When Arapahoe Basin set a goal of shaving its energy bill by five percent, GM Alan Henceroth knew he could find savings by replacing windows and sealing cracks. But he didn’t know about the early morning delivery driver.

Working with his team to detect easy-to-fix energy losses, Henceroth discovered that the driver, while ferrying goods several mornings a week, had been propping open a door for up to a full hour. Given how much it costs to heat buildings, getting that door used more judiciously delivered quick savings.

From New England to the Rockies, an obvious, but sometimes overlooked, lesson in shrinking energy use is the human component. Yes, saving energy sometimes requires investment. But much can be saved by simply paying attention to the behavior of employees and visitors.

At A-Basin, savings came from many places. “Our tactics were pretty simple,” says Henceroth. “We picked our worst, draftiest places and replaced windows or sealed them. And we engaged in a real aggressive training and educational program with our employees.

“We got better at what we were doing and saved a bunch of energy and money,” says Henceroth.

Energy audits can easily identify what can be fixed economically. For example, A-Basin’s audit last year turned up a heater that was performing poorly because it used an inappropriate mix of outside air. This was relatively easy to fix.

At Alta, Utah, sustainability coordinator Maura Olivos also recommends a season-opening energy audit. These typically reveal plenty of wish-list items, she says, but also low-hanging fruit. “It can be as simple as lowering the temperature of your boiler or turning off a light. That’s the great thing about an audit, it points out the real simple things,” says Olivos.

She also recommends listing all energy uses by department. With such lists, employees can avoid mistakes, such as turning up a boiler used for restroom water to 180 degrees when 90 degree will suffice nicely.

A start-of-the-season audit can also pinpoint energy hogs with simple technological solutions. For example, lights in ski instructor locker rooms typically remain on after everybody has left—sometimes even at season’s end. Staff electricians can easily remedy that waste with a motion-sensor light system.

Finally, Olivos sees great value in start-of-season meetings with all employees. In just 15 to 30 minutes with each department, she can explain what they need to do to help save energy, such as shutting down computer monitors.

The Human Factor

Grand Targhee, located on the Wyoming-Idaho border, has saved energy and money by encouraging a culture of energy efficiency. Total use last season was down 10 percent compared with the five-year average. That represents a $14,000 savings for six months.

Like A-Basin and Alta, Targhee conducted an energy audit at the start of last season. The audit identified retrofits and weatherization projects. Power strips were handed out to better manage electricity demand in offices, making it easy to shut off all energy hogs at day’s end.

Electricity not only energizes lifts and lights at Targhee, but also heats most buildings. The resort has 60 electrical meters to measure usage, but to better monitor demand, the resort installed “turtle loggers” provided by the local utility. That allows managers, when they notice spikes, to investigate the cause.

But the human factor may be the most important. Christina Thomure, director of sustainable operations, says she is seeking to instill a culture of energy consciousness.

An Energy Conservation Committee, composed of key resort leaders at Targhee, identifies opportunities for conservation of electricity and manages those projects. Committee members also communicate information regarding the energy-saving initiative.

And that’s important, as knowledgeable, committed employees are crucial to saving energy. Thomure and other managers explained the goals and program last winter, and managers kept in touch on a weekly basis with rank and file employees. Thomure also met with managers every two weeks to review energy use and projects.

“We were trying to get our employees to be really sensitive to the issue and keep it in the front of their minds,” she says.

“When we started last year, we had all of our managers and supervisory staff do a walk-around spot audit. This convinced us that there are plenty of areas where we can conserve electricity: rooms that weren’t being used that were being heated, heaters that were turned up high, and lights in storage units that had been left on forever. We started talking about all this at our bi-weekly meetings.”

Humor helps in delivering the energy message. So does repetition, and the two were combined to get employees’ attention. For example, if an employee left her computer on, she might return the next day to find a note, created for exactly such instances, stuck to her computer screen. On the sticky note were the faces of popular managers superimposed on their favorite cartoon characters, with admonitions such as, “To keep the powder deep, turn down the heat.”

“It was funny, instead of being top-down and autocratic,” says Thomure. And she should know: she was the employee in the example above.

Guest Involvement

Guests got into the act at Targhee, too. In four lodging units, guests were included in a pilot program that ran from mid-December to mid-January. Each room had monitors to measure the electricity used for heating and appliances and for water use.

Two of the rooms were offered to those who knowingly had agreed to be more efficient with energy by turning off lights when not needed, turning down heat when absent, and perhaps taking shorter showers. The other two rooms had monitors, but those renting the rooms had no knowledge their energy was being measured.

The savings were substantial: the energy-aware guests used 30 percent less energy than those in the control rooms. “The feedback (we got) was that people really felt that it went beyond saving the resort money, because it was a bigger-picture initiative,” says Thomure. “You’re not giving (the guests) enough credit if you think they don’t want to participate.”

Tracking energy use and marshalling efforts to reduce it take a good deal of initiative and an investment of time. “It was kind of intense when getting it going,” she says. “Now that we’ve done it once, it will be easier to implement in the coming season.”

Stimulating Solutions

Resorts looking to trim energy bills should also look to their utilities and local and state governments. All have adopted policies to meet load growth through conservation. Federal stimulus funds flooded through state governments have provided grants. In other cases, rebates are available.

“Talk very aggressively with your power company, because a lot of times your power company has rebates,” says Kris Blomback, GM at Pats Peak.

But Blomback notes that technological solutions are not without their consequences. The New Hampshire resort hosts about 60 weddings per year. At least one ended unhappily even before the nuptials. The 24 compact fluorescent lightbulbs installed in the chapel were dimmed—and then half went off, as CFLs don’t react well to dimming efforts. From his wedding coordinator the following Monday, Blomback learned exactly what he could do with CFL bulbs.

Blomback sees lighting technology struggling to catch up with marketplace demand. He wanted to install super-energy-efficient LED lights for a 2,000-square-foot addition at Pats, but the payback on the investment was about 14 years.

Still, taking the longer view, even these more-expensive investments may make sense sooner than the yardsticks of today suggest. A recent publication by the U.S. Department of Energy predicts that electricity prices will increase 50 percent in the next 20 years.

When that happens, it definitely will be worth keeping an eagle eye on that 5 a.m. delivery driver.