Colorado Resort to Invest Heavily in Wind Power

[gulfcoastliberal]

DENVER, Aug. 1 — Vail Resorts, the big Colorado ski and recreation company, said Tuesday that it would make a huge investment in wind power, buying enough credits to offset all the power needed for its resorts, retail stores and office buildings.

The announcement makes Vail the second-largest corporate buyer of wind energy in the nation, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, after Whole Foods Market Inc., the big supermarket chain that went to all wind power earlier this year.

Buying wind, though, will not mean building mountain windmills. Rather, Vail officials said they would buy the equivalent amount of their energy needs in wind power credits from a Boulder company called Renewable Choice Energy. Renewable Choice will then buy wind power from producers — mainly in Minnesota, Kansas, North Dakota and South Dakota — and inject the amount of power Vail uses into the national electric grid.

snip

Recent climate studies have suggested that winter tourism in the West could be especially hard hit in years to come by global warming, which could reduce mountain snowpack. But the chief executive officer at Vail, Robert A. Katz, said at a news conference that an equally important motive in embracing renewable energy was to establish and maintain relationships with visitors, who Mr. Katz said increasingly expected high environmental standards as they decided where to spend money.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/us/02wind.html?ex=1155268800&en=bd2aa375c6c3bfe0&ei=5070

Interesting concept, the article is worth reading.

[NNadir]

1. Of course all of these theoretical gyrations are superior to putting

windmills on Vail Mountain.

We wouldn't want a wealthy person to have to actually look at a Windmill.

I wonder if they have any windmills on Snowmass Mountain.