.

But there's a positive outcome: "Despite the increasingly unpredictable weather and higher number of avalanches as temperatures rise, there are fewer accidents, largely because the danger is more predictable."

Being strategic and adaptable is the key to ski-season survival. Diego Clara, from Dolomiti Superski, puts it succinctly: "The more time passes, the more we'll seek new strategies for the winter as thousands of families depend on this and only tourism gives people the possibility to live stably in their alpine valleys."

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How does the future of ski resorts look in the face of climate change?

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Confronted by increasing temperatures and decreasing snow levels the winter sports industry faces an uncertain but hopeful way ahead.

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ON THIN ICE: How Climate Change is Shaping Winter Recreation

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ON THIN ICE: How Climate Change is Shaping Winter Recreation

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Climate Central, Article, 2019.

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Climate Change And How It Is Damaging The Ski Industry In NH

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Climate Change And How It Is Damaging The Ski Industry In NH

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Ted.com, Ted Talk, educational and informative presentation, 2019.

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Dr. Elizabeth Burakowski: Climate Change And How It Is Damaging The Ski Industry In NH

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Snow scientist, Dr. Elizabeth Burakowski, uses climate models, snow measurements, and satellites to understand how winter in the northeastern United States has changed in the past and what we can expect for the future.

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Social Climate Change: The Advancing Extirpation of Snowmobilers in Vermont

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Social Climate Change: The Advancing Extirpation of Snowmobilers in Vermont

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Colorado State University Libraries, Article, 2018.

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Effects of Climate Change on the Seasonality of Weather for Tourism in Alaska

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Effects of Climate Change on the Seasonality of Weather for Tourism in Alaska

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Colorado State University Libraries, Journal Article, 2009.

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The Canadian Geographer, Scholarly Article, 2015.

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15 ways climate change has impacted winter sports.

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15 ways climate change has impacted winter sports.

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Stacker, Article, 2020.

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Climate change has made winters in the United States warmer on average. Not only are temperatures higher overall, but there are fewer days below freezing as well as fewer extremely cold days.

While many of us might appreciate wearing lighter coats and not having to shovel our driveways as often, one industry that is struggling with climate change is that of winter sports and winter tourism. Winter sports are a huge business in the United States. Twenty-three million Americans participate in winter sports each year, totaling $12.2 billion in spending. During the 2015-2016 season, 20 million people went downhill skiing, snowboarding, or snowmobiling. These industries also include activities like cross-country skiing, ice-skating, and snowshoeing, along with events such as the Iditarod dog sled race and World Cup skiing and snowboarding competitions.

Based on even moderate projections, using a Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) of 4.5, meaning that emissions would stabilize around the year 2100, the average global temperature by 2100 is predicted to be 4.3°F warmer than preindustrial times. And given how things are currently going, that might be optimistic. Some scientists are using RCP 8.5 as a model, calling it "business as usual," which represents the level of emissions if we do not change our behavior at all. This estimate shows temperatures being 8.8°F warmer than the preindustrial average by 2100.

To look at the impacts of these rising winter temperatures and changes in winter weather patterns, the nonprofit group Protect Our Winters (in collaboration with REI Co-op) wrote and published a February 2018 report called "The Economic Contributions of Winter Sports in a Changing Climate." Using statistics and facts from this report, Stacker compiled a list of 15 ways climate change has already impacted winter sports and also what we can expect from our winters and our winter activities in the coming years.

You may also like: 30 incredible photos that show the true power of nature

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15 ways climate change has impacted winter sports

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Climate change is affecting every facet of daily life, including winter recreation. Stacker leveraged a 2018 report from Protect Our Winters, to explore ways climate change has impacted winter sports.

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Here's how climate change is impacting the ski industry.

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Here's how climate change is impacting the ski industry.

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CNBC Television, informative video, 2019.

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Here's how climate change is impacting the ski industry

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Spotify "Trained", Podcast Episode, 2022.

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M. Sanjayan and Joan Benoit Samuelson | The Race Toward a Greener Future

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Listen to this episode from TRAINED on Spotify. What do a top conservation biologist and a legendary marathoner have in common? Their passion for the environment. On this episode, two unique perspectives come together to tell the story of one goal: to preserve our planet so we can all thrive.