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Even as prices of electricity, natural gas, and diesel have been rising, Crested Butte Mountain Resort (CBMR), Colo., has figured out how to slash its costs. Thanks in part to an $80,000 grant from the National Ski Areas Association’s Sustainable Slopes program, mountain managers reduced annual energy use by 18.9 percent between 2008 and 2010. But even without that, changes to snowmaking and grooming operations and installation of programmable temperature and lighting controls have made a sizable dent in energy expenses.

Overall, Crested Butte so far has been able to reduce electrical use by 17.2 percent, liquid fuels by 22.3 percent, and natural gas by 32.1 percent. That reduction represents a savings of close to $300,000, says John Sale, director of planning and permitting at Crested Butte. While declining to give specific numbers, Sale said that the resort’s total energy bill had dropped from more than $1 million in 2008 to less than $1 million last year.

For this effort, Crested Butte was recognized in July by Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper. The resort was one of five charter members of the Colorado Industrial Energy Challenge and has committed to reducing energy consumption as measured against 2008.

Crested Butte’s biggest percentage reduction was in natural gas, which is used to heat the vehicle maintenance shop, a 50- x 150-foot metal barn. Timed thermostats now turn down the heat when humans forget. This simple step reduced natural gas use by 25 percent the first year. Timers on lights also have reduced electrical use.

Improved efficiencies in snowmaking have yielded the greatest savings in dollar terms. The savings come from improved technology, especially low-e tower guns from HKD Turbo, which replaced air-water guns. (Four of CBMR’s 10 new tower guns came from the Sustainable Slopes grant, which was underwritten by Clif Bars and HKD.) The new guns also make snow more rapidly. “Where we used to spend a week, we’re now spending 10 hours,” says Mark Voegeli, assistant mountain manager.


Strategies for Savings
New strategies have also yielded savings. For example, instead of cranking up snowmaking operations by Halloween or even earlier, they now wait until mid-November, when colder temperatures prevail and allow snowmaking with greater production and much less use of compressed air.

Here’s a good measure of that efficiency: Instead of 12 ground guns operating at 600 cubic feet of air per minute at the park and pipes, CBMR now runs 12 tower guns at 100 cubic feet of air per minute.

At 16 degrees, snowmaking crews cut the air entirely. “A lot of ski areas question why we’re doing that,” says Voegeli. “We were prompted by the manufacturer saying, ‘Yeah, you can do that with this equipment.’”

A new location for the terrain park and pipes, lower on the mountain, has also yielded savings, as this eliminated the need for one water pumping station.

All this reduces electrical use, although not necessarily electrical costs. This coming year Crested Butte expects an eight-percent hike in electrical unit charges from its supplier, Gunnison Country Electric.

Crested Butte has also minimized cost increases for snow grooming through investment in technology and adoption of a new strategy. “We are spending more money, but we are actually using less diesel,” says Voegeli. He explains that Crested Butte has switched to bigger machines, now using five Prinoth Beasts where it formerly used eight smaller machines. But each Beast can cover half again as much as the smaller machines, and that cuts fuel consumption. The resort has also adopted fleet-style grooming techniques, which seem to more efficiently groom slopes than groomers working in isolation.

Bigger machines and similar techniques have been employed at some larger resorts for years, but Crested Butte is, by Colorado standards, no more than mid-sized, even a bit small—it recorded 370,000 visits last year.

There are more efficiencies to come, and now armed with an impressive return on investment, Crested Butte managers think they have a good case to take to management for investment in energy-saving materials and technology.

“These savings have allowed me to continue with smaller projects through these tighter financial times,” says Voegeli. “They’re not huge amounts, just good solid projects for the last couple of years.”

In time, says Sale, CBMR also hopes to expand the efforts to the base-area hotels and administrative buildings. On-mountain, future savings may come from improved insulation for the lift terminals and lift shacks. There’s interest in solar panels on lift terminals or even wind, but for now, the better money is in saving energy.

CBMR is not the first area to systematically approach energy efficiency, but its success in achieving nearly 20 percent savings in just two-plus years demonstrates both how quickly a plan can be implemented, and how much of a difference it can make. What would you do with an extra $300,000?