SAM Magazine—Aspen, Colo., Jan. 30, 2024—A new sustainability report from Aspen One, the parent company of Aspen Skiing Company, ASPENX, and Aspen Hospitality, highlights the company’s environmental and social responsibility efforts in areas such as political action, research, and philanthropy. The report presents as part educational tool, part catalog of the company’s climate-forward efforts, and part call to action. 

Within the report, Aspen One draws a distinction between traditional corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices around environmental and social governance (ESG)—such as emissions tracking, offset purchasing, and waste and water measurements—and what it calls “meaningful corporate action,” which includes advocacy, pressuring trade groups, and calling peer businesses to account, among other actions, according to the company. The report pushed back, in particular, against the idea of setting climate targets and instead called for more systemic action to fight climate change.

The report does include some absolute (rather than normalized) emissions tracking—Aspen One has reduced the total tons of CO2 emitted at its Aspen Snowmass and Ketchum, Idaho, operations from 29,820 in 2000 to 21,287 in 2022. 

Although, the report appears to have been created with edification rather than the dissemination of metrics in mind. 

For example, a section highlighting new construction built in accordance with the company’s “no new natural gas” policy focused on the design of several new structures rather than, say, the carbon emissions those sustainable designs might save. A new guest services center constructed at Buttermilk Mountain is described as “all-electric, passive solar, with argon-gas filled low-e coated double-pane windows, super-insulated roof and walls, and soon, a new sign that educates guests about how to build green themselves.” It is also, apparently, “easily replicated at a reasonable cost by conventional builders.”

The report made note of several advocacy and legislative efforts, including work to help rewrite Pitkin County’s land-use codes with an eye toward reducing the impact of the residential sector on areas such as energy use and workforce generation, and the work of Aspen’s longtime partner Protect Our Winters in passing the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate bill in U.S. history. The report cites a bevy of news stories the company has used to “aggressively push out ideas and projects” as well.

Two key 2023 climate-related research projects were also identified in the report. Aspen One peer-reviewed a white paper from the University of Pennsylvania designed to inform the COP 28 climate conference called “Are carbon offsets unscalable, unjust, and unfixable—and a threat to the Paris Climate Agreement?” The company also funded a climate model to see what the West would look like if the anthropogenic climate change observed from the 1980s to the 2020s had not occurred. “The results,” said the report, “can be used to sue the fossil fuel industry for damages.”

The full report can be found HERE. 

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