The building that houses administrative functions of the Aspen Skiing Co. is a place of fire and ice. At the bottom level, the chief financial officer sometimes resorts to fingerless gloves. Top-floor administrative officers can bake in the afternoon sun.

The 1970s-era building is inefficient in its use of electricity and natural gas, which are increasingly becoming expensive. That waste also means the building has a larger carbon footprint than it should have, a potential embarrassment for a company that has so publicly and firmly committed to shrinking emissions of greenhouse gases.

Aspen’s problem is a familiar one in the ski industry. Much of the building infrastructure dates to the boom era of 25 to 35 years ago, when the threat of global warming was less clearly understood and energy was far less expensive. On the other hand, the methods then for saving energy were far less advanced.

Auden Schendler, Aspen’s executive director for community and environmental responsibility, says ski areas serious about shrinking energy use must look at buildings. “You really can’t do much on lifts, other than not run them. Snow groomers are just a small part of the carbon footprint. The only thing you have left are snowmaking and buildings.”


GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Nationally, 50 percent of energy is devoted to buildings. At Aspen, the figure is even higher, 56 percent, which includes two major base area lodges. But short of razing your buildings and starting from scratch, what can you do?

A lot, actually. A menu of options is available. Dan Richardson, an energy expert, advises ski areas to conduct a simple self-evaluation. On its Energy Star website, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offers a Target Finder (see Website Resources box). Plug in information about a building’s size, utility bills and climatic zone, and the Finder yields a report that estimates how efficiently the building uses energy.

“You use it for a gut check,” says Richardson, a senior energy consultant with Schmueser Gordon Meyer, an engineering and surveying company based in Glenwood Springs, Colo. “Are we in the ballpark of the average building?” The results can suggest your next steps.

Those steps, Richardson and others conservatively estimate, can cut energy costs by 10 to 20 percent, with a payback period of two to five years. Ski areas as diverse as Mammoth and Jiminy Peak say they have achieved greater than 20 percent savings in energy. So retrofitting can make good sense.


WHO YOU GONNA CALL?
How do you make sure you get the best bang for your buck?

One option for large operators is performance contracting. What is called an energy service company, or ESCO, studies the buildings and other operations, figuring out what investments and changes will yield the greatest savings in energy. It can then go ahead and make those improvements itself. This route requires no up-front capital. The energy service company finances the upgrades, and its profits come from savings in utility costs over a 10- to 15-year period.

Where do you find such a company? The Colorado Governor’s Energy Office (www.colorado.gov/energy/) lists 13 such enterprises, which work in most other states as well. Other state governments have similar energy offices.

Another option: contracting with an engineering firm to do an energy audit and building assessment. Richardson recommends firms that are multi-disciplinary, with a mechanical engineer, HVAC expertise, and expertise in what grants and low-interest loans may be available from governments and energy utilities.

It important to know, says Richardson, whether the firm can deliver information that is clearly understood. If a report is written entirely in engineering jargon, then that report may be of little use. Planning for implementation is a key aspect of performing an audit.

While most older buildings have great inefficiencies, Richardson says, skimming this cream is not always as easy as is sometimes described. It is important to be able to translate the theoretical into the practical. “Even if you know intuitively, and it’s an old building, and there are things wrong, making those improvements happen can be a challenge.”

Aspen Skiing’s headquarters is one of those challenging older buildings. Richardson’s company was hired last year to evaluate the longevity of the building and assess how efficiently it uses energy. An inspection of heating bills for the last three years showed a clear increase in consumption of natural gas. The company’s assessment found many reasons why. One culprit is an old gas-fired boiler. The best new models have an efficiency of 99 percent. This one originally had an efficiency of 78, but age and insufficient maintenance have reduced the efficiency to just 53 percent.

The assessment also includes a long list of other recommended changes, some as simple as removing old leaves piled up on the roof. The report also recommended application of films to the south-facing windows in the top floor, to reduce glare and unwanted heat.

Aspen has committed to the improvements, although not without deliberation. “If we’re going to spend $250,000 in this old building, it will take an awful lot of increases in electricity to get any kind of payback,” says Schendler. But if the Aspen Skiing Co. is truly committed to reducing its energy footprint, he added, the proof is in the execution.


EVALUATING BUILDINGS
A range of evaluation services is available, at different costs. A retro-commissioning report, such as was done for Aspen, is relatively expensive, but comes with great detail. An energy audit is less expensive and more basic.

Some utilities will pay for energy audits, or at least deeply discount them. The Brendle Group of Fort Collins, Colo., which works with the National Ski Areas Association in its Sustainable Slopes program, says a company might pay $200 to $300 for an audit. That typically involves a thorough walk-through of a facility, says the Group’s Dave Workman. “We can tell right away if they have the newest generation of fluorescent lighting,” he says, “or whether they have lighting controls, such as occupancy sensors in bathrooms or for special meeting rooms that are used intermittently.”

Savings are not often hard to find. During one audit, a Brendle Company engineer made a shocking discovery: heaters were blasting hot air in on-mountain lift shacks at the height of summer. The operators, apparently, had forgotten to turn off the heaters at the end of ski season. That waste, says Workman, illustrates the value of programmable thermostats, to negate the cost of human forgetfulness.


IN- AND OUT-HOUSE HELP
Richardson emphasizes the importance of both maintenance and broad expertise in energy management. “You have a lot of people who don’t necessarily have a background in managing buildings,” he points out. “They may own the buildings, and are by default the building manager, but they don’t necessarily know the kind of maintenance program they should have. Or maybe they have a good background in HVAC but they don’t know about indoor air quality or lighting or the thermal envelope. So a maintenance program is kind of a way, regardless of the experience of the owner, to take a comprehensive look at your building and make sure it gets done.”

Schendler agrees. “You would never consider buying a car and not changing the oil for 100,000 miles and then get pissed off when it breaks down,” he says. “But that’s standard operating procedure for buildings.”

While quite happy with Richardson’s work, Schendler warns that “at some point, you have to cast your lot with somebody you think is good and smart and honest in engineering, and they are extremely hard to find. We had one person charging $200 to install thermostats that cost $40. We caught them, but most people don’t, because they don’t know what a thermostat costs.”

Of course, it’s possible to do much in-house. Improvements to lighting fixtures, water systems, and other low- hanging fruit are good candidates. It doesn’t take a Ph.D., but it does take smarts, hard work, and research. Richardson recommends Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy’s checklist for internal energy audits as a starting point; other websites with such checklists also abound.

“Get some expert advice on the first project so you can identify the key issues,” suggests Richardson. “Pay a good electrician for the first project, then once you know what you know and what you don’t know, you can tackle it yourself.”


DINKY LITTLE THINGS
At Michigan’s Crystal Mountain Resort and Spa, owner and manager Jim MacInnes has done most upgrades on his own. “I am not against hiring people. We have had energy audits, but I am not sure how much of that you need to do,” he says. “I think it is just simple, common-sense stuff. You can buy a book and get a lot out of the book.”

For example, two years ago Crystal Mountain changed out 4,300 incandescent light bulbs to the more energy efficient compact-fluorescents. It has installed timers on bathroom exhaust fans. It has improved insulation. It restricts how much water is used through installation of such things as aerators. Water, in addition to requiring energy to heat, requires vast amounts of energy to pump and treat.

“It’s a lot of little dinky stuff, and you do all that before you start thinking about renewable energy,” says MacInnes.

MacInnes maintains that the “dinky stuff” is urgent. Energy remains relatively cheap, but he expects that will change. He cites a cascade of evidence that point toward higher prices to heat and light buildings. “It will take energy to do what you want to do, but now is the time to do it,” he says.

Richardson says he’s reluctant to predict prices, but price increases are likely. Increased investments are necessary to expand transmission capacity. Many long-term leases for coal, which produces about half of the country’s electricity, are about to lapse. Also, there is the looming taxation of carbon through the cap-and-trade system advocated by President Obama. And finally, natural gas is powering most new capacity in electrical generation, and gas is far more expensive than coal. And the use of natural gas to produce electricity will likely drive up the price of gas used for heating.

Upgrading older buildings can be viewed as a good investment in the future. Efficiency upgrades typically involve dollars spent locally, Richardson notes, and thus benefit the community. In contrast, your utility bill is often paid to an out-of-state company.

Whatever steps you take, know that energy efficiency is not a simple battle, but a long war. Always, there will be more that can be done. On the other hand, the longer you wait, the more money you waste.